BackupBrain: My MicroISV Venture

Gavin Bowman’s written a food-for-thought post about good ideas versus execution:

If I believe everything I read: ideas are cheap; it’s all about execution. Developers are sitting on dozens of great ideas for products or services, if they only had enough time and funding. It wouldn’t matter which idea they chose, as long as the execution was right.

It’s a thought-provoking post, but one simple suggestion in particular jumped out at me:

Build a website or some basic product literature. Do you still think you can build it as quickly as you thought? Do you still think you can sell it? Is it still something you want to work on?

Interesting idea! I may do just that. I don’t think I’d worry too much about final layouts or anything, but the idea of writing up at least part of a product website describing the features as I envision them may be a useful way of seeing how realistic my plan is. As well, it’ll give me something to show to people when describing my idea.

And now for something completely different…

Wikis are a simple, yet amazingly versatile and useful software concept. I’ve used one for the last few years on a personal domain as a scratchpad and notebook for the various tips, tricks, and clever solutions I discover in my day-to-day work. It’s not a known wiki and it’s only really ever visited by one person – me.

It has been a “life-saver” many times for when I have been unable to remember the steps involved in a certain procedure or something else and I’ve been able to get to my notes easily and refresh myself.

What I’m wondering is how can wikis be used to benefit those of us trying to build our Micro-ISV ventures?

For example, should wikis used as mentioned above, as personal knowledgebases, be opened up for viewing by our customers? Part of me thinks that this would be a good way of showing the breadth of our skills and expertise in various areas. Another part of me says “No, that’s giving too much information away”.

I saw reference somewhere that Bob Walsh is/was thinking of including a wiki as part of his My Micro-ISV resource site (which would make it an even better resource), but that’s not what I’m interested in here: there does not seem to be any MicroISVs who have included a wiki on their main site in some way, either for support or something else (except for the LookLater FAQ page). Perhaps some Micro-ISVs are using them, but are keeping their URLs hidden or on internal sites only?

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One use for a wiki that I can see potential in would be as an easy way to maintain and produce product documentation: the wiki provides the online searchable version (not necessarily editable by the public) with an easy way to create printable PDF versions. e.g. see the combination of PmWiki and WikiPublisher, as one way to achieve this. Then said PDF could be uploaded to Lulu or CafePress, made into a book and then used as another way to promote yourself and your knowledge a bit, a promotional tool, or even another revenue stream (although it’d be unlikely to be a big one).

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Or, perhaps a wiki could be a place to put all those tidbits of info that will one day make it into the documentation proper but hasn’t yet. This wiki could then be available for the more technical users amongst our customer bases.

I’m just thinking aloud here, but, it does appear that there may be opportunities for Micro-ISVs involving wikis. I’d be interested in knowing if any others are doing anything interesting in this area.

A couple of links that are helpful for selecting a wiki are:

• Top Ten Wiki Engines @ c2.com
• WikiMatrix.org – Wiki Feature comparison

MicroWiki looks like an interesting option for those that already use WordPress for their site’s content.

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Myself, I’ll probably setup a copy of PmWiki and experiment with it, as that’s one I’m familiar with and it has a lot of active development behind it, plenty of interesting plugins, and a sizable and active user-community.

There’s a good post over at MyMicroISV on Picking your micro-ISV niche.

He gave a useful link to a Squidoo lens about the long tail. If, like me, you’ve often heard reference to the long tail concept, but weren’t sure exactly what it is, that lens contains some good links to help clarify things.

In my own case, about to develop a web service, I don’t think I’m following the hype cycle, as I’ve been thinking about the concept for the last 4 years or so and discussing ideas with others as opportunity arose.

My service fits roughly in the online PIM marketplace, alongside the likes of BackPackit, RememberTheMilk, and one or two others which escape me at the moment. On discovering these services I almost thought of abandoning my ideas for the reason that others are getting close to my way of thinking and I wouldn’t have to wait long until I could just use their offerings myself. Which would have been fine, ’cause I have other ideas I could develop. However, their services are more narrowly focussed than mine and their emphasis is a bit different to what I am aiming for.

When will I go live? Not sure, but I feel good having picked a niche and made a start… now to just keep forging ahead!

And, now I continue my investigation with a first look at commercial help desk solutions… (note: that I haven’t yet installed any of these myself. I have formed my opinions from the product’s own web site, tours and any other reviews I’ve come across. I want to see what is/is not worth installing for a closer look)

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Another new Micro-ISV blog begins…

smallisv.wordpress.com… is by John Gunning and, although he’s only got two posts up at the moment, I’ll be interested in following his progress and his perspectives on starting a business from my side of the world (him being a fellow Aussie).

At this stage, I’m not sure what type of business he’s developing as he has even less details up than I do!

This post from Kevin, reminded me that I really need to investigate some of the various JavaScript UI libraries myself.

So far the ones I want to have a play with, including the couple from Kevin’s link, are:

• Prototype
• Rico, which is built on Prototype
• MochiKit
• Dojo
• Yahoo’s UI contribution
• x-desktop and idots2
• AjaxTK (added 22nd Feb. Forgot about this one!)

Anyone know any others? Or, has anyone actually used these in a real project?

I thought a better way to start my comparison of available help desk software would be to go back and have a look at each of their sites, check out any online demo versions and draw up a short list of contenders for further evaluation (i.e. actual installation on my own site). The list came from my previous post.

Let’s start with the Open Source sector…
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This is last week’s news I know, but I thought it was worth comment. VMware Server now being free is a huge gift to the Micro-ISV community, methinks.

I’ve downloaded it and given it a quick test, and it looks great so far.

I have recently been evaluating both VMware Workstation and Parallels Workstation with the view to using one of them to setup development web servers for my own Micro-ISV; instead this has saved me quite a bit of money with no loss of functionality. Cool!

I’ve been doing a bit of reading tonight and came across this article from Evan William’s, of Blogger fame, on “Ten Rules for Web Startups“…

“No. 6. Be Self Centered – Great products almost always come from someone scratching their own itch. Create something you want to exist in the world. Be a user of your own product. Hire people who are users of your product. Make it better based on your own desires.”

A good point, and one that I’m actually following with my own service/product. I plan on following the “eat your own dogfood” idea and building stuff that I would find useful and want to use often.

It’s an old post, and many of you would have read it already but if, like me, you missed it, go read the rest of the points sometime.

From Wired: Vaporware: Better Late Than Never

The lesson for all good Micro-ISVs? Never announce product release dates!