Bear with me here. This will turn out to be relevant to the business of software. I’ll explain later on in the week.

Have a look at this drawing of a carpenter:

Pretty average, bordering on poor, right? The hands are all wrong, the skull’s been chopped off, it doesn’t look quite right.

So who do you reckon drew it? Post here …

In the late 1980s I bought a game for my Acorn Archimedes. It came on a floppy disk and was shipped with a piece of laminated card printed with a 10×10 grid of coloured cells. To run the game I had to insert the floppy disk and type in the colour of the cell at a given, random position. Floppy disks, bits of coloured card, dongles daisy-chained four deep into the printer ports, funny plastic lenses: this was the state of copy protection back in the 1980s. Did it stop people cracking games? No. Did it piss users off? Yes. Unfortunately, although the mechanisms are different now, the result is often still the same.

Much copy protection is based on a fundamentally flawed assumption. Obviously, the point of copy protection is to stop people copying your software. Obvious, but wrong. The point of copy protection is to maximise the amount of money that you, the vendor, make from your software.

These two goals are not aligned, as a simple thought experiment shows. Imagine you’ve written an application that can decode any encrypted message. You’ve spent years perfecting the algorithm. You’re protected by patents and you’ve obfuscated your code but you’re worried that your customers will copy your application and not pay you. You devise a fool-proof, dongle-based copy-protection system. The Pentagon hear about your software and want to buy it. They’ll pay you $250,000 a copy and want 1,000 copies. You’re happy: your copy protection will stop the Pentagon from stealing from you. You dream of retiring to the Caribbean, a multi-millionaire. Unfortunately, the Pentagon have an anti-dongle policy. You refuse to budge. What if they bought 1,000 licences but installed the software on 2,000 machines? You’d lose millions. They don’t buy. You end up with nothing and end up burnt out and penniless.

Here’s another story. Say you’re selling software at $500 a seat. Alice downloads a free trial of your software. She tries it, it’s not for her. She doesn’t buy. You’ve made no money.

Bob also downloads your software. He tries your software, and likes it. Your only copy protection is a nag screen encouraging people to buy. Hitting the ‘remind me later’ button is easier than opening his wallet, so Bob doesn’t buy either. You’ve made no money.

Charles downloads your software. He tries it, and likes it. His trial expires. He could try to get round the copy protection system, or search for a warez site, but he’s an honest man so he gets out his credit card and buys. You’ve made $500.

David downloads your software. He tries it, and likes it. His trial expires. David is a student. He thinks that charging for software is evil. No way will he pay $500 for it. He spends a couple of hours cracking your software and gets it for free. You’ve made no money.

Out of the four people who tried out your software, there are only two interesting cases. Alice and David are never going to buy: Alice, because she doesn’t want the software, and David because he wants it but will never pay for it. You want to make Bob behave like Charles. All you need to do is to make it easier to buy than not to buy. There is no point in worrying about the Davids of this world. And David might even grow up one day, get a job, and actually buy a copy.

You might not even need copy protection. If Alice is your typical user then you need to fix your software. If you’re just starting out then your biggest problem isn’t people not paying for your software. It’s that they don’t want to buy it. Either your software doesn’t fit people’s needs or you’re not able to tell enough people about it. Don’t spend time and money on copy protection: spend it on product development and marketing instead.

In real life, users are on a continuum. At one end lie those who are honest to a fault: people who’ve actually paid for a WinZip licence. On the other are those who will crack software they don’t even want, just to prove a point. Most of us lie somewhere in the middle. The point of your copy protection system should be to encourage us, the honest but imperfect and lazy users, to buy without pissing us off.

Do you use copy protection? How draconian is it? Post here …

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At last week’s conference, Dan Nunan told a story of how some bozo had claimed that if somebody built a better search engine then people would switch from Google in an instant. Some Silicon Valley start-up could do to Google what Google did to Alta Vista. Since that bozo was me, I think I’d better justify myself.

