Business of Software Blog

Alexis Ohanian at Business of Software 2008 - video online

At BoS 2008, Alexis Ohanian's alter ego, Pierre Francois, won the Pecha Kucha with a talk about how to start, run and sell a web 2.0 startup. You can watch it on the business of software social networking site.

I'm going to post up more videos next week, and then every few days. Jason Fried will probably be up next.

There are two ways you can be kept informed as I put them online: you can either subscribe to my blog, or join the business of software social networking site

Enjoy!

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Business of Software social network

One of things I did for Business of Software 2008 was to set up a social networking site for the conference. I was skeptical about the value of doing this - I don't really get much out of Facebook or LinkedIn - but this proved to be a great idea (thanks Jeff). I wasn't alone in spotting the value: some 80% of conference attendees signed up, and there was a real buzz in the week before the conference.

Now that the conference is over, I'd like to encourage people to connect between now and next year's conference. I thought about using Facebook or LinkedIn, but these are more like badges - shared symbols of belonging - than coherent groups. So I've set up a Business of Software social network on Ning. I've even paid a subscription fee so you won't get hassled by adverts.

Rather than limiting it to conference attendees, I'd like to open it up to anybody who's interested in building long term, sustainable, profitable software businesses. This is the niche I think I fit into best. The web 2.0, build-it-and-flip-it-to-Google, we'll-figure-out-some-way-to-monetise-it-in-the-future crowd have got plenty of other places to hang out.

So, check it out, sign up and upload your photo at network.businessofsoftware.org

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Suggestions for Business of Software 2009

If you've got any suggestions for next year's conference (who you'd like speak, what topics you'd like covered and so on) then post them at this Google moderator site. You can vote on other people's too.

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The power of boring

Dharmesh Shah has written a great post about the power of polarization over on OnStartups.com

I find the "be remarkable" message tremendously inspiring and exciting. It makes me think.

And yet ...

... is it actually true that curve-jumping companies selling remarkable products to a small but polarised audience are more successful than boring companies selling average products to average people?

I'm not convinced. For every Apple there's a Microsoft; for every for Twitter a SAS institute; for every 37signals, an SAP. There are a lot of very boring, very succesful companies quietly knuckling down to the boring business of figuring out what customers want, building it and then selling it to them.

The 'remarkable' companies are, by definition, companies that stick in our minds. But we shouldn't blindly follow them, basing our decisions on individual, vivid and easy-to-recall examples when the data lies in the dull.

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Throw yourself out of the plane door

John Moody posted up a question on the Business of Software forums asking if a product idea he has - a hosted error logging and reporting service - is worth pursuing. The general consensus was that it wasn't.

Screw the naysayers.

Starting a company is like skydiving*. The hard part isn't falling through the air, opening the parachute or even landing. It's throwing yourself out of the airplane.

Sure, talk to some potential customers, investigate the competitors and minimise the risk, but at some point you need to throw yourself out of the plane door.

The odds are you won't land where you thought you would. Red Gate's first product was a bug tracking system; Bill Gates's and Paul Allen's was Traff-O-Data; Joel Spolsky and Michael Pryor started Fog Creek as a consulting business; Apple started off selling hand-built motherboards.

And you've always got a reserve chute if things don't go as you hoped. You'll have more scars, skills and experience and be even more employable than you were before.

*Not that you'd ever get me to skydive.

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