The Ongoing History of a Software Entrepreneur

Surviving Google's Aging Delay

2005-04-21T14:23:00.000-07:00

Back in November, when I first set out on my own as a microISV, I launched the microISVReality.com site as a service to other microISVs. In just two weeks I was ranked 2nd in Google for my target keywords. I was right up there with Eric Sink and microisv.com - the definitive sites on the topic of single person software companies.

I thought I had a good idea of how to conduct SEO. So when I launched RoadRaceResults.com in March I wasn't too concerned about getting near top search engine ranking, especially since site has specific target keywords. Daily I checked but I was still lost on page 6 or 7 in Google.

However, for many results searches I was already #1 in Altavista and MSN.
Altavista Robbie burns 8K results

It would be a huge boost to my business if I could get that sort of ranking in Google. What is going on with Google? I started working on incoming links and kept monitoring my ranking but no improvement.

Then I discovered that Google has put an aging delay in place that prevents new sites from getting ranked. (read more about the Aging Delay...)

Apparently it will be 6-8 months before I start to see top rankings. However, I am reading that taking out a Google AdWords ad will immediately remove the aging delay. If so, then Google has abandoned their role of impartially indexing the web. These are dirty tactics but I guess Google is a business and they are free to do anything they want to generate revenue.

I'm going to do some more research to find out whether I need to advertise on Google if I want to receive a high ranking, especially in the first 6 months.

The other thing that can c be done to jump start indexing in Google is to make use of existing domains you may have that are old enough to be indexed. I have several, two of which receive top ranking for certain keywords.
www.qwikpage.com is the site that I launched last November as a resource for other software entrepeneurs who were just starting out like me. There are several keyword combinations related to microISVs and software entrepreneurs that I get top ranking. So I could piggy-back on this site to get some good rankings to my RoadRaceResults.com site.
I also, have been managing www.RunningClub.ca for a few years now (although it's fairly stale lately). I can get top search ranking with this site as well. This site would make more sense to act as a Google Search front end to RoadRaceResults.com since the topic is similar.

This makes me think, if some microISV out there wants to take over a site that gets hits from software entrepreneurs then I would consider transferring it at a very low cost. It has consistent medium-level traffic, is indexed well by the search engines and has many incoming links. Contact me if you think you would like to take this site over... www.qWIKpage.com

Yahoo! Small Business Doesn't Like Canadians

2005-04-21T14:21:00.000-07:00

I have never ranted in my blog before, but...
In my previous blog I briefly described how I spent a week creating a Yahoo! Small Business Storefront only to find out that since I am in Canada I will not be able to get a merchant account to accept credit cards.
If I can save even one other person who lives outside of the United States from wasting time like I did then this blog will be a success.
Yahoo! Small Business makes it REAL easy to launch a small eCommerce site. I can't imagine it being much easier. And the cost is quite low.
But if you are not in the United States you will not be able to accept credit card payments.

Now you know.

Rainmaking: "If you build it, they will come. If you don't keep working on it, they will go away."

2005-04-21T14:13:00.000-07:00

You will recall from my previous blogs, that in November and December I did alot of reading and background research about small business and being an entrepreneur. I read about being a Rainmaker in sales. In theory I understood that being a Rainmaker means that if you don't get out there and sell then you won't sell anything. Sounds obvious enough. But in the past month I have been experiencing it first hand.

The Rainmaker image is an allegory suggesting that the rain doesn't just come - you need to do a rain dance to attract it, encourage it and coax it. And you don't just do it once and walk away. You need to keep up the dance.

My first sponsorships and first site memberships were thrilling. After launching RoadRaceResults.com I promoted it at The Around-The-Bay Road Race. The result was a spike in traffic and some phone calls that lead to sponsorship. Then nothing. So I made some calls and sent out some emails. And BAM, more sponsorship and partners.

I went back to developing some features and working on a partner eCommerce site and the incoming interest and traffic to the site waned. I started to really get the feel for how sales and promotion activity responds directly to the amount of effort I put into it.

It feels like inflating a ballon that has a slow leak. If you keep pumping air into it then everything is great. As soon as you stop pumping air then the balloon slowly deflates and 'dies'.

