A Brief History of Draconis Software
I thought a good way to start off the Draconis Software Blog would be to give a story of who we are and how we got here. Like most small businesses, we’ve learned as we’ve gone along and had our share of triumphs and mistakes.Draconis Software started over 5 years ago without a company or really much of a plan. Myself (Costa) and Ryan had grown a fairly large computer network, but had no good way to keep track of the machines until it was too late and a problem developed. We thought it might be nice to write a small program that could run on the machines and collect statistics like CPU, memory, and disk usage, and then report back to a central machine to display a summary on a monitor.
As we started development, we kept thinking of more and more features we could add on to the program. Why not make it save the information in a database and provide graphs of past performance? And make it cross-platform? And allow users to write their own plugins?
At a certain point, we had to draw the line somewhere and pick which features we were going to finish for the 1.0 release, and which ones were just going to have to wait until later. Even so, in retrospect, I think we waited too long before our first release; I’ve learned that the axiom of “release early, release often” is very important for small software startups. While there’s a valid drive to make the first release perfect and filled with new ideas, this can become so difficult and time consuming that the release never happens. In addition, since software startups are usually understaffed, this process can take even longer. By having a stable, fully tested (albeit scaled down) initial release, you can slowly grow a client base and be sure that each new release has even more useful features for your market.
As we continued working on our program, which we named RSP, we realized that it had grown big enough to actually become a product; we’d made something we felt would be useful to companies, and for which they might be willing to pay. This meant forming a company. At the time we knew very little about legally forming companies, and had to put aside our coding (the “fun part”) to research how we would do this. We ended up forming an LLC (Limited Liability Company), and naming ourselves Draconis Software after the dragon constellation “Draco”. While the process of forming a company can be difficult, it’s not as hard as many people think. You don’t need an MBA, just a bit of research, some paperwork, and a bit of money (unfortunately).
So we had a product, a company, and a target market. Time to start having lots of customers, right? Not quite. I think for technical minded people who begin startups, the hardest part is marketing and advertising your product. It certainly was for us. The Internet is a huge place; how can you let people know you’re out there? Lots of websites will take your advertising money, but will you reach the right audience? And even when you do, there’s no way to know that you’re giving them the right message or telling them the right information about your product.
In many cases the best way for a software startup to get its first few customers is to use that business buzzword “networking”. While most programmers like me would probably rather be doing networking of the Ethernet variety, it doesn’t have to be as daunting as people think. You don’t need a huge Rolodex of powerful business executives. Just talking to your family, friends, and people you’ve worked with can often generate more leads than you’d think. In the case of Draconis Software, our first sale came from talking to an old co-worker about what we were up to..
As the years have passed we’ve continued to work on RSP. Another important lesson we’ve learned over time is that while you shouldn’t forget all your great ideas for features, always keep an eye on what’s happening in your industry. Don’t necessarily be afraid of change. I’ve learned that most successful software companies have had to make major changes to their product/business two or three times, if not more, before they finally reached success. This could be due to current events, market trends, or customer suggestions. And there’s always the problem with burnout: you may decide you simply don’t like the business you’re in and opt for a change.
In the case of Draconis Software, our original plan to have a desktop application ended up becoming a fully featured web application, as the browser became a simpler and more popular means of doing work during the current Web 2.0 movement. We learned from our customers that while network monitoring is important, organizing what happens after a problem can be just as important, which is why we’ve added incident tracking to our software. And in the coming months we’ll be continuing to add new network management features like inventory management and network discovery.
In this blog we hope to continue giving advice from our experiences, but we’ll also share new things we learn about startups, Web 2.0, and the IT world in general, as well as talking about what we’re up at Draconis.
