New Blog - Life in a small ISV
Thanks to Joe for setting this blog up for me. I'd better introduce myself: my name is Ade Bullock - I'm Co-owner/Lead Developer/Teaboy for a small startup ISV called Contigo, based in Solihull in the UK, building enterprise ASP.NET applications for the Energy and Utilities industries. We develop both packaged and bespoke applications using most of the MS stack as well as occasionally some Java and Oracle.
Rather than being too technically focused I want to provide more of a real-world insight into the challenges of building, selling and deploying ASP.NET apps into big enterprise customers and also the various highs and lows of running and working in a small ISV. For most of my career I've been a developer/architect in large companies building line of business (LOB) applications. Myself and a few techy friends finally had the courage to start our own company in 2006 and it's been a roller coaster ride ever since.
My first bit of advice to anyone considering the jump to start their own ISV is to do it - I wish I'd done it years ago. You need to have a positive outlook as there will be plenty of lows as well as many highs. My second bit of advice is to have a reasonably clear focus on what you intend to do. Rather than being a general software development shop, we are focused on the Energy market as we know the market well, have lots of contacts and have identified lots of potential opportunities. Having a pool of a few hundred potential clients is often easier than having a potential pool of 1000's of companies.
In the next issue, I'll provide some more detail on the various things we had to do to startup the company and the great resources available from Microsoft for ISVs. I might slip in the odd techy tip as well. Stay tuned.