The *business* of software
Infrastructure for starting an ISV
All,
Please excuse if this has been discussed before - grateful for links if that is the case.
For my first startup, pieces of business support infrastructure were added when there was a critical need (i.e., once the horse had bolted). For example, (to my shame) we didn't start using source code (VSS in those days) until two years after we started building software, when the need for it became self-evident. Our website was one dumb page for a long time until we needed to use it to generate business. Accounting was done in hard-backed books and CRM was done on post-it notes; bug tracking (when it was done at all) was in Excel for quite a while.
Looking to do things a little better the second time around, I would be interested in people's recommendations for the tools/infrastucture they have found helpful in their businesses. Most likely, we will primarily be a .NET shop, so we're more interested in Microsoft-based tools, but the question is an open one as other readers may have different preferences. Similarly, we're open-minded to Open Source solutions, although for the more day-to-day mission critical elements, I want to be able to pay someone for decent support. Feel free to comment across the full range of support tools and software, from business operation to software development.
Thanks in advance for everyone's feedback.
Please excuse if this has been discussed before - grateful for links if that is the case.
For my first startup, pieces of business support infrastructure were added when there was a critical need (i.e., once the horse had bolted). For example, (to my shame) we didn't start using source code (VSS in those days) until two years after we started building software, when the need for it became self-evident. Our website was one dumb page for a long time until we needed to use it to generate business. Accounting was done in hard-backed books and CRM was done on post-it notes; bug tracking (when it was done at all) was in Excel for quite a while.
Looking to do things a little better the second time around, I would be interested in people's recommendations for the tools/infrastucture they have found helpful in their businesses. Most likely, we will primarily be a .NET shop, so we're more interested in Microsoft-based tools, but the question is an open one as other readers may have different preferences. Similarly, we're open-minded to Open Source solutions, although for the more day-to-day mission critical elements, I want to be able to pay someone for decent support. Feel free to comment across the full range of support tools and software, from business operation to software development.
Thanks in advance for everyone's feedback.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by David Filip on -
There is my list of tools:
Bazaar: great version control written in Python. Works well on unix and windows machine.
Mantis: (http://www.mantisbt.org/) as a bug tracker tool, written in PHP, but I think that it will also works at IIS
Basecamp: famous project management tool, I am using mostly todo lists and milestones
Highrise: CRM from creator of Basecamp, very lightweight but it is good fit for me
Accounting: I am located at Czech Republic, so I am using software which is not applicable to another part of world.
Google Docs for writing documents and sharing them with my colleagues
and other Google software: analytics, gmail, calendar.
I am using pen and paper for UI prototyping, but want to try Balsamiq Mockups soon.
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Permalink Reply by Steve Wilkinson on -
David - thanks for the tips.
I particularly like the look of Highrise - are any other businesses having success with this thing as their CRM tool?
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Permalink Reply by Alex on -
You'll need a:
1) a VPS-server (for your web server, payment-processing scripts, and version-control)
2) Your fav. dev tool
3) "Google apps" for your domain (to handle your emails - blogged about it here
Also I recommend MS "BizSpark" initiative that allows you getting their products almost free of charge (Microsft TFS version control system for instance)
http://www.microsoft.com/BizSpark/
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Permalink Reply by Nigel AInscoe on -
Plus one to Alex for BizSpark.
If you can't get BizSpark the MS Partner program also has an ISV program that get's you pretty much the same thing for a few hundred pounds a year. Shell out about £600 quid for a Dell T105 or similar and you can run the free copy of Small Business Server 2008 that you get with your BizSpark or ISV pack. That gives you Exchange Server so you can have grown up email, calendering and more. Use Small Business Contact Manager - that also comes with your free Office 2007 suite - to keep track of your leads and opportunities. I also recommend Microsoft Small Business Accounting - as do PC Pro Magazine - mainly because it's pretty easy to use and it integrates seamlessly with Small Business Contact Manager. https://partner.microsoft.com/UK/partner
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Permalink Reply by Paul Walsh on -
Steve,
It's not .NET specific, but there is a very related activity at http://startuptools.pbworks.com/
It's a bunch of startup companies sharing info on the tools they use in development and beyond. I think the list has become less useful as it got longer and more unstructured, but it's still a good list.
regards
Paul
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Permalink Reply by Martin Suryadarma on
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Hi Steve,
We're also a .NET shop and try to use available web services as much as possible. Here's our list:
1. Subversion for source control, with TortoiseSVN as a client. This is an open-source product installed on our VPS.
2. FogBugz for case/bug tracking, release management, user support centre, and wiki. Quite cheap if you get the online version.
