Two links to Mike Gunderloy’s blog tonight. This time Mike has posted up with a review of Bob Walsh’s book “Micro-ISV: From Vision to Reality”. I have been reading Bob’s book after hearing him talk on the G’Day World podcast last week and I really recommend it if you have ever considered striking out on your own and delivering your own product.

I have to admit the idea of starting a Micro-ISV really appeals to me, but I am no thickie, it is a lot of hard work (late hours) to do IP development in a self-funded model.

Over the weekend and in the evenings this week I have contemplated what kind of software I would build if I was a Micro-ISV trying to make a crust. I’ve got lots of ideas but after discussing the idea with a few people I can now make the following observations.

Don’t build software for geeks!

This is an important one. While you may stumble across an idea that your average geek might get out there credit card for its far more likely that they will have NIHS relapse and think they can build it themselves. The thought process goes something like this:

  1. Thats cool!
  2. I wonder how they built that?
  3. That doesn’t seem that hard!
  4. I’ll build it myself, better faster stronger.
  5. Bah – couldn’t be stuffed!

There are lots of different kinds of analysis!

I had this observation when I was talking to someone tonight. My original idea was very simple in scope, but depending on who I shared the idea with it was either so simple that I should just go out and build it, or spend quite a bit of time doing analysis about the target industry.

The interesting thing is depending on how you approached it the software would morph to suite the situation. I think the issue here is that certain kinds of analysis ask different kinds of questions and those questions help you shape your view of the product.

Once you come through the analysis both answers are completely valid because whilst they were the same idea at the root they are completely different solutions for different problems.

Sometimes I feel like I have a whole meta-conversation going on in my head :P Its my blog, I’ll waffle if I want to . . .