At this point, I am still at the stage where revenue isn't the main priority until more features are completed which will lead to traffic which is necessary for advertisers. So I don't need to keep 'pumping up' the work on getting sponsors but site traffic works the same way. If you abandon your work on promoting the site to build traffic then your logs will directly reflect this. I have watched 'hits' go from thousands to hundreds in a week whenever I neglect my work on promotion.

The Field of Dreams mantra, "If you build it, they will come." doesn't work in business.
Rather, "If you build it, they will come. If you don't keep working on it, they will go away."

In just the short month that I have been Rainmaking, I've learned that the following traits are necessary:
1) Creativity - come up with creative solutions by imagining you are the prospect and creatively creating a solution for them
2) Enthusiasm - get excited about how a partnership between you and the prospect will create a Win-Win outcome (you need to keep thinking about how the other party will benefit)
3) Persistence...to a point - offer altenative solutions to your customer (different promotions, different requirements, scaled back features etc), but know when it's time to stop the pressure and just keep in touch with the customer in case the situation changes in the future
4) Integrity - believe that what you have is exactly what the client or customer needs, and if it is not then move on
5) Being Real - the best approach is to simply communicate with your customer as yourself, don't try to be slick

The Main Thing is keeping the Main Thing the Main Thing

2005-04-21T14:09:00.000-07:00

It's been a month since launching RoadRaceResults.com. After The Launch of a site (or any software for that matter) as soon as positive indicators of success start coming in (such as early revenue, traffic, emails, feedback) the tendency is to rush things.
Even with thorough market research you still never know how successful your venture will be until it's 'out there' performing in the real world. So, when you start to realize that 'this thing has potential' the excitement builds and you want every feature to be complete, all possible promotion done, every possible sales prospect contacted, top search rankings, etc. etc.
At least this is what I have experienced. "IF ONLY, I could get these features and these sponsors and these users then this venture could be wildly successful sooner than planned."
Well, don't abandon your diligence by being hasty now that things look promising.
A Proverb says, "The plans of the diligent lead to profit as surely as haste leads to poverty." (proverbs 21:5)
It was methodical planning and diligence that got this product launched and now is no time to abandon it for haste.

In the past month, I stressed and pushed to get too much done and to accomplish things before their time. It's not so much a problem of working too hard but rather a case of trying to do something before it's natural time.

In the past few weeks I deviated from my one year plan (shown below) and tried to get an eCommerce site launched as I describe below. This work really messed up my progress and added to my stress level.

Here's a brief summary of what I got me off track.
After the launch, I generated promising traffic numbers and secured some sponsorship for the site. I had a list of features that I planned but I thought it would be great if I could monetize the traffic sooner than later and get some revenue flowing. I know that until traffic reaches a much greater level I will not be able to go after certain national advertizers so direct sales seemed appealing.
My plan is to create a partner eCommerce site for RoadRaceResults.com that will offer products targetted at my users. I spent at a great deal of time setting up all the merchant accounts, getting the product distributor accounts, getting my Vendor Permit and investigating full-service hosting that will allow me to get the eCommerce site launched quickly.
The result of my research was that Yahoo!'s Small Business Services makes it real easy to build an online storefront and connect it to a backend payment processor. According to their instructions I needed to build the storefront first and then apply for the PaymentTech credit card merchant account. To approve me for the merchant account they needed to look at the site. So I took a week to do this, with product pictures, descriptions, categories etc. Then I started the process of getting the merchant account and immediately found out that since I am in Canada I can't get a merchant account that will work with Yahoo!'s backend processing system. Nothing in their user guides or online help explained this before I started. So, I was ticked! Of course, they gave me a refund but I still wasted some time. All was not lost, the storefront pages I made will make it quicker to do this again with some other Canadian-based hosting solution but wasted time is something I can't afford now.
The eCommerce hosting solution I use will probably be www.cartikahosting.com.

LESSON LEARNED
Don't deviate from the plan. It wasn't time to rush into direct product sales yet. And even if it was, I approached this with too much haste.
So after learning this lesson I am taking a deep breath and reminding myself of the one-year plan for RoadRaceResults.com (shown below).
Once making this realization, and slowing down to put things into perspective I feel much less stress. I have a plan and it can't all get done this week.
Lesson Learned - stick to the plan, and stick to the schedule.

