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by Marcus Mac Innes.
Original Post: Going Independent
Feed Title: Marcus Mac Innes' Blog
Feed URL: http://www.styledesign.biz/weblogs/macinnesm/Rss.aspx
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James Avery recently started a yahoo discussion group called Going Independent which follows on from his recent blog entry here about the subject. Scott Mitchell also blogged about the subject here and Eric Sink has done a number of great MSDN articles for ISVs which appear on his blog entitled The Business of Software. I joined up on the group and have posted an intro which I copied below. Good luck to James hope this group grows.
My name is Marcus Mac Innes and I live and work from Dublin, Ireland.
I have a small software / consulting company called Style Design Systems (http://www.styledesign.biz) which provides .NET consultancy and software development. In reality the grand plan, like most of you, is to develop an outstanding software product which will sell successfully in a global market. Isn’t that what everyone one of us is trying to achieve!
To give you some background and context: Some 10 years ago (or more), I completed a Software Engineering degree at Trinity College Dublin and from there went to work for a telecoms software company in London, England. I (and the company I was working for) soon realised that my technical skills outmatched those of my peers and I received promotion after promotion which pushed my up the ladder until I ended up in project management delivering a large deployment into one of the UK’s largest financial institutions.
Soon, the sales guys were insisting I was part of the sales team and what do you know before long I became Sales Manager. The money was huge but the job satisfaction was in my opinion almost ‘false’. I just couldn’t help creeping back into the engineering department to see if I could lend a hand!
In January 2000, everyone was making millions out the some of the most ridiculous web site ideas so I decided to join them with an idea I had for Internet / Digital TV based Pizza Delivery. The idea was to provide a centralised service to local independent outlets so that they could compete with Pizza Hut and Dominos online stores which had recently launched. I quit my job and went “Independent” after all I had the technical experience, the project management experience and now the sales experience...
I think it was March 2000 when the internet bubble burst and the famous boo.com closed their doors. Everything changed and investors were no longer handing out money for Internet ventures. In fact there were so many of us now in the same boat, I started a group called Starting Digital (http://www.startingdigital.com) which has a discussion group here on yahoo called StartingDigital (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/startingdigital). The aim of this group was to encourage entrepreneurial spirit and bring together different disciplines which together could form companies and management teams to make their dreams come true. We had techies, accountants, lawyers, investors, marketing people etc and held meetings in the function room of a pub in London once a month. Companies were formed and there were a number of successes.
What lessons were learned?
The single most valuable lesson I can give you from my experience is that if you want to make a success of something, you have to have a balance. It doesn’t matter if you have the best software product or the best technical experience… you’ve got to balance those assets with “process” (for credibility and management), “marketing” (to tell customers), “sales” (to close deals) and “legal” (to protect your hard work). This all sounds so easy and obvious, but if you are a techie (like me) then these items will be lower on your list of priorities when you are on your own trying to establish yourself. My advice is to: Open up a word document, paste those words in your favourite big font, print it out and tape it to the wall above your monitor. Look at it every day and ask yourself (in addition to the great code you are writing) if you are on top of these items?
If your definition of going independent is what we call in Europe “contracting” meaning that you are selling your skills on a consultancy basis usually for 1-6 months fixed periods then things are going to be much easier than if you are trying to develop and build a company which provides products and services to the industry. Get yourself a sales and marketing department (an agent) and call him/her every 1-2 days. Be nice, very polite, never get impatient or give them an excuse to ask you not to call every day and you will be the first person they place when a consultancy opportunity arises. Nobody wants to be called every day.
It’s very difficult to get everything right if you don’t use an agent, since they will help you protect yourself both financially and legally from the end customer. After one or two contracts you will have the gist of the process, the negotiation, the legal paperwork and the confidence to go direct using either web sites or advertisements.
One last thing: A note about blogging. When you are working for a company like Microsoft or indeed any other company or have established your name in the industry a someone who knows what they are talking about, blog away. Say what you like and have no regrets. On the other hand if you are just starting out an independent, you probably don’t have any public credibility and your blog will be viewed in the same light as your CV (Resume). Be very careful because customers or prospective employers will find your blog on Google and read it. Just keep this in mind when you are about to post a comment or ask a question about something which you (according to your CV) should be an expert in. Use your blog to create your credibility.
Sorry for the long post, I don’t find the time to post often, but when I do, I usually get carried away!
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