Dan’s point is that Google is much more than an algorithm. It’s a brand. We use Google for the same reason we eat at McDonalds or Starbucks: it delivers a guaranteed, consistent experience whenever we use it, wherever we use it. And it’s not just about the physical experience: we identify with brands and their values. The brands we eat, drink and wear are symbols we use to communicate to others in our tribe.

Starbucks vs Peets, Coca Cola vs Pepsi, Dasani vs Evian. These are battles fought over brands, not substance. Brew a better coffee, create a better fizzy drink or produce better water and you will not dent these brands’ dominance. And it’s not just about marketing: even Virgin Cola, backed by Richard Branson’s flair for marketing and publicity, failed to hurt Coke or Pepsi.

With commodities, brand beats product. In Seattle, I came across two neighbouring coffee shops. One was Starbucks, one was a local one-off cafe. The local one sold better coffee, had better service and was empty. The Starbucks sold worse coffee, had worse service and was full.

Dan’s thesis is that Google’s dominance is based on more than technology. Even if search becomes commoditized (is Google really technically much better than Ask or Live?), Google’s strength is its brand. We’re familiar with it, we trust it and we won’t switch, the same way we won’t switch from Coke to Virgin Cola or from Windows to BeOS.

I’m not sure I agree though. Our interactions with search engines are too fleeting to build a significant bond we’re reluctant to break. My choice of clothes, music or fizzy drink might say something about me, but does my choice of search engine? The ease of switching is high, and the costs and risks low. If I change the coffee I drink, the clothes that I wear or the music I listen to then I risk drinking bad coffee, looking stupid in ill-fitting clothes or making a fool of myself in front of my peers. I use Google maybe 30 times a day. That’s 200 times a week I have a chance to surreptitiously flirt with Live over Google. It’s not that embarrassing and nobody will ever know if it doesn’t work.

So I have the means to switch (it’s free), and I have the opportunity (200 times a week). All I need is the motive. If somebody built a better search engine maybe the world wouldn’t beat a path to their door, but I for one would try it. And if it were better, I’d switch.

Would you?

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The conference is now over. It’s been hard work, but worth it. The talks were consistently excellent, and I got to meet a whole bunch of interesting people (speakers and attendees). People came from all over for the conference. From within the US we had people from 30 states, from Alaska to Georgia. Internationally, people flew in from 12 different countries including Australia, Brasil, The Czech Republic, Denmark and England.

I’m going to post up links to the speakers’ blogs, books and, where possible, slide decks and videos. Initially this is on the Facebook Business of Software group (http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=7006257142) but once I’ve got time I’ll update the main web site with highlights.

Thanks again to everybody who made the effort to attend the conference, and I hope to see you all next year.

Bob Cramblitt reports on Jeff Pfeffer’s talk from Business of Software 2007. To sign up for BoS 2008, visit www.businessofsoftware.org

Ignorance might be bliss, but it is anathema to a great company.

Jeffrey Pfeffer of the Stanford Graduate School of Business capped the two-day Business of Software 2007 conference by urging conference participants to start the future tomorrow, and to decide what they will do differently.

Pfeffer’s presentation, titled "Why Software Companies Don’t Do What They Know — And What Leaders Can Do About It" was peppered with anecdotes from his experience with diverse organizations such as SAS Institute and Men’s Wearhouse.

Overcoming fear, the corporate star system, and the millstones of the past were central themes.  Pfeffer discussed the principal obstacles to closing the gap between what companies know and what they do, including:

• Doing what everyone else is doing.
• Measuring too many things and the wrong things. Measure the two or three most important things for your business, and not what is easiest.
• Absence of an action orientation because of fear of making a mistake.
• Fear of job loss, telling the truth, conflict, or not being liked.
• Ego that gets in the way of admitting what we don’t know and that we’ve made mistakes.
• The victim mentality — seeing things as happening to us instead of feeling efficacious.
• Commitment to the past.
• Choosing "better before worse" instead of "worse before better."
• Reluctance to doing things differently.

