Draconis Software Blog

There’s a funny article up on ReadWriteWeb about some of the worst webapp names, though only 10? Almost every day there’s a stupid name coming across the TechCrunch wires. But on the flip side, you have to give a lot of these people credit: coming up with a name for a product is very difficult.

Case in point: for a long time, we’ve been calling our monitoring software RSP (which, for those paying attention, doesn’t stand for anything). The name is forgettable and boring, and really doesn’t convey what the product is all about. So, in a teaser for the future, we’ll be ditching the name RSP in favor of something else. It’s a bit more web 2.0-ish, it’s kind of fun, and it’s different. I won’t say just what it is yet, but it’s coming soon.

Apologies for the shameless plug, but I’m excited to mention our new site which launched late last week: invotrak.com. We do a lot of consulting work for various clients, often with many projects running simultaneously, and it got harder and harder to keep track of the invoices we sent to our clients. So, out of this need, invotrak was created. It’s free and easy to use, so if you’re in a similar position to us (freelancers, small businesses, etc), check it out and let us know what you think.

Also, apologies for the lack of posts lately – we’ve been real busy getting invotrak launched and work with our clients. Hopefully we’ll get some more posts up this week.

We’ve been looking for a good way to manage the myriad of projects we’ve been working on lately, with efforts spanning several clients, different developers, and all sorts of other complexity, and recently gave activeCollab a spin. If you haven’t seen it yet, it’s a great open source project management tool without a lot of the bloat (plus, it doesn’t have any of the restrictions found in BaseCamp, a tool we were also considering). I’ve been quite happy with it so far, though we’ve only just begun using it.

The idea is to allow access for many of our clients to the activeCollab portal throughout the relationship, making it easier for all of us to communicate progress. Of course, nothing will replace those good ol’ regular status reports, phone conferences, etc, but this gives clients a better understanding (and a more direct line of communication to developers) while working on their project.

My biggest concern going forward is keeping things fresh. We’ve tried using SugarCRM in the past to manage clients, contacts, projects, and other data, but it just wasn’t used as much as it could be (people just didn’t keep it updated or use it on a regular basis, myself included). Part of this could be due to it being a change in a regular routine, but I think there was something else. After all, we implemented a wiki based on MediaWiki after trying Sugar to great success. So I believe the main problem with Sugar was due to it being not quite what we needed. Incidentally, Sugar has an interesting project management module for the Sugar Enterprise product, though we’re not ready to make a purchase for a tool like this yet. Hopefully activeCollab will be a success.

While still focusing on developing and selling RSP, Draconis has also been offering consulting services for some time now. It might still be more common for consulting companies to branch into the software market, but it’s becoming increasingly common for things to happen the other way around, as it did for us.

A lot of the time doing contract work on the side can be very easy for startups. Many may already have relationships with companies who need work, which simplifies what can be the most difficult part of consulting: finding jobs. Even without an network to work from, the software startup already has personnel, a set of marketable skills, and an LLC or similar corporate entity.

Let’s look at some of the benefits consulting provides:

1. Consulting brings in money when you need it most.

Startups can always use more money. This can be particularly true during initial development, when it’s likely there’s no money coming in at all. Having a steady stream of income can literally save new companies from going under. Consulting can often be pretty lucrative on its own, and while you can’t necessarily count on a job whenever you need one, it can be a lot more consistent than those early sales. Even when there is a temporary lull in work, there’s always plenty to be done in the startup itself.

2. Consulting gives you new customers.

While you certainly don’t want to start right in with a sales pitch as soon as you get a new job, you might be surprised how often clients end up becoming customers. A big reason companies avoid buying from a startups is the lack of a strong reputation. Once you’ve proven your trust by doing good work on a job, that reputation is already there. Forming a good relationship is a great way towards getting that next client.

3. Consulting helps you learn what your customers needs are.

During the trials and tribulations of forming a company, it can be easy to loose focus on what your target market wants. A brand new feature is no good if it’s not going to do something to help your customer. Consulting will give you a chance to see firsthand what a potential customer is going through, and will probably give you tons of ideas of how your software tool can help them.

4. Consulting teaches you new skills to help your business.

You can almost always learn something from seeing another company in action. This could be anything from how they pay their sales staff, to how they run their finances, to which kind of furniture they have in their lobby. Keep in mind that you might see just as many things not to do — but this can be just as helpful. There’s no better way to learn about the world of business than by seeing what makes real world companies work (or not work).

5. Consulting gives you a break from the routine of building a business.

Let’s face it; starting a business can be tedious. Don’t get me wrong, there’s often tons of excitement, but when you’re in the middle of writing a business plan, or working on that 10th white paper or piece of marketing material, you might feel like you need a breather. Rather than loosing focus on your company, consulting gives you a chance to do something different while still helping your company. You get to work on a variety of projects, meet new people, and of course the extra money doesn’t hurt either.

When creating a company, one of the significant choices any entrepreneur makes is deciding how to sell their products. In today’s economy, there are hundreds of different routes to take, often establishing a mix of various strategies tuned for their particular customers. One such route is to create your own online store and sell your products directly.

Recently, my business partner and I were considering opening up an online storefront for our software company, Draconis Software. The idea was to make it easier to reach smaller customers (those who would only be interested in 1 to 5 software licenses, and usually costing only a couple hundred dollars in total). Rather than having these small customers go through our regular sales channel (where we target larger customers with sales presentations, on-site demonstrations, etc), these customers are able to evaluate the software for themselves using a free demonstration version, and make the purchase – all on their own.

Setting up an online store can be a very complex process, and is very dependent on how many customers you’re expecting, the level of control you require over the process, and the amount of legal liability you’re willing to expose yourself to. There are essentially two options: create and host the storefront yourself, or outsource it to a specialized service provider. We chose the latter.

This is a multi-part article that outlines what I found in my research, including reasons for choosing to outsource, how you might do the same, and even info on setting up your own storefront in-house. This part details why you might choose to outsource to a registration service, and some of the options you have.

(Read the article)

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Interested in starting your own company? It’s not as complicated as it may seem. Here’s an interesting link that should point you in the right direction (at least for filing the forms for a Limited Liability Company – a popular entity type for tech companies, and the one that we use for Draconis Software).

Something else to think about: several sites exist that can fill out and even file the forms for you (BizFilings.com is one). Just make sure you know what you’re getting into: choosing an entity type and correctly filling out the forms is rather important.

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.

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