Online TODO Lists

2005-03-21T07:20:00.000-08:00

I am now moving away from the Development phase to the promotion phase.
I am finding that the personal process needed here isn't the same as I used when developing (see my Big Charts post)
What I have now is hundreds of little TODOs when doing business development and promotion.
After a bit of searching I found 'The Simplest Thing That Works' with an online todo list/ WIKI-like thing at:

JotNote.com
- The Online To-Do List

Give it a try.

Fortunately, the launch of RoadRaceResults.com hasn't had many programming fires to put out. But all the little tasks are piling up and I am entering a mode called 'Running Down the Hall with Your Hair on Fire". A picture is worth a thousand words...

Promotion of RoadRaceResults.com has started

2005-03-21T07:12:00.000-08:00

Yesterday marked the first day that I promoted RoadRaceResults.com within the target market - runners in Ontario.
The first big road race of the year in this area is the Around-the-Bay 30K run. I attended this race and promoted the site.
Can you tell from the daily stats graph when I started promoting the site...

The great thing is that there are still almost no referrers so that means thousands of users have typed in RoadRaceResults.com.

I haven't done anything for SEO so I still an not indexed. That is at the top of my list. (see next Blog entry about Todo List).

Serious Design Flaw in PHP Development Environment

2005-03-08T15:18:00.000-08:00

I was forced to buy 'File Recovery for Windows' late Sunday night.
DOOOH!

Here's the scenario.
In Zend Dev Studio...
1. Right Click a Project and click 'Add to Project' in the context menu
2. Try to select a file in c:\RoadRaceResults directory
3. Double click RoadRaceResults directory (instead of click)
This adds the c:\RoadRaceResults directory to the project rather than open up the folder to allow a file in it to be selected.
4. So remove this folder from the project and try to add the file again.
Do this by Right Clicking c:\RoadRaceResults in project and click Delete.

THIS DELETES THE ACTUAL FOLDER RATHER THAN REMOVING IT FROM THE PROJECT!

Folder and all subdirectories GONE!
And since it was deleted by an app it isn't in Recycle Bin.

Thank God for my nightly backups to another computer but this day was an amazingly productive day.
All the work this day was lost.

Quickly do a search for recovery software.
FILE Recovery for Windows seems like the best bet.
I gave it a try.
I was able to find some files that had some of the content I was looking for. Of course the filenames didn't give a hint but the Last Modified time helped narrow it down. With some hunting, all the bytes of the files were somewhere on the hard drive and in a couple hours I was able to piece everything back together. I got to bed after 1AM considerably less stressed than I was a couple hours earlier.

Bad feedback for Zend Dev Studio.
Great feedback for FILE Recovery for Windows.

Technologies used for RoadRaceResults.com Portal

2005-03-08T14:08:00.000-08:00

After evaluating several languages, tools and environments, here is what I finally decided on to deploy RoadRaceResults.com.

The criteria were:
- excellent development environment
- site will be all dynamic pages
- quick execution speed, site must be very responsive
- support and documentation easy to access, many other developers to tap into
- hosting of chosen technologies widely available and competively prices
- compatibility with all client platform
- compatibility with at least one common server platform
- cost
- server logging, monitoring and statistics

Factors that were not very important, if at all:
- learning curve
- complexity
- third party components availability

I needed to choose technologies for:
-web application server
- server-side application development and hosting
- database
- page markup
- some client-side functionality
- development envisome client-side functionality

I always lean toward technologies that are low-level to gain speed at the expense of complexity. I have a great deal of experience with CGI and some ISAPI filter experience so that wasn't out of the question. Those would result in the most responsive sites. But cost was a factor here and hosting was more limited for these. I would have had to co-locate the host right from day one if I went this way. Eventually, I will need to co-locate but I wanted to wait to grow into that.

I have experience with ASP.NET and some ASP experience so those were each a possibility. My experience with these is that there is a bit more overhead than I am comfortable with. In addition, my tendency to low-level solutions pushed me away from these but I seriously considered .NET. Hosting is getting quite easy to find and cost effective.

Finally, I jumped on the bandwagon and selected PHP and mySQL even though I hadn't every used them. I was up to speed quite quickly and everything is going great so far. Easy to learn. Quick responsive site. Easy to deploy. Widely available hosting. Cost effective. etc. etc.

For the development environment I tried several CSS editors, HTML editors, graphics tools, PHP development environments and FTP clients. I'm not going to take the time to list all the tools I didn't choose but suffice to say, I tried almost everything.

