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Eric Sink on Starting Your Own Software Company
prostoalex writes "The topic of starting your own software company was recently brought up on Ask Slashdot as a way to fight current employment trends. Eric Sink from SourceGear, who shared his software company-building experience before has written a new article published on MSDN. Getting started with your own software company suggests several simple steps to evaluate your abilities, count your estimated expenses and then start the software company, if the idea still seems feasible."
Microsoft and its ilk don't do developer tools because the potential revenue is so exciting. Rather, they play in these markets because doing so is strategic support for their platform.
Which is why I've always found Win32 example code, docs, and the like mediocre at best. In contast, Apple always has incredible and astoundly impressive dev docs, support, and communication. Whenever I'm trying to find stuff on msdn, it feels like the days when your searching for something using Hotbot. At Apple, I'm reading the right resources typically within 20 secs of arriving at the site. I'd comment about other dev communities, but I have little to no xp and/or exposure there.
G-Force music visualization
- Ideas are worthless
- Know Yourself
- Understand the business
- Seed capital
A startup can be rewarding, but risky, difficult, and challenging. If you're going this route, be prepared for the difficulties and determined to make it succeed.It's all about execution. The idea by itself is worth nothing.
Are you really prepared to do what it takes to force this company to succeed?
You may not need a business plan, but you need to understand your product, competitors, and where your cash will be going during the first several quarters.
Initial financing is difficult to acquire for a risky new startup and, even if you do find it, you'll end up working with little or no salary for the first several months.
He's not an M$ employee.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
Direct quote from the article:
"You cannot compete with large companies."
Yeah, sure. Asswipe.
Compare with Joel's advice to, if at all possible, get into a design war with a large company. You'll always win.
Laugh at my Lisp and I keeell you.
I noticed that the consulting firm that I work for now is essentially a software company, and that such a software company is incredibly easy to start, assuming that one already works at said consulting firm. The thing that takes the most time is winning the contracts in the first place. If you can get the customers (and therefore $) easily, you're home free.
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...Because if you read his dribble, it's clear, he thinks Open Source doesn't work and closed source does! I call it dribble because Open Source helps make us profitable, every single day.
Besides, Open Source vs closed source is not really my beef with Microsoft. What I hate them for is the way they behave as if no other fish should have the right to live in the ocean. They kill other companies by either cutting of the oxygen supply or by gobbling them up, whole.
Why can't they at least be more like Cisco? Cisco tends to buy companies and then let them simply exist, intact -- most of the time. Makes for a much healthier ecosystem if you nurture instead of vanquish.
To me, that's really where Open Source helps. I have to hope Open Source can beat the crap out of Microsoft to help level the playing field, once and for all. When the vast majority of the market accepted open hardware standards, it made it difficult for IBM -- the big bully of hardware, at the time -- to wrest the market back (remember the PS2?). Hopefully, Open Source will have the same effect on the big bully of software.
This is true, there are a lot of ideas kicking about. You simply have to solve the problem. Try studying a discipline in IT and using that to improve a product. For example, postgres and mysql are DBMS's with a lot of room to grow. Learn the product, study the science, and build a better mousetrap. Nothing stops you from selling it, much as RH sells their version of Linux.
The same could be said for Linux admin-ware. Study all the packages, the admins out there, and form your own uber-dashboard.
There are tons of these add-on ideas kicking about. OSDN has quite a few, albeit mired in a lot of other projects. However, with people constantly throwing their effort against these concepts, the tools eventually mature. The key is not to reinvent the wheel, like you said, but to not even build on the ground, as it were. Build on top of existing products that people are buying and find lacking.
Hit a large-user-base commercial product and try it there perhaps. ACAD, Microstation, Renderman, SAP, PeopleSoft, Oracle, MS all have applications with APIs to plug into and expand. After the good idea, you're back to the article's best advice: Marketing is everything.
I am an INTP. The Myers-Briggs test is remarkable...I recommend everyone (especially INTP) read it so they can understand the common traits (both good and bad) of their personality.
/.er to me!
INTP is a very unique group...only 1% of the world's population. But it probably accounts for at least 75% of programmers.
Slashdot readership I would estimate as high as 50%.
Idealistic...fascinated by complex abstract concepts (computers)...and of course doesn't always shower enough...sounds like a
Absolutely. The one thing you don't need to have as a contractor is a good idea of something that other people might be interested in. You just work on what your customers find interesting and important. If all goes well, you can transform that into stuff that's interesting for you as well (that's why they hired you).
Also, the one thing that counts more than anything else for a contractor is your contacts. You should build them before you actually start to depend on them financially, e.g. while you study. Actually, it doesn't take much conscious effort. It just happens if you spend long enough among technically oriented people.
That is a well established strategy used by corporations to grow and increase profitability. Business courses, the business press, and others will mention it. The strategy is called Mergers & Acquisitions. Companies like Microsoft, Cisco, and others became what they are due to it.
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places
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