More ISV Startup Resources
My earlier post on resources for startups generated a lot of interest and so I thought another instalment would be worthwhile. Most of the things I pointed to in the previous post are still valid but there are a few different/new things worth mentioning. I should say these are resources which have been useful for us at Contigo where we build applications for Energy and Utility companies using Microsoft technology - they may be more or less useful to you depending on your type of company/application!
The first is a new initiative from Microsoft called BizSpark, aimed at wooing software startup companies to use Microsoft technology, it is a sexier version of the existing Empower program and provides access to the latest tools and technologies, including Visual Studio Team Suite, for an initial cost of $0. There a few conditions but seems a great opportunity for new software companies.
Once you are up and running, you'll find that there are other things you have to do other than develop software. One of the most important is sales and marketing - if you don't have anyone to buy what you're developing, what's the point. There are some very expensive ways to achieve this but as a small company you need some shortcuts. The Sales and Marketing books from the Beermat Entrepeneur guys are great guides to undertaking sales and marketing activities on a limited budget.
You will at some point need a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system to manage all your sales and marketing activity. We use Microsoft Dynamics but there are plenty of free or cheap alternatives such as Sugar CRM, Highrise from 37Signals, Salesforce Group Edition and Zoho CRM. It is important to capture and track as much as you can about your current and potential customers.
One obvious tip is to make yourself stand out; the world is not short of software companies so you need to define why you are different by selecting a particular niche market or USP (Unique Selling Point). Seth Godin has plenty of advice on how to make yourselves stand out and has written several books on marketing with a difference.
At some point you will need to deliver presentations to potential clients, investors or partners. This is a good opportunity to look dynamic and different rather than delivering another "Death by PowerPoint" presentation. Garry Reynolds Presentation Zen book and blog presents a more graphical method of designing presentations as does Cliff Atkinson in his Beyond Bullet Points book. Once you follow this approach, you need lots of images to use - we use iStockPhoto and stock.xchng for cheap and/or free, high quality graphics for our presentations, brochures and web site.
Once you have your application out there, you are probably going to have to support it. We use an online help desk from zendesk to provide web and email based support to our customers. It is not dissimilar in approach to Basecamp from 37signals which we also use. This allows us to present a professional support operation to our customers for very little cost.
Finally, there are a few other web sites which I monitor regularly that are interesting or useful for startup ISV's which you may or may not be aware of: