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Andy Smith's Blog

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Starting A Business

I have a big announcement to make. After a lot of soul searching, I've decided that I'm going to have a go at the whole entrepreneur thing. I've decided to turn MetaBuilders into a business. I’m just getting started here, so all the legal goop of setting up a company is still ahead of me. The coming month has some pretty big distractions for me, like the MVP summit in a week, so I don’t really know a time frame for when I’ll be making my first product announcements, but it’s definitely in the near future.

I’m sure there’s going to be big questions about this, so I thought I’d take a second to answer some of them right now.

What You Will See:

  • More controls on MetaBuilders, because now I’ll be able to spend all my time on this instead of balancing it with a full time job. ( YAY! )
  • Much more smooth and complete installation, help, and support systems with my controls.
  • More diverse blog posts, such as how to do the things involved in making professional level controls, such as licensing, help integration, and deployment.

What You Won’t See:

  • You won’t see this blog become a PR/Marketing mouthpiece. Sure, I’ll probably talk some about MetaBuilders and new controls, just like I always have, but it’s going to be from a technical standpoint, and in a help-oriented vein, just like it always has been. The plan here is to have a separate MetaBuilders blog hosted on metabuilders.com for those interested getting the scoop on product news.
  • You wont see me immediately take down every free control I have available and charge for them now. Everything that’s free right now will stay free right now. Major upgrades, such as for Whidbey, will probably involve turning the more complex components into products, but not everything along these lines is set in stone yet.

Well, all that said, it’s an exciting and slightly scary time for me right now. This whole capitalism thing is quite a ride.

Published Mar 29 2004, 02:35 PM by Andy Smith

Comments

 

Jeff Gonzalez said:

Good Luck, you should be pretty successful, your components and controls rock.

This is liKwid from IRC btw.
March 29, 2004 4:42 PM
 

Brad More said:

Congrats! I just choose a different path ... after getting my own company's administrative house in order I decided to put that on hold and accept a (very nice new) position with my current employer. Maybe that made room in the business cosmos!
March 29, 2004 5:16 PM
 

Darren Neimke said:

Andy, all the best with your venture. I've learnt so much from you over the past few years regarding control authoring by reading through your code. Given the high quality of what I've seen, I'm sure that you will be successful.

Hope to catch up with you next week!
March 29, 2004 5:22 PM
 

Chris Frazier said:

If anybody's got this, it's you Andy.

I, too have learned lots from you and your controls and I wish you nothing but the best.
March 29, 2004 5:29 PM
 

Martin Vobr said:

Good luck! and welcome aboard.

Your components have permanent place in my toolbox and I'm sure I'm not alone. Your success is nearby ;-). I'm running component business too, and I'm really enjoying the experience. I wish you the same!
March 29, 2004 5:35 PM
 

M. Keith Warren said:

Good luck, you can contact me via my blog and ask any questions. I started my company 2 years ago and read and learned so many things about company structures and tax stuff.

Software is the easy part ;)
March 29, 2004 6:01 PM
 

Todd Moon said:

That's awsome! Good move!
March 30, 2004 2:49 PM
 

Datagrid Girl said:

Congrats Andy!! I'm looking forward to big things from your new company.

--Marcie
March 31, 2004 11:41 AM
 

James Avery said:

Awesome! I have always thought you should go down this road, but I know you were hesitant in the past. I look forward to seeing what your company produces.

-James
March 31, 2004 12:55 PM
 

Christian ASP.NET said:

Thank you for all your incredible contributions to the ASP.NET community. I'm looking forward to what you have in store for all of us! You can bet I'll be one of your first paying customers :)

- David
March 31, 2004 1:23 PM
 

Doug Reilly said:

Congratulations. I look forward to seeing the new cool stuff you will be creating! I have learned an amazing amount of stuff looking at your code and controls...
April 1, 2004 10:24 AM
 

Gabriel Fogante said:

Best desires for you Andy!
Regards from Argentina.

Gabriel
April 7, 2004 1:47 PM
 

Eric Engler said:

You're a smart man and I'm sure a lot of us will be interested in a subscription. I'm guessing you'll use a subscription model, right?

But this is a hard type of business to run. Many people aren't willing to pay for anything. I know of 2 cases where friends of mine failed: one was a paid "members only" website, and the other guy sold components. Both of them were popular until they tried to go commercial.

I sincerely hope it works out well for you. We need to support people like you because that gives us all a big return down the road.

- Eric
April 27, 2004 5:34 PM

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