Here's what I finally choose:

HTML Pad or Rapid CSS from Blumentals (RapidPHP from Blumentals didn't make the cut though)

Zend Studio Client (excellent PHP debugging)

Navicat 2004 (mySQL client)

Flash FTP

Easy GIF Animator (Blumentals)

Corel Draw

MS Paint

JASC Aftershot (for simple filtering and transforming images)

TextPAD

I'm still deciding on the site monitoring and site analysis tools.
WebTrends seems very good so far.
Save yourself some time. If you're building a portal with medium traffic then these tools will allow you to deploy a responsive, reliable site in a minimum amount of time.

RoadRaceResults.com BETA Launched!

2005-03-08T13:31:00.000-08:00

As reported in a previous Blog entry, in January I changed gears from my qWIKpage Intranet prototype to the design and development of RoadRaceResults.com.
Now, after about a month of development I have launched the RoadRaceResults.com BETA site!

Please, take a look and give me any feedback you can think of...

Look'n'Feel

Colors, Fonts

Site navigation

Features

Useability

etc.

Thanks

PHP with mySQL Authentication Protocol OLD_PASSWORD Problem

2005-02-22T07:40:00.000-08:00

I just finished wrestling through a problem with mySQL that I now understand.
I'll share my experience in hopes that someone else who has the same problem in the future will stumble on the solution here.

Problem: A PHP client of a mySQL database gets an error message when calling mysql_connect:
"Client does not support authentication protocol requested
by server; consider upgrading MySQL client"

It turns out that the problem is because I changed the PHP client user password using Navicat 2004 6.1.9. Apparently, almost all of the mySQL Administration packages change a password using a new mySQL 4.1.1 password hashing scheme. The PHP client uses an old hashing scheme so the authentication fails. Even though the password is correct it doesn't get hashed using the same scheme that the admin client used.

Solution: Use the mySQL command-line client to change the password...

mysql> SET PASSWORD FOR 'some_user'@'some_host' = OLD_PASSWORD('newpwd');

The OLD_PASSWORD function forces the hashing scheme to be the same that the PHP client uses.

Read more about it in the mySQL Reference Manual.

Standard Banner Sizes - Ad Units - IAB Marketing Units etc

2005-02-17T16:15:00.000-08:00

The variety of sizes of internet advertising banners, images and graphics seems to be limitless.
While designing the RoadRaceResults page layout I visited countless sites to determine what the most popular sizes were. I wanted the CSS layout to accomodate standard banner sizes to pave the way for posting ad graphics.
I didn't find one single page with all the standard ad sizes. Many are out there but none appear to be as complete.
So I made a page of my own. You can find it at www.qwikpage.com/commonbannersizes.htm. It should be helpful to others who needs the same thing.

Feel free to use these graphics when building mockups of your own page layouts. The naming is simple - standardName.gif and widthXheight.gif.
For example, one standard size is called a Leader Board which is 728 X 90 pixels. The graphic for this can be found at
http://www.qwikpage.com/leaderboard.gif OR
http://www.qwikpage.com/728X90.gif

Microsoft Doesn't Get It. IE CSS Box Model Hack

2005-02-17T12:01:00.000-08:00

I recently wrestled with a CSS rendering problem in Internet Explorer.
Of course, anyone who has worked with CSS knows that it is always a challenge to find the most elegant hacks to work-around differences between IE and every other browser.

I want to share this case because I found a work-around that is alot simpler than everything else I was able to find on the web.

The problem is commonly called "The Box Model Hack" and it is explained quite well here by Tantek Celik's.

In my case (shown here) the problem with the box rendering is that IE adds a pixel at the bottom of an image so that pixel-perfect alignment isn't possible without some kind of hack. Notice that the far right column is up to high (but not in Firefox or Netscape).

The accepted hack is to set the box dimensions in the style rule so that IE will render properly, then put in a rule that causes a known IE parsing bug (in the voice-family value below). The result is that IE stops parsing the rule but other browsers continue. Then the dimensions are set properly for the other browsers and everyone is happy - except that it is very ugly.


#myDIV
{
    border:10px solid black;
    width:200px;
    voice-family: "\"}\"";
    voice-family: inherit; 
    width:180px;
}
html>body #myDIV
{
   width:180px;
}

When I called technical support
at Microsoft thier first suggestion was
that I should use tables to layout my page!
THEY DON'T GET IT.