For more on Pfeffer, please see the interview on this blog:
http://blog.businessofsoftware.org/2007/09/think—-and-th.html

Bob Cramblitt reports on Hugh MacLeod’s talk from Business of Software 2007. To sign up for BoS 2008, visit www.businessofsoftware.org

A Savile Row tailor, a South African winery and Microsoft.  Strange bedfellows, perhaps, but not if it’s Hugh MacLeod’s bed.  MacLeod (www.gapingvoid.com) has helped all three define themselves in new and distinct ways that have nothing to do with product, and everything to do with people and their embracing of social objects.

The tailor, Thomas Mahon, has established a blog (http://www.englishcut.com/) that personalizes his craft, leading to recognition around the world, and demand that far exceeds supply.  The South African winery, Stormhoek (http://www.stormhoek.com/blog/), has tripled its sales over the last few years with its "smarter wine" campaign.  MacLeod’s cartoon for Microsoft (see below) has become an underground hit within the company, leading to a new mantra: "Change the World or Go Home."

As for software, MacLeod says, "If geeks aren’t geeking out over your product, you’re in trouble.  Make your product a social object and you will succeed."

MacLeod’s iconoclastic insights might not seem immediately relevant to software, but look a little closer, and you’ll see the connection.  Check out his tips on how to be creative: http://www.gapingvoid.com/Moveable_Type/archives/000932.html

Bob Cramblitt reports on Jennifer Aaker’s talk from Business of Software 2007. To sign up for BoS 2008, visit www.businessofsoftware.org

What’s your favorite product at Trader Joe’s?  If you are a Trader Joe’s customer, you can no doubt name more than a few.  What’s your favorite product at Safeway? You probably have trouble naming one.

What would your reaction be to torn packaging at Trader Joe’s vs. the same thing at Safeway?

The companies are in the same industry, and offer the same basic products.  But, your reactions to and perceptions of the two are quite different, because you have different relationships and social contracts with the two stores.

Relationships — formed immediately and changing over time — define brands and your perception of the companies behind them, according to Jennifer Aaker (http://gsbapps.stanford.edu/facultybios/biomain.asp?id=04071874) of the Haas School of Business and Stanford Graduate School of Business.  Good companies know this and make decisions based on the impact of relationships.

In her presentation at the Business of Software conference, Aaker defined four basic points:

(1) Rethink your concept of brand. Reputations color all interactions.
(2) Reactions to brands depend on implicit contracts — the do’s and don’ts of the relationship.
(3) Rethink transgressions: Letdowns aren’t always bad; they can serve as an opportunity to re-engage.
(4) Engagement is multi-dimensional — essentially about memories of the time spent.

Many companies tend to see relationships with customers as an optional thing, without a solid impact on the bottom line.  Studies and business results show otherwise.  Ignore the relationship with your customers at your own peril.

Bob Cramblitt reports on Rick Chapman’s talk from Business of Software 2007. To sign up for BoS 2008, visit www.businessofsoftware.org

It’s coming, and many software companies will either ride it or drown in it.  It’s the SaaS tsunami, and its success is inevitable, according to Rick Chapman’s presentation today at Business of Software 2007.

The success of SaaS is evidenced by a 21% a year growth rate. It will be a $21B market by 2009, according to Gartner.  Ironically, Microsoft has supplied two key drivers for SaaS success: The failure of Microsoft Vista, and Microsoft WGA copyright protection, which, in Chapman’s words, makes Microsoft look like an "old fart company" interested only in circling the wagons around its fiefdom.

Companies buy Saas for the following reasons:
new capabilities — 59%
operating, not capital expense — 16%
other — 14%
replace client/server — 11%

For those interested in following the SaaS tsunami and other software issues, subscribe to Rick Chapman’s Softletter: http://www.softletter.com/

Bob Cramblitt reports on Matt Mason’s talk from Business of Software 2007. To sign up for BoS 2008, visit www.businessofsoftware.org

"Greed is good," said the Gordon Gekko character in the movie Wall Street.  Although it goes against most established thought about software, Matt Mason, author of the upcoming book, The Pirate’s Dilemma (www.thepiratesdilemma.com), says that piracy can be good.

