“Daniel Berlinger, Re: Help with Macrobyte's Future”

Daniel Berlinger responded to my questions about Macrobyte's future, on his site. This is my response.

>He'd like to keep the cost of his software "low" and build a
>community of developers and users around it. If this is the case
>then it is a consulting company he's building and software
>sales, and developer support, are income streams alongside of
>his client work. (There's still a balance to achieve, but
>still.)

That's essentially the wording that I've used internally, but switched around. Quoting from something I posted to Macrobyte's intenal list, "The perfect situation, in my opinion, would be a slow-but-steady flow of software sales to provide the bottom end of Macrobyte's income scale, with custom development and consulting work provding the high end." Of course that omits support contracts and hosting fees. I'd slot hosting fees into the bottom end, with software sales, and support contracts at the top with consulting.

>I'm not sure that this is what he wants. I get the impression
>(and this a weak stab considering my impression is over the
>internet) he'd prefer to be a software developer.

Well, not really, no. Consulting is what Macrobyte is all about. Conversant was written to be a consultant's/developer's tool, something that can be easily customized for any situation.

[SNIP]

>There's other possible revenue streams even if you are a
>developer... you can employ your own software and host the
>resulting services for end users even as you sell the product 
>to var's and developers.

Yes, we're already doing that, and would like to do more of it.

[SNIP]

>Each of these has different support requirements. End user
>support (even for the most excellent of products) requires
>patience. Understand that there's a lot of venting and rage that
>gets loaded onto support people that has nothing to do with your
>product or your level of service.

See the earlier comments by Jim, Greg, and Brian Andresen on Macrobyte's technical support. This is something that I think the developers are really going to like about working with us. Some of us, myself include, actually enjoy helping other people code almost as much as we enjoy writing our own code.

Yes, we'll be dealing with a lot more than just developers. There will be users... like Brian Carnell, for example, whose Conversant-based sites currently have about 50,000 pages and who has asked a different question or made a different feature request for almost every one of them.

(Just teasing, Brian!)

>Dealing with professionals has a different tone, but there's the
>clock ticking, "I've got my own clients to satisfy" tumult of
>professional "I rely on you" pressure. Macrobyte might be more
>or less suited to one or the other of these.

I hope the developers/professionals will give us the benefit of the doubt and see what we can do.

>So I think the first question is, what business do you prefer to
>be in? What style suits you best? What would you rather do given
>the choice?

Hopefully, this has now been answered.

>These dilemmas are close to my heart right now. I've been a
>consultant for a long time, interspersed with attempts to find
>the right company and working for them full time. The last job
>ended back in October. And after taking some time to rest and
>regroup, I started thinking about what I'd like to do.
>
>I've thought about all these things as I burn through my
>savings...

Yeah, I know what that feels like.

>I've also been working on my own software and considering the
>various ways it could be sold. On its own, bundled with site
>software/hosting, through the folks who create server software
>(ahem). All of the above?

That's very interesting. Of course, in order to bundle it with a piece of server software, it should inter-operate with that software very well. I know you've started working on that.

>Joel of JoelOnSoftware has also talked a little about this.
>About how his company and been doing consulting work to pay
>bills while the software business gets going... but that they
>expect to be in the software business, not the consulting
>business.

I'm hoping for something like a 30/70 split in favor of consulting. Enough sales to justify the product's continuation, and enough consulting to pay for lots of improvements and additions to the software.

Thanks Daniel!

Seth