Future?
READ THE UPDATE
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Hello Everyone,
I haven't done much for Ataraxis Software and my darling little application, Pudding, since the birth of my daughter. I was in a mad rush to get Pudding launched before she was born, and I did it!!! I was able to finish a small feature after launch, and I (finally!!!) got up a "tour" video of Pudding.
Unfortunately, Pudding hasn't exactly been as huge of a success as I would have liked.
During the last couple of months of Pudding development I knew it would be a long shot for it to be successful. Pudding is a very basic application, and with competitors like ConceptShare and a host of other photo-sharing-editing-viewing web apps out there, Pudding looks very 2005. Which, oddly enough, was the year it was conceived.
2005 was kind of the birth of the whole microISV/AJAX/web 2.0 era, and if Pudding launched within 3 months of me thinking it up, the product would be in a very different place right now. I could have built out the feature set, came up to speed with the sophisticated UI technologies like Flex, and implemented a totally sick Flash interface sometime in the beginning of 2006.
I tried to play catch-up this year. I convinced a couple of buddies of mine, one amazing artist, and one amazing programmer (Java/Flex - he would have picked up Ruby in about 2 hours), to join me in the development of Pudding 2.0. We came up with some really amazing UI concepts (on paper). I really believe the UI ideas we came up with would really stand up to, and in some ways beat, the current offerings in visual collaboration.
After a year and a half of Pudding development I was completely burned out. But working with these guys got me totally inspired! It was like catching a 5th wind.
Unfortunately, we all have full time jobs, and not everyone is willing to sacrifice every waking moment of their life for a software startup. The three of us have unofficially stopped working on Pudding 2.0. There's no hard feelings, it's just, life got in the way.
I'm now at a very difficult point in this journey. My options are....
To be continued.....
-------------------------
Hello Everyone,
I haven't done much for Ataraxis Software and my darling little application, Pudding, since the birth of my daughter. I was in a mad rush to get Pudding launched before she was born, and I did it!!! I was able to finish a small feature after launch, and I (finally!!!) got up a "tour" video of Pudding.
Unfortunately, Pudding hasn't exactly been as huge of a success as I would have liked.
During the last couple of months of Pudding development I knew it would be a long shot for it to be successful. Pudding is a very basic application, and with competitors like ConceptShare and a host of other photo-sharing-editing-viewing web apps out there, Pudding looks very 2005. Which, oddly enough, was the year it was conceived.
2005 was kind of the birth of the whole microISV/AJAX/web 2.0 era, and if Pudding launched within 3 months of me thinking it up, the product would be in a very different place right now. I could have built out the feature set, came up to speed with the sophisticated UI technologies like Flex, and implemented a totally sick Flash interface sometime in the beginning of 2006.
I tried to play catch-up this year. I convinced a couple of buddies of mine, one amazing artist, and one amazing programmer (Java/Flex - he would have picked up Ruby in about 2 hours), to join me in the development of Pudding 2.0. We came up with some really amazing UI concepts (on paper). I really believe the UI ideas we came up with would really stand up to, and in some ways beat, the current offerings in visual collaboration.
After a year and a half of Pudding development I was completely burned out. But working with these guys got me totally inspired! It was like catching a 5th wind.
Unfortunately, we all have full time jobs, and not everyone is willing to sacrifice every waking moment of their life for a software startup. The three of us have unofficially stopped working on Pudding 2.0. There's no hard feelings, it's just, life got in the way.
I'm now at a very difficult point in this journey. My options are....
- (by myself) Come up to speed with Flex and implement a completely bad-ass UI/feature-set that will make all competitors bow to the awesomeness that is Pudding. Hopefully launch this mind-blowing/competitor-terrorizing version sometime before 2010.
- Maintain the status quo because I just can't let go of my baby, Pudding. Essentially limp along and continue to run up my business credit card on hosting fees, while spending cash on banking fees.
- Give up and stop. Focus on my day job and the skills I need to learn and enhance to one day work for a software company. (Program Manager anyone??? ;) )
To be continued.....