Mason, a former pirate radio DJ, makes the compelling argument that piracy drives innovation by exposing flaws in the current marketplace — the music business is a prime example.  Historically, piracy has been imbedded into the very fabric of business, especially in America, a nation practically founded on piracy.

Having your work copied can be a powerful force in the market — think about mods in the gaming industry or designer copying in fashion. And, pirating doesn’t necessarily hurt the marketplace as much as one might think: Despite all the pirating of movies, Hollywood had its biggest summer ever this year.

The dilemma comes from the thin line between when piracy does good for an industry and when it does harm.  I have a feeling that Mason’s book, with a cover blurb by Seth Godin, will be a "must read" for business book readers.   

Bob Cramblitt reports on Dan Nunan’s talk from Business of Software 2007. To sign up for BoS 2008, visit www.businessofsoftware.org

Writers have long known that it is easier to churn out 1,000 words on a subject than 100.  The same goes for software according to Dan Nunan, chief marketing officer for Red Gate (www.red-gate.com).  Nunan kicked off the second day of the Business of Software 2007 conference, attended by more than 150 people from 30 states and 12 different countries.

Although simplicity is more difficult to achieve, it is worth it, according to Nunan.  Unnecessary complexity — such as the four different versions of Microsoft Vista — tends to inhibit decision-making, effectively paralyzing the customer.

Nunan presented four steps toward marketing simplicity:

• Be authentic — Be transparent, trust your employees and use common sense (Microsoft’s policy on blogging).
• Make do with limited resources.  Throwing money at marketing doesn’t make marketing more effective.
• Respect your customers  — and don’t worry about what your competitors are having for breakfast.
• Worry about complexity — Your customers don’t need 100 reasons to use your software or be presented with 300 new features.  Focus on one or two things that resonate with customers.

Nunan has learned 10 things about software marketing:

1. If your software is completely lousy, go home.
2. Just because a piece of software doesn’t have any bugs, doesn’t mean it is high quality.  The customer is the arbiter of quality.
3. Software marketing people are the organizational glue between technical people and sales.
4. Sales works (but you need something to sell).
5. Print advertising doesn’t work (but not for the reasons you think). It doesn’t work because of how much time is spent doing it; time that could be better spent doing something more effective.
6. PR isn’t press releases. Work with influencers; those who write books, blogs.  Communicate with the community and get feedback.
7. Understand Google. You need someone in the organization who understands Google and everything they do.
8. The future of graphical display ads is dim. Use of ad blockers is increasing; it’s difficult to display graphics in e-mail.
9. Software is a great place for the future of marketing.
10. Branding still counts, but you don’t need $10M to build an awesome brand.

Bob Cramblitt reports on Joel Spolsky’s talk from Business of Software 2007. To sign up for BoS 2008, visit www.businessofsoftware.org

Everybody in the capacity audience at Business of Software 2007 wanted to know what he thought about employee hiring and retention.  He is Joel Spolsky, CEO of Fog Creek Software and author of the popular Joel on Software blog.  In a fast-paced presentation and question-and-answer period, Spolsky covered what type of people his company looks for, how he attracts them, and how they are kept in the fold.

The Fog Creek screening process for incoming resumes includes the following factors:

• Passion – This is manifested by long-time interest in programming and an agressive pursuit of goals.
• English – Not mastery of the English language, but good communication skills.
• Creativity – As evidenced by whether applicants have shown that they want this particular job at this particular company.
• Selectivity – The candidate has been selected by good schools and/or employers.
• Brains – As reflected by good grades, participation in math camps, and special honors.
• Diversity – People unlike those currently in the company; people with different ideas, and ethnic, cultural backgrounds.

Those who make the resume cut go through a phone interview, then could be invited to NYC for a personal interview, with all expenses paid.  Spolsky says it is important to make a good impression on the prospective employee.  The most important factors for most applicants are working with smart and interesting people, working on interesting problems, free lunches and other benefits, a nice office, and a boss who "gets" them.  Way down on the list is salary, although that certainly has to be competitive.

