vote for bob
Our favorite MicroISV writer and evangelist Bob Walsh needs our help! If you have a chance go over to the Business of Software conference site and vote for Bob to be a speaker at the conference.
Our favorite MicroISV writer and evangelist Bob Walsh needs our help! If you have a chance go over to the Business of Software conference site and vote for Bob to be a speaker at the conference.
Wasn't I just asking for this? Looks like the Techsmith guys are on it! They even provided extremely fast tech support when I emailed in a question. Very nice.
Bob Walsh is launching a MicroISV consulting service on his new site, 47hats.com. There's not much else up about the exact services, it will be interesting to see what he ends up offering. I think it's an interesting idea. I remember talking to Bob probably over a year ago and he was kicking this around.
What I'm most interested in is how he pulls in customers. MicroISV's are notoriously cheap (even when it's not in their best interest to be). I'm hoping Bob has some unique product offerings.
Just the other day I was lamenting about the MicroISV world, perhaps this will be the shot in the arm we (I) need. I'm really looking forward to helping Bob succeed with this initiative.
Looks like we lost Alex Williams, he's off to get a ..... job. You may remember I was wondering what he was up to a few months back. We never found out :-(
For some reason this news has me a bit reflective. A few years ago when I was starting UserScape there were a bunch of other MicroISV's starting up. There were blogs all over about it, so many people getting into it. The fact is that I don't think any of them are still around at least not the ones I followed. Can I really be the last man standing? Where the heck is everyone?
I guess this goes to show you that starting a MicroISV is still starting a business. It still takes incredible persistence. The barrier to entry may be lower, but only a small percentage actually make it the entire way.
I'm not sure how I missed everyone falling off, but as I look at my RSS reader I realize there's almost nobody in there from back in the beginning. Now that I think about it, this may be part of the reason blogging isn't as fun for me as it used to be. There was more of an almost team effort feel to it back then. Everyone posting and trying to build up something together, commenting on each others work.
I'd love to get some of that back. Maybe I'm just not hanging out in the right circles?
If so you may want to drop a note to DnL. It's a web consulting company started by my brother (Joe) and cousin (Carl). They're already doing some amazing work with big name clients (including a little bit for UserScape!). They're a very good team. My brother is a great programmer (far better than me) and my cousin is a really good sales and business man. You may have to wait a little bit as they've already generated a ton of work in just the first few months. Always a good problem in the consulting biz!
I've asked them to leave a spot open in the org chart for me, perhaps head coffee runner?
Check them out when you have a chance. Any links you could send their way would be great.
Patrick has a long and thoughtful post on the scam currently being run by the payment processor SWREG, which was uncovered by Andy Brice. Obviously what they're doing is horrible, no doubt about that.
My question is though, why do all you guys use these processors? I see lots of downside and very little upside. My main concerns would be total lack of control over the checkout process experience (as shown by this event) and the insane fees. It's significantly more expensive to use these guys than to just run the transactions yourself via a payment gateway. I suppose the convenience of not having to get a payment gateway is the main draw, but doing that little extra work gives you complete control and will save you hundreds if not thousands of dollars a month. Am I missing something?
Scoble with an interesting post on how the iPhone stops strangers in their tracks.
The post reminded me of a good tip for business meetings. Back when I worked in publishing I had a boss who would always buy the latest handheld gadget. Didn't matter what it was as long as it was just released and something nobody else is likely to have already. I remember in one specific meeting it was a shiny silver iPaq. He'd always put it in the middle of the table and conspicuously use it before the meeting started. Inevitably people would start to ask about it and a conversation would ensue. Before you knew what happened he was running the meeting. Not only that, but by doing this he'd broken the ice with the others attending and this often helped him sway them to his will. In fact if you knew what was going on it was almost scary the effect it had on the others.
Today my wife was noting with me how our friends and family are really wearing on her (us). Not that we don't all get along, we do. We get along very well in fact. What's wearing on her is how nobody knows what the heck we do for a living.
I must admit that I expected it to be a challenge to explain to people, but it's been far worse than I anticipated. I think if we just ran a website they could maybe get that. Say, if we sold socks online. I could show them the URL and explain how we get orders and ship socks out and that would register. It would be close enough to a normal retail store that they'd get it.
Maybe even if we sold table planning software or bingo card software they'd get that. They've had need of these things themselves and they could download it and play around with it. At family get togethers I could gather everyone around and show it to them and get the questions over in one swoop.
It seems though that help desk software, which is downloadable but web based doesn't resonate as well. Not to mention that it's primary function is to run a service desk which none of them have every worked at or even thought about. I don't blame them, but it can be frustrating from our perspective.
It's not an obvious problem, it's actually very subtle. For instance, no body ever believes we're making good money. It just doesn't seem possible that there's a market for this thing. So when we buy things (for instance, we're buying a new house) we're often greeted with questioning looks, as if to ask if we can really afford such things.
I don't blame them, heck half the time I don't believe it myself. It's all so virtual, with bytes going one way and money coming the other. It doesn't seem real to me so it must be impossible to believe for them.
There also tends to be a lot of helpful advice, like get a nice suite and go down to the business district and knock on doors. Things like that. That's how business always has been done, so it's impossible for those not living in our little digital world to believe that we do pretty much no advertising and no local business. For the last tax quarter I collected $100 in NY sales tax. Not much, because our customers are around the globe.
Perhaps the most frustrating aspects are when we talk about working. For instance, my wife was discussing how hard we've been working on the new release to a friend of hers this week. How we've been testing and spent all day on the computer. It actually is extremely draining and yet there's always silence on the other end of the phone. Almost a disbelief that such things could be considered actual work. That's also often accompanied by a lack of anything to say in return, since the amazement at it even being work sucks any other thoughts out of their mind.
It may sound like I'm ranting, but I'm really not. I just find it interesting how different a world we live in from everyone around us. It's yet another of the stresses and challenges of starting a web based business.
I've tried using YouTube and the ilk for video, but it just doesn't work for my use. The videos I often present are not me jumping around in a monkey suite, where the resolution is not important. I want a flash video player that leaves the video uncompressed or at least leaves it at a good enough resolution that text can be read. Anyone know of such a product? It would be great if I could host it myself, but I'm open to a hosted solution as well.
Here's a tiny little video of the HelpSpot API's output types. This particular video is showing the public API method that will list all public forums.