This blog is sub-titled The Story of a Software Start-up from Day 1, but much of the writing has been in the form of tips and advice for people in similar situations. Hopefully some of it has been helpful and interesting to at least some of my readers. However, to date, there hasn’t been too much content about the development of the business, and this is largely because I didn’t really have much of a clue where the business was going.
Over the past week, things have become just a little bit clearer, and I am nearly ready to launch my first product. Curiously this product isn’t a piece of software, or even a more trendy Software as a Service (SaaS) offering, but rather a packaged consulting service.
It is clear to anyone who has studied technology businesses even to a rudimentary level that software product businesses scale much better than service businesses, so why am I launching a consulting offering? The main reason is that I have been working in an area where I think there are product opportunities, but I really don’t know where to focus my efforts. Regular readers will be aware that I am a keen proponent of “systems thinking” when it comes to product delivery – providing a complete solution (for example, as Apple did with iTunes and the iPod) rather than just a piece of software and a manual. The challenge with delivering a well developed ecosystem around your product is that it takes time (and money) and you better know what the customer needs, or you’re going to burn a lot of resources trying to second-guess those needs.
My conclusion then was to take the expertise I had developed over the last few months and turn it into a packaged service offering. You can read a little more about my FIXatdl Jump-Start service on the new Cornerstone Technology home page – unfortunately it is such a niche area that many readers may find it a little impenetrable, but I’m sure you’ll get the general idea. In terms of strategy, I plan to spend the next few months working with customers as part of the service offering, and based on that experience, establish next steps for the software products I think would be of value. Of course, I’ll be documenting my findings as this whole thing develops.
I’d be interested if others have had similar experiences or taken a similar approach on their way to building software product businesses – if you have, please leave a comment and let me know.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Good luck on your days as consultant – dont get bogged down out there and abandon your product scope. Use the time to gain info about the consumers needs and insight into their ways of doing business.
I’m still not convinced that a wall to wall solution is the best way for an IT start up – I will recommend you to be the best of bread in your particular field and integrate your solution to neighboring systems seamlessly, it will also make an easy exit where someone wants to buy you out and broaden their solution.
Ole – many thanks for the feedback. For sure you are right that a start-up can’t possibly expect to deliver all components of a sophisticated ecosystem overnight (and perhaps shouldn’t try to); my point is simply that approaching a product offering with a “systems thinking” hat on gives you an advantage over the competition if they only focus on point solutions.
Don’t worry – I don’t plan to abandon my product vision – in fact, this consulting activity is set to strengthen it – if you read Steve Blank’s Four Steps to the Epiphany, you can see that the most value in terms of product input comes from “outside the building”, so I see this as a great opportunity not only to get inside customer’s heads, but in a way to be one for a short while.