Michael Lehman and I’s interview with Judi Tyabji Wilson, CEO of Tugboat Enterprises, is now up at Channel 9 and if you are an incurable optimist and your PC works flawlessly and never, ever crashes, don’t bother watching it. For the rest of billion or so people whose lives include those happy little moments of [...]
Continue reading... September 13, 2007
MicroISV Tactics #1 – Treat their customers like your customers.
(I’m starting a new category here at 47hats.com for smart marketing tactics being used by microISVs – MicroISV Tactics. The thing about these tactics is that they draw on the nature of microISVs; they’re not just general good things to do in business ideas.) Patrick McKenzie, Bingo Card Creator, posted about why he treats his [...]
Continue reading... September 7, 2007
Hard lessons from the field – ‘Real-world WPF business application #1’
By Stuart Foster-Hall from AMBA Sterling ICT Ltd. AMBA Sterling ICT Ltd. stuart@ambasterling.com ambasterling.spaces.live.com www.ambasterling.com [Ed. Note: From time to time I'm inviting various microISVs to come talk about the development of their products here at 47hats.com. Stuart Foster-Hall kicks off MicroISV Profiles by discussing what it's like building a microISV app in Windows Presentation [...]
Continue reading... September 5, 2007
Getting nice and uncomfortable.
Doing business in the online world is all about getting uncomfortable. For me, last week’s revised try at becoming a speaker for the Business of Software Conference was a supremely uncomfortable act – I’d rather have slept on a bed of piercingly sharp nails than go on camera. That said it – with the support [...]
Continue reading... September 4, 2007
Are you working hard or are you working long?
Here’s a question for you: are you working hard or working long? If you think the two are the same, go read this post by Seth Godin in full (not a bad idea anyway). Here’s the gist of it: Sure, you’re working long, but “long” and “hard” are now two different things. In the old [...]
Continue reading... August 31, 2007
Coming up with a microISV product idea.
This final 47hats.com tip for microISVs for the month of August has to do with a question that gets asked often at the Business of Software Forum: How do I come up with an idea for my microISV? It’s damn hard, no doubt about it. In some ways, the answer to the question “What product [...]
Continue reading... August 30, 2007
Nick Hodges of CodeGear talks about CodeGear, Borland and Delphi
The MicroISV Show goes where blue badgers fear to tread – to the home of CodeGear, the Borland spinoff of all things Delphi, to get get the lowdown on what today’s other windows development environment has to offer microISVs. Nick Hodges, codegear product manager for Delphi makes the case and spills the beans. While the [...]
Continue reading... August 30, 2007
A tiny favor to ask: Vote for me.
You may have heard about the upcoming Business of Software Conference (10/29-30, San Jose, CA), and my first (extremely, horribly bad) video effort to win through your votes a speaking slot there. It was so bad it would have been banned by the Geneva Conventions (assuming we still follow them). So bad, I asked Neil [...]
Continue reading... August 29, 2007
The real costs of buying your software
Over at the Business of Software forum, there’s been a more than a little angst this summer over whether microISVs can compete with Free and Open Source (FOSS) software. After all, we have to charge for our software or go broke; there are a lot of really good FOSS apps out there; Microsoft is worried, [...]
Continue reading... August 29, 2007
One (extra) hat you might not need to wear
By Cristian Dorobantescu Affiliate Network Coordinator / Avangate BV Bob says that a (Micro) ISV owner has to wear about 47 hats to keep the business running. I have to agree with Bob on this one, as from my experience in working for and with (Micro)ISV, 47 it’s just about the right number of hats! [...]
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