Labels: business_of_software, pudding, visual_collaboration
posted by Michael Sica at
11:27 PM
11 Comments:
I'm sorry to hear that, Michael :-(
If you want some advice from someone who doesn't have a successful microISV business, then I'd say that Pudding didn't offer enough value beyond say, using Flickr with appropriate access controls. I'm sure there's an angle out there somewhere for software targetted at designers and their needs, but this wasn't quite it. Or maybe you just didn't get enough visibility in the right community, I don't know.
Anyway, kudos on achieving what you did. I know how hard it is to get as far as having something that people can pay to use, mainly because I haven't got there myself yet...
Maybe you just need a fresh start. Pudding is in a very competitive and worse trendy fad filled niche.
You sound like you have a practical day job, maybe find a product that would solve a simple but real business problem and build that.
Even if it's a give away like that new jottit site or something along those lines. Stay focused on solving problems and stay away from fad sectors.
My 2 cents.
Hi John,
That's kind of what I was getting at in my post. The competition can work on their app full-time, with multiple developers and I just can't keep up with that.
This is probably one of the reasons Ian Landsman quit his job to get UserScape done. He had to focus 100% of his time on completing his product. Unfortunately, I've never been in a situation where I could do that (partially my own doing, mind you).
Oh just 2 more cents, but I would run as fast as you can from flex. Again it's a fad. Why focus on building web apps that can go offline when the world is quickly embracing wifi everywhere?
Stay focused on the solution not the technology.
Hi Ian,
I have to disagree with you in regards to the visual collaboration market being "a fad". People can use Flickr for this sort of work, but if you use something like ConceptShare, you'll see the difference. Pudding actually grew out of the need to solve a problem for the creative design studio here at my company, and I could use Pudding with the designers I have working for me. It's a very useful product area.
Almost all of the apps you see now-a-days have collaboration baked in. Look at the last 10 years of MS Office development. Most people don't realize the crazy stuff MS has been building into their Office System/Sharepoint, because it's not marketed outside of the Enterprise market. Almost all knowledge-workers applications need to revolve collaboration. Pudding just isn't as feature-rich as it needs to be in order to compete with the likes of ConceptShare.
Ian, Flex is not for people to go offline. Air (Apollo) is a platform for desktop/online apps, which is probably what you are referring to. Flex is just one of the languages you can use to take advantage of that platform. XHTML/JavaScript being the other.
Flex is like any other platform, it has advantages/disadvantages. If I was building a UI for a web app today, it would definitely be in Flex. (Take a look at those showcase apps, they're bad-ass.)
Michael,
Flex has been around since March 2004. Where are the killer apps?
It seems to me that XHTML/CSS/JavaScript are good enough for most web applications, with perhaps a bit of Flash thrown in here and there.
P.S. The allowed tags explanation on this comment form is now in German for some reason and the CAPTCHA seems to be a bit unreliable.
The first version of Flex was (unfortunately) a $12,000 product. Flex 2 compiler was the first one to be offered for free, and Flex 3 will be open source. So the 2004 reference, while true, is a bit mis-leading.
The largest example of a killer app is yahoo's mapping solution. It does all the google maps stuff, but the dev team didn't have to have call up the Firefox lead engineer to get their app working.
ConceptShare is a Flash app, which is built on Flex, but is running on the same run time. (Flex compiles to a Flash movie.)
Looking through the featured showcase apps on flex.org, I noticed a lot of small software shops getting on the Flex development. It's not needed for every solution, but once you've got a toolkit like that you can build almost any experience you can dream up.
Oops, I meant to say, "ConceptShare is a Flash app, which is NOT built on Flex, ...."
Hey Michael,
I think quitting your day job and focusing on Pudding full time may be the only way to go.
When you're self-funded, and your startup is your only means to make some money, you end up fighting for survival in a way that you don't when you have a nice cushy day job. In other words, when you HAVE to succeed, good things happen.
You also need a healthy dose of smarts, luck, and a supportive team.
The good news is that you learned a lot, right? And lucky for you, the financial risk was minimal.
Lastly, without funding, it's going to be pretty hard to catch up to your competitors any time soon. You might be able to compete in a niche by solving a VERY specific problem better than your competitors.... but even that is pretty risky at this point.
Good luck with whatever you do!
-chrisk (gliffy)
Hi Chris,
Thanks for the advice (again ;)).
I definitely learned a lot! I haven't made a firm decision on Pudding quite yet. I'll probably have an official announcement up in the next couple of weeks.
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