The secrets of a system integrator. My Journey of Startup, Product + Project Development
Look out information hoarders. Knowledge isn’t power, applying knowledge is power. 15 years of being thrown down many problem solving wells is about to rain down some cold hard facts!
So, you have a business. Like any business, you need answers from every system in your business. The funny part? Every business wants the same answer from their data.
WHERE IS EVERYTHING AT?
That’s all anyone cares to know. On demand. Get good at it and there’s a future for you.
Automatically presenting this answer through systemizing is what I do as a Systems Integrator. I first make it simple to use what you click and read. Then under the covers, the complexity of what you do is busy working away for you 24/7.
If you’re looking for for meaty, applicable experience, here’s the first post in hopefully many. If more software was built like this, or better, we wouldn’t have so much bad, time consuming, hard to use software.
Following my post on finding a software startup idea, the next step is to pick one. I know, rocket science.
There’s a lot of great material out there on how to pick a startup idea that stands a chance of succeeding after you’ve found and made a list. Do your best to not get lost in a sea of reading. There will be no perfect decision, only a more informed one. (A great habit I have picked up is never, ever read anything that doesn’t have something to do with the exact current thing you’re working on in your project. Just bookmark it.)
A noble first goal is to validate that your idea is something customers are willing to pay for. Seth Godin summed it up beautifully in a blog post the other day about the two step process to find and pick an idea. Seth highlights how founders often don’t wander wide enough to examine a lot of ideas, and once they begin with an idea that might not be very good, become far too open and attached to it.
Having a profitable business alone isn’t success.
Every business needs cashflow (and profit) to survive like the body needs oxygen, food, and air. Just because a business has cashflow, doesn’t mean it’s a success, much like we aren’t a success in life just because we sat around and survived.
I received this funny comic and it got me thinking…..
I have often wondered how a relationship between specialist (Web, designer, programmer, etc.,) can sometimes turn into the customer believing they understand everything better than the specialist, and how to do it.
This is when phrases like:
“Couldn’t you just..”
“All you have to do..”
“It should be pretty simple..”
“Can’t we make it really simple on the screen? Why would that be more work to do it all behind the scenes?”
become more, and more common.
Problem? I don’t know.
It’s simple. Building a product with less time developing the product, and more time building the business around the product (marketing, etc.,), the greater chance it will have of actually succeeding.
I recently read that a product is 80% marketing and 20% actual product. That probably would explain why garbage can succeed and great software can fail.
The truth is as developers, startup entrepreneurs, it’s critical to know how to sell and market. Without learning the ability to have the conversation to sell, there may not be much of a reason to start building anything.