Then after a few days they called back with a simple solution. Just don't put any white space after the <img> tag before the next tag. Apparently, it is the white space (like tab, space or CR) that causes the extra pixel to get added.
Sure enough, that worked.

It's all explained here.

microISV = Shareware Professional?

2005-02-09T10:29:00.000-08:00

In mid 2004 the term 'microISV' started to be used to refer to a one-person software company.
The attention that Eric Sink was getting with his column on MSDN popularized the term. (see http://www.qwikpage.com/microisv/WhatIsAMicroISV.htm )
Brian Plexico then launched microISV.com as a discussion forum and many people were ferring to the microISV movement in their blogs and articles.

In November, I launched my own microISV business and created as website called microISVReality at qwikpage.com.In general, my purpose for the site was to serve as a resource for other startup microISVs; articles, information, links, collaboration, advice and a place for others to promote their new business.

Traffic grew quite quickly for three reasons;

1. my SEO was focussed on 3 key words - microISV software entrepreneur (I quickly became 3rd ranked in Google behine Eric Sinks site and microISV.com)
2. press releases
3. mentioned and linked in discussion forums

The specific purpose of the site was (and still is) a bit unclear.

In January, I sent out an email to some key people in the microISV community to determine if there was any interest in organizing our actibities to build momentum.
My suggestions included;
- make microISV.com the accepted, promoted and centralized discussion forum for microISVs (the rest of us would remove our forums and redirect there)
- form a membership or association of microISVs
- offer some means for startups to solicit advice for experienced entrepreneurs
- organize articles written for the benefit of microISVs
- periodic NetMeetings
- eventually a small conference or seminars to meet face-to-face

The almost unanimous response was that the microISV entity is sufficiently different than a shareware professional and that the mature organization of the Association of Sharware Professionals already provides most of these services. Any time spent organizing microISVs would be wasted effort.

I'm well aware that in many cases microISVs use the shareware distribution model but I don't agree that all microISVs are shareware authors.Being a microISV refers to the organizational structure of the business while being a shareware professional refers to a distribution model. Granted, there is a large intersection between the two groups. However, I believe that a microISV association could establish an identify of its own to the benefit of its members.
I'm not willing to single-handledly take on this cause though.

The other almost unanimouse response from the recipients of my email was that we are all quite busy and this isn't something we have time for.
This I agree with. So I've decided to take my email list and discussion forum down and link from my site to microISV.com for discussions.
My site, http://www.qwikpage.com/, will focus on providing organized, high-quality articles relevant to startup entrepreneurs.
I will also provide a directory of microISVs for their own promotion.
I will not continue my previous attempt to put together a group fo 15 start-up microISV and 5 mentors. The advice I heard is that this can be done on the Association for Sharware Professionals site.

Making these changes actually reduces some of my distractions from my core business - which is developing RoadRaceResults.com - a running portal site.
And that's a GOOD THING.

As an old German proverbs says,
"The main thing is keeping the main thing, the main thing."
In the past 3 months I continually read that a startup entrepreneur must seek advice from experts and gather feedback from users as often as possible. This input needs to be used to influence strategic and quality improvements in the next iteration.
The email I sent out was a great exercise in asking pointed questions, and getting feedback to set direction. I'm confident that I saved myself alot of wasted effort simply by asking questions.
When I launch my products and web sites, I will make an effort to continually seek user feedback to help determine my next steps.
Lesson Learned.

Why Bother Blogging?

2005-01-27T20:44:00.000-08:00

Got your attention?
What? A Blog, questioning the benefits of Blogging?

Actually, I know the benefits, here are a bunch of links that describe the obvious benefits, particularly to startup software entrepreneurs:
What are the benefits of blogging for small business?
Business Benefits of Blogging
Uses/Benefits of Blogging for Knowledge Workers
Do Blogs Really Help Create Traffic
etc. etc.