Two key criteria outweigh all for Fog Creek (1) being smart and (2) getting things done. An optional third factor: not being an asshole.

Things that Spolsky and his team have done to help make Fog Creek a great place to work include:

• private offices
• nice computing systems with large monitors
• Aeron chairs
• giving employees what they need to do their jobs
• free lunches
• more vacation than the average company
• high bonuses

Brand awareness has become a major factor not just for products, but for attracting recruits, and the prominence of the Joel on Software blog definitely helps.  Spolsky says he has been on campus recruiting trips and heard Fog Creek mentioned in the same breath as Google and Microsoft.

Bob Cramblitt reports on Alberto Savoia’s talk from Business of Software 2007. To sign up for BoS 2008, visit www.businessofsoftware.org

Alberto Savoia of Agitar Software (www.agitar.com) knows crappy software, in every permutation.  More than talking about it, his company is eradicating crappy software through better testing.  Business of Software 2007 attendees were treated to a hilarious treatise on crappy software from Savoia.  Those who experienced Alberto live won’t forget him anytime soon.  For the rest of you, there’s the interview on this blog: http://blog.businessofsoftware.org/2007/09/alberto-savoia-.html

Steve Johnson of Pragmatic Marketing (www.pragmaticmarketing.com) won the closely contested Software Idol competition at Business of Software 2007.  Johnson’s presentation centered on a market-driven model for managing and marketing technology software.

Congrats to Steve and the other finalists: Geoff Perlman of Real Software; Bob Walsh of 47hats.com; Jeffrey Gordon, author of the Software Licensing Handbook; and Jerry Foster of Plexus Systems.

Bob Cramblitt reports on Eric Sink’s talk from Business of Software 2007. To sign up for the BoS 2008, visit www.businessofsoftware.org

Why did the marketing guy cross the road?  To avoid the geek approaching him.  Or vice versa.

Why would any company want to have geeks involved in marketing?  Or, conversely, why would any geek want to be involved with the marketing wonks, or “clueless weinees” as Erik Sink called them in his Business of Software 2007 presentation.

Sink, the author of the Apress book The Business of Software, says that developers are often involved in marketing whether they know it or not.  If they are involved in deciding what features to build, they are doing marketing.

Geeks have three problems with the marketing role, according to Sink:
(1) Generally, they suck at marketing, but then again, everyone does.
(2) They tend not to be too normal in discriminating between good ideas and bad ideas.
(3) They fall in love with technology for technology’s sake.

Still, having geeks involved in marketing is generally a big plus for both the company and its developers.  The company gets the unique perspective of technical staff, and developers get to play a greater role in the fate of the products they produce.

Bob Cramblitt reports on Bill Buxton’s talk from Business of Software 2007. To sign up for the BoS 2008, visit www.businessofsoftware.org

Software product development is broken, and Bill Buxton is angry.  Addressing the current process turns Buxton into a raging, slightly profane comedian with a very serious agenda.

Buxton, a principal researcher at Microsoft Research, said today at the Business of Software 2007 conference that the industry is based almost entirely on N+1 products.  In its history, according to Buxton, Adobe has created just two new products in house: Acrobat and Illustrator.

The problem is that new software projects are greenlighted from day 1, before the company really knows what it is going to build, if it can be built, and how it is going to be sold. Rarely is there participation from all the important elements within the company: technical, marketing and creative.

Buxton likens the typical approach of software engineers having sole responsibility for new product development to an ice hockey team with all goalies.  No matter how good your goalies are, they aren’t going to beat even a bad team with the proper mix of players.

The Buxton approach centers on the power of sketching user experiences at the beginning of the product development period.  Sketching is quick, timely, inexpensive, disposable, and plentiful. 

There is an ambiguity in sketching: If you want to get the most out of a sketch, you need to leave big enough holes – like Swiss cheese.  There has to be enough room for the imagination.  The goal is not arriving at a design, but the best design.

