BackupBrain: My MicroISV Venture

Ian Landsman, of Helpspot fame, has just launched his first experimental “mini-site” here: Open Source Help Desk List.
I like the honesty and confidence that this shows: honesty because the site doesn’t hide the fact that this is helping to drive traffic to the HelpSpot site, and the confidence that he obviously has in his product to hold its own against the competition.

It’ll be interesting to follow the results of this experiment to see how much of an impact this has on his sales.
And, Ian, the only other opensource product I can think of that you’ve left off is: ZenTrack.

To keep things moving, it’s time to set my first monthly goal, even if I have missed the first week already.

By the end of the month, I want to have a functioning Customer Portal/Payments Gateway up on my site. It does not have to be “finished” in terms of complete functionality but it has to be ready to create customer accounts and accept payments via at least one gateway (e.g. Paypal).

Why have I chosen this as my first goal? Well, I have one small customer with the possibility of a second one and this facility in place would be useful for them as well as myself. Also, being able to use & fine-tune it with a few actual customers will be helpful.

I made a decision tonight that I hope will help really get things going around here: each month I will pick one thing to do with my business and then I will have four weeks to research, develop/purchase and then implement a solution to that goal.
This came about as I was thinking again about payment processing and customer portals, etc and I realised that I’ve looked at this stuff before, yet still haven’t implemented anything!

From here on I’m going to (attempt to) discipline myself and proceed in a more structured way, including at least one post for each goal to be made here.

I think this should help me to focus my efforts and achieve real results.

Speaking of the offline side of business… I recently got my first set of business cards printed; And I’ve already passed out quite a few of them around town. So far, I’ve had positive reactions from those who have shown an interest in what I am doing and planning.

And, apart from the obvious benefits of beginning to get my name out and about in my local area, there is something to be said for having a physical item that can be picked up and held. Also, the act of actually spending money on something helped me to stop and consider how serious I am in this.

Somehow it confirms that this Micro-ISV thing is real – that it’s not just a business name, number and website. This is real! This is the next chapter of my career and life. I am really doing this.

It has reignited my enthusiasm and excitement levels!

So my recommendation is, if you too are starting a Micro-ISV and are serious about it (eventually) being a full-time gig, get some professional business cards printed and start talking about your ISV with the people around you that are interested. You may just be surprised at how much that can enthuse and motivate you.

Gee, I can’t believe it, it’s almost Christmas!
I also can’t believe that I haven’t posted anything here since July, which I guess means most of you have given up on me as an MicroISV dreamer with no follow-through…

That would certainly be an understandable assessment, as activity online has progressed slowly (to say the least!).

Offline though things have been steadily progressing. The plan is still to quit the day job and make this a full-time venture within the next one to two years. However, in order to do that I’m going to need more alternative income streams and, to that end, I have been evaluating various options around my local area. Opportunities that would use my current skill sets and mesh with my future ISV vision.
On the Micro ISV side, preliminary ThoughtFiler development has begun with an initial interface for the desktop version (the web services will come later).
Anyway, I’m still around and hope to be posting a little more regularly from here on.