What I have found though is that Blogging may just be a distracting sideline for the entrepreneur authoring the Blog.
Recently, I read "The 80/20 Individual" (here's a good summary) . The premise is that many of the world's most successful people are 80/20 Individuals. These are people that have a "20% spike", that is, 20% or less of these people contribute to 80% or more of their impact. The 20% Spike is the one thing that the person is outstandingly good at. If these people achieve intense focus on this strength and surround themselves with other people that can perform the other required 80% then they will reach the pinnacle of success in their field.
It is also critical that they apply their 20% Spike to an appropriate field. For example, an extreme case is Shaquille O'Neal who obviously has a 20% Spike (or 1% Spike) suited to slam-dunking a basketball over much smaller people. He is most successful concentrating on that while surrounding himself with others that can perform the remaining 80% of the tasks. And of course, he has wisely choosen to pursue a career in basketball.
It is of utmost importance, that we, as software entrepreneurs, identify our 20% Spike and apply it with laser-like focus to a product idea to which it is suited.

I say all this to point out that maintaining a Blog for any benefit may be extremely counter-productive for many software entrepreneurs (as well as individuals in any other field).

When I started this Blog back at the beginning of the year, my main purpose was to share my progress in developing RoadRaceResults.com (read Jan 11 Entry).
The reason I want to do this is to;
- be accountable and
- to solicit advice.
When compared to working in a corporate environment, a software developer, independently working on a product is accountable to very few people. In addition, advice and criticism is rare unless actively sought.
So, I considered daily chronicling my progress, decisions and questions for all to see.
It turns out that my particular 20% Spike may not include Blogging.

When I write, I typically strive for more quality and completeness than a well-written Blog demands. If I were to Blog daily, it would consume a good portion of my time.
It's possible that I can set guidelines and metrics to strive to Blog daily:
- for no less than 15 minutes (to honestly test whether it is worthwhile)
- and no more than 30 minutes to ensure that I don't cut into the work I need to be focusing on.

A quote from Bruce Lee that I have posted in my office, "The successful warrior, is the average man with laser-like focus". Somehow, I don't sense that this includes Blogging.

BUT, at the same time, I still feel that I can benefit greatly from some sort of accountability that I had while employment in the past.

In my own case, the verdict is still out on writing a Blog.
The case of reading Blogs still has benefits to me so that I can learn from others (I'm glad that Blogging is part of their 20% Spike).

Now, my default behaviour would be to go back and proof-read this post, condense it, add headings etc etc.
But in the interest of proper Blogging I will just click "Publish Post"....

Big Visible Charts For A MicroISV

2005-01-11T20:08:00.000-08:00

My previous post discusses some of the essentials of a home office designed for software development.
A bulletin board for 'Big Visible Charts' is at the center of the action.
BVCs aren't just for collaboration and communication.
Since this is a single person project, the priority is on:

accountability to my stakeholders (family)
focus (to keep me working on the right things)
urgency (to constantly remind me how much work still needs to be done)

To satisfy these purposes my BVC has:

Work Breakdown Structure (printed by MS Project)
Schedule (a linear calendar of 4 weeks)
Backlog Tasks cards (taken from WBS to show what is coming up)
Current Scheduled Tasks cards (taken from WBS to show what is currently being done)
Recently Completed Tasks cards (to show stakeholders what has been accomplished)

I will write a post later about why scheduling only needs to be done for 2-3 weeks (especially for one person) as long as a Work Breakdown Structure is kept current for the entire project. The entire project shouldn't exceed 4 months (or it should be broken down into 2 projects).

The guideline is to closely watch your footing on the path immediately in front of you (your 2-3 week schedule and Task Backlog).

Don't be too concerned about the path that is out of view, as long as you ensure that the path is leading to the correct destination (your WBS).

Periodically look back at where you have been to learn from it (add notes to your Recently Complete Tasks when they have important lessons for a retrospective).

The Pilgrim's Den - where it all happens

2005-01-11T16:45:00.000-08:00

In my previous post I officially unleashed my plans to develop RoadRaceResults.com (still not described here, but I'll get to that).

I mentioned that one thing I accomplished was to set up The Pilgrim's Den, which is what I call my home office. I have always felt very strongly that the physical work environment is critical to productivity and success in software development. While employed in the past, I would take great care in setting up my workstation just the way I wanted it.
Here are some of the essentials:

lots of whiteboards
close to all team members that I am working with
an environment that allows speaking back-and-forth (without being concerned about interupting other developers working on something else)
a desktop computer where I can sit or stand to work
a notebook computer to be able to move around
a kitchen nearby

When working at home the criteria are slightly different:

whiteboard space
huge bulletin board for 'Big Visible Charts'
music (CD player and great computer speakers)
hands-free phone
books, printers, files easily accessible

Working at home is a lifestyle decision and it must be fun. This isn't frivilous but I have found it critical for productivity.