One of the overriding lessons from Buxton is this: Everything is best for something, and worst for something else.  The participation of people from multiple disciplines, combined with the experimental flexibility of sketching, can determine whether a product will fly before critical resources are committed.

Bob Cramblitt reports on Tim Lister’s talk from Business of Software 2007. To sign up for the BoS 2008, visit www.businessofsoftware.org

“Tim Lister is an anthropologist,” says Simon Galbraith, co-CEO of Red Gate Software. It’s an apt description. Lister uncovers the often-hidden patterns that constitute software culture, everything from the developers’ war against perceived inferiors (i.e. marketing wonks) within the company, to the smell of dead fish that permeates a project that’s doomed from the beginning.

More than 70 patterns are outlined in the upcoming book, Project Patterns: From Adrenaline Junkies to Template Zombies, co-authored by Lister. Here are some of the ones he discussed in his Business of Software 2007 presentation:

• Mañana – the loss of a natural sense of urgency. Agile development fights mañana.
• The dead fish of failure – projects that are dead from the start. Everyone smells it right away, but they hunker down and work.
• Lessons unlearned – Retrospectives rarely trigger change.
• What smell? – People in the organization cannot detect its underlying vitality or decay.
• Marilyn Munster – Like the normal girl among the monsters in the old TV family, the esteem often given technical workers versus managerial staff varies. In some organizations, developers are king; in others they are pawns.
• Surprise! – The manager offering rewards and incentives gets responses in addition to those he planned.
• Everyone wears clothes for a reason – Complete openness grinds progress to a halt.
• Music – people with real musical skills are disproportionably represented, sometimes extremely so, in technology organizations.

Lister’s essential message: Look for patterns, name them, then propagate or defeat them.

For more, check out the Tim Lister interview on this blog:

http://blog.businessofsoftware.org/2007/07/from-project-sl.html

Bob Cramblitt reports on Guy Kawasaki’s talk from Business of Software 2007. To sign up for the BoS 2008, visit www.businessofsoftware.org

Guy Kawasaki was part of the Mac team at Apple between 1983 and 1987, which he called “the largest collection of egomaniacs until Google.” He’s had huge successes, and made some mistakes, including not taking a job in the early days of Yahoo.

Kawasaki kicked off Business of Software 2007 with 11 key points for fulfilling “The Art of Innovation”:

1. Make meaning – Decide how you are going to make meaning. Nike makes meaning out of shoes.
2. Make mantra – Put together 2 or 3 words that explain why your software exists. Most companies have mission statements, not mantras. Some proposed mantras from Guy: Wendy’s: “Healthy fast food.” Nike: “Authentic athletic performance.” FedEx: “Peace of mind.” eBay: “Democratize commerce.”
3. Jump to the next curve – Don’t go for 10% better, shoot for 10X better: Mac vs. Apple II; telephone vs. telegraph. No ice harvester became an ice factory and no ice factory became a refrigerator company.
4. Role the DICEE – Deep: PhotoShop. Intelligent: Someone anticipating what I need to do. Complete: Create a totality of experience. Elegant: Nano controls thousands of songs with a wheel. Emotive – Harley-Davidson.
5. Don’t worry, be crappy – Version 1 means never having to say you’re sorry. Shoot then test. A first product can have elements of crappiness.
6. Polarize people – The Scion xB isn’t for everyone. The more people you try to serve, the greater the mediocrity.
7. Let a hundred flowers blossom (Mao) – If you ship software and find users are not the right people (the audience you anticipated), “take the money.” Ask people who are buying why they are buying
8. Churn, baby, churn – The first permutation of the next curve will have elements of crappiness, but you have to move beyond crappiness quickly. Need to fix your revolution. Can’t stay crappy forever.
9. Niche thyself – Provide a unique product or service that delivers value to the customer. Examples: Fandango movie reservations – no standing in line. Breitling Emergency wristwatch – antenna sends out emergency signal. Smart Car – park perpendicular to curb. Trek Lime – automatic transmission in a bike. LG Kimchi refrigerator. Royal Caribbean – ice skating rink on a cruise ship.
10. Follow the 10/20/30 rule of pitching: Maximum of 10 slides in PowerPoint for 60 minutes. Complete presentation in 20 minutes. Use 30 point font size. Dark background; sans serif font; fill or left justify.
11. Don’t let the bozos grind you down – Bozos don’t have vision. Examples: Ken Olsen of DEC saying that people didn’t need computers at home. Kawasaki’s response to Yahoo: “It’s too far to drive and I don’t see how it can be a business.”