3. Google Apps for email and calendar. Free.
4. Harvest for time tracking, expense tracking, and creating invoices.
5. Mailchimp for mailing list (we don't use it but our clients do).
6. ServersCheck for server/application monitoring.
7. Balsamiq for UI mockups.
8. MYOB for accounting. The only reason is because our accountants use it. Currently considering switching to Xero.
Good luck, and give me a shout if you have any questions.
Martin
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Permalink Reply by Ian Tebbutt on
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More of the same from me, the BizSpark program gives you a massive benefit as a .Net shop. I'm running a couple of machines, but by using VPC we've doubled our Os coverage without much problem. Having access to VS and Sql and being able to provide that to our associate developers is a real win.
For souce control its subversion and tortoise. For bugtracking, website etc we're using DotNetNuke. To get the message out there blogger. To keep track of things it's basecamp, however it's just so basic, and relatively expensive. Does anyone have a good alternative?
Has anyone experience of MS CRM, it's there through BizSpark, and could be a useful platform for what we're creating, but only if it works. Does anybody here use it?
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Permalink Reply by Justin James on -
Microsoft CRM is awful. We spent 6 months or so migrating our old data to it and making the customizations to it, and our users still hate it!
J.Ja
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Permalink Reply by Andrew on
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This is some of the stuff we use:
For source control we use http://svnrepository.com We used to run our own source control server in house but there wasn't any real benefit to having it in the office. For $3.95/month we have a world facing repository and OS updates, security etc are all someone else's problem. As far as I know svnrepository.com has had 100% uptime since we started using them a year or so ago which is better than we had running our own server.
For bug tracking we use Basecamp's free version. We'll upgrade to their paid version eventually Im sure but their free version has been adequate thus far. https://signup.37signals.com/basecamp/Free/signup/new?source=37sign... Again, we used to run something in house, Mantis in this case, but now we don't and we've never looked back.
For hosting we use these guys although there are zillions of perfectly good hosting companies out there. http://www.hostgator.com/
If you ask me you should outsource everything but your core competencies. It will vary from startup to startup obviously but its likely that running servers is not your business. Writing and selling software is. Stick to writing and selling software and off load everything else, running source control servers, web servers and bug tracking servers, to people whose actual job is running those servers.
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Permalink Reply by David Filip on
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2Andrew: how are you using basemp to do the bugtracing? I am missing possibility to close isues by various reasons, see list of newevst thing and so on.
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Permalink Reply by Dr. Petri I. Salonen on -
Hi Steve,
This post is pretty old, but as I just recently joined this community, I thought to give my five cents. When working in the .NET technology, BizSpark is a non-brainer due to the cost and the stuff you get with the subscription. We sold our BI software company in 2004 (to a large publicly traded US company) and when I founded my current company TELLUS International, Inc with the idea that everything had to be based on SaaS-model. I was sick and tired of hardware and software upgrades, that needed to be done by somebody else.. In our daily business, we use following solutions:
1) Quickbooks Online for accounting and cost accounting
2) Microsoft SharePoint and Groove for document sharing
3) Hosted Microsoft Exchange for email
4) Gotomeeting.com for software product demostrations
5) Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Live for CRM,
6) DotNeNuke for web-site
7) Skype for calls
8) Vonage for IP telephony
9) Mindjet Mindmanager for Web for Mindmapping
10) Camtasia Studio 6 for creating product demonstrations
I hope this gives you a picture what we use. The development tools etc... was well covered in the other posts.
Petri
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Permalink Reply by Steve Wilkinson on
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All,
As Dr Petri notes, this is quite an old post, but I did want to take the time to thank everyone for their comments.
I was unaware of BizSpark, and that does seem to be a great opportunity to save a lot of money. Based on the comments posted and further research, here's a shortlist of stuff I came across that I thought would be great for getting started:
1) Xero for accounts
2) Highrise for managing relationships
3) Zendesk for help desk/support management
4) TripIt for travel itinerary planning
5) Hosted Exchange and Sharepoint - there seem to be plenty of providers out there, including Microsoft
6) InstantKB.net for knowledge base
If we end up running Visual Studio Team System, then we'll end up with local SQL Server, etc., so I don't think we'll quite make the SaaS nirvana, but having done this before too, I completely agree with the proposition of having the bare mimimum of hardware/software that you have to manage.
Thanks once again for all those that took the time to post.
Steve.
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