Here are some pictures of 'where it all happens' for me.

The home office location up in the Great White North

The Pilgrim's Den- The Think! Inspiration Whiteboard

The Pilgrim's Den- The Big Visible Chart (WBS, Tasks and Schedule)

Inception Stage Started - WBS and stuff

2005-01-11T13:08:00.000-08:00

Now that I've had over 2 months to get started as a microISV, here's what I've accomplished:

transition to self-employment and spend time with family
read or skim about 100 marketing/business and technical books
read tons of web articles about business/marketing
develop some qWIKpage technology
put qWIKpage on the back burner

I have now committed to developing RoadRaceResults.com.

Here's where I'm at with that:

initial Work Breakdown Structure created
set up productive work environment (The Pilgrim's Den)
implemented a "Big Visible Charts" system for personal project management (another BVC link)
did some preliminary scheduling

I'll talk more some of this in later posts but I want to mention a bit about making the Work Breakdown Structure.

In the past I have used WBS's to get a project started when it was anything but obvious where to start. Even when working on a single person project it is essential to get a feel for what work needs to be done.

The typical approach I use is to breakdown all tasks on post-it notes and build a hierarchical structure of work down to individual tasks. Each tasks is about 1/2 to 2 days. If a task is very important but only takes an hour or so it still may get a WBS entry of its own.

These post-it notes then form the basis of a MS Project Gantt chart. This time around I felt I didn't really want to use MS Project since collaboration and communication isn't necessary. So I searched for software specifically designed to create WBS's.

It seemed that WBS Chart Pro is the most popular tool in this niche. With a 30 day (50 task) trial license I tried it out. Yes, it is quite easy to use and does what it should but I don't really see any advantage over using a subset of MS Project's features to enter tasks and print out a tree-like Big Chart.

In a post to follow I will show and describe my Big Chart system.

This now officially unleashes the Inception Stage of my microISV business.

Gestation Phase - First 2 Months

2005-01-11T07:34:00.000-08:00

November 1, 2004 was Day 1 for me as a microISV.
Since then I have been in the Gestation Phase.
(Note: this terminology is from Ten3 Business e-Coach. Take a look, their site is filled with 100s of quality concise articles related to starting and running a business)

The risks identified with the first period of a new venture are:
- clarifying vision
- developing your business skills
- identification of the market niche

I started with a file of potential ideas and some prototype code for some of the ideas.
I had a short-list of 3 ideas and one in particular that I was prototyping. I started working on something called TEAM qWIKpage while learning as much as I could about business, and marketing in particular (which I contend covers most of what we need as microISVs)

On the personal side I also spent more time with my family than in the past 7 years while at Pattern Discovery Software as Dir. of Product Development. I needed more time with my kids just doing things together. Simple things, like preparing and eating breakfast with all 5 of us each morning and then driving them to school instead of the bus. Of course, I may have accomplished more in my business if I didn't do this but you can't put a price on these memories.

While working on the qWIKpage Technology in Nov and Dec, I made some exciting innovations that will differentiate it from the competition.
At the same time, I was becoming less comfortable with my market positioning. You see, this technology (not unveiled yet) can be used in many applications.

The common downfall of many software entrepreneurs is that they get married to an idea and press on with developing and launching a product. In an article titled, The 10 Deadly Small Business Mistakes, the number one mistake is "Getting Wedded to an Idea and Sticking with it Too Long". With the technical blinders on, the status quo entrepreneur misses the chance to target a more profitable market.

We read everywhere that the best time to save a failing project is sooner rather than later. For this reason, I stopped the product development to allow me to be more diligent about the product strategy.

I shifted my focus to www.qWIKpage.com to do some on-the-job training on launching a site, getting it indexed in the search engines and generating traffic.

While doing this I started to do some market research on some other product ideas. This is where I am now.

If you read my tongue-in-cheek page About DRB, you will learn that a personal passion of mine is running. This experience has identified an opportunity in the sizeable running subculture. Not only is there a potential for a successful site/service/franchise but there is a seasonal window of opportunity that goes along with it. For this reason, I have committed to developing this idea immediately.