Yeah, the Red Sox had a great line-up for the World Series (maybe we should start calling it the "American Series"?), but check out this one for today’s Business of Software 2007 conference, listed by order of appearance.

Guy Kawasaki
Tim Lister
Bill Buxton
Software Idol winners
Eric Sink
Breakout sessions (take your dilemmas to the experts)
Alberto Savoia
Joel Spolsky

Stay tuned for highlights throughout the day.

Stay tuned tomorrow for ongoing, almost real-time posts from the 1st annual Business of Software conference.  Wish you were here.

The idea for the Business of Software conference first popped into my head in March this year. We’ve now got 2 weeks to go until the conference starts. This is the second business I’ve started (I also co-founded Red Gate Software). Although the businesses are clearly very different, there are some interesting parallels. Here are some lessons I’ve relearned:

Having a good product isn’t enough
Even if you have an excellent product, you can’t just drop it into the marketplace and expect people to find it, and buy it. If you build a better mousetrap, the world will not beat a path to your door. Of course, you can’t market a dog: a good product is necessary, but not sufficient. Whatever your product – whether it’s software or a conference – you need to spend a lot of time, thought, effort and, less importantly, money on getting people to notice it.

Try twenty small things; not one big thing
If you don’t know what you’re doing, you can never tell what’s going to work and what’s not. Rather than intellectualising a lot, selecting the single best way of doing things, and then doing it, it’s best just to get out there and try things. Some things will work, some things will fail, but slowly you’ll start to turn the flywheel. We tried many things to market the conference: print ads, Google ads, web ads, asking speakers to publicise the conference, sofware giveaways, a free ebook, blog articles, themed fortune cookies and speaker interviews. In the end, the most successful bit of marketing was when Joel Spolsky mentioned an advert we’d run in San Jose airport. There’s no way we could have predicted that: we tried enough and eventually we got lucky.

Listen to other people
Getting other people’s perspectives, and their advice, is always useful. I’m fortunate enough to have had advice – and help – from some great people.

Ignore other people
Many people – often the same people – will tell you that what you want to do can’t be done; it’s a dumb idea; it will never work. Listen to them, but do it anyway.

Minimize the downside
Minimizing the downside is as important as maximizing the upside: only risk as deep as your pockets go. For the conference, that meant guaranteeing the minimum number of hotel rooms I could, even though that limited the potential upside. For Red Gate, it meant only spending the money we had, and carrying on contracting for my previous job for the first 6 months after start-up.

Maximize the downside
Although you don’t want to bankrupt yourself, your pride is less valuable. Putting yourself in a position where failure means humiliation, or embarrassment at least, is a powerful motivator. With Red Gate, running it as a Micro ISV for an hour or two a day in parallel with the day job would have been easy. If I failed, nobody would notice, and my world would have continued much as before. By quitting the day job and publicly announcing my intentions to friends, family and colleagues I removed the easy exit.

At some point, you need to take the plunge. You’re never going to have enough evidence or data to predict that what you’re going to do is going to work. Think about it, but then just do it. For the conference, that point came when we had about 30 attendees. The speakers were asking if the conference was going ahead and others were questioning its viability. Backing down and cancelling would have been easy. It was scary, but I decided to go ahead, knowing that there was a good chance that I wouldn’t get enough sign-ups, that the conference would flop, and that I’d make a tit of myself. Paradoxically, increasing the chance of looking like an idiot on failure actually decreased the overall chance of looking like an idiot.

I’ll be expanding on some of these points in more depth over the next couple of weeks, and I’ll add some more lessons learned once the conference is over. I hope to see you in San Jose.

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