Ataraxis Software & Pudding, R.I.P.

I started this blog in May 2005. I created the Ataraxis Software, LLC company around September 2005. I kicked around a few ideas (Project Management app, Requirements Management app) and technologies (OpenLaszlo, Java, RealBasic), finally settling on an idea centered around, "electronic review and approval", and the Ruby on Rails platform. On June 8th, 2007 I was able to release 1.0 of Pudding.

A lot happened in those 2 years.

I got married, bought a house, got promoted to management at my day job, bought another house, sold the first house, and went through most of my wife's pregnancy (my daught was born about a month after Pudding launched on 07/07/07). These are not exactly activies you can "phone-in", if you know what I mean.

Trying to balance the day job, life, and building a product was insane. Most people in the software industry will tell you that taking 2 years to develop a web product is just blame dumb. And they're right. The lapse in time allowed a much more feature-full competitor to build, release, and grass-roots market their product. When I first saw ConceptShare I knew my opportunity to be the first and only product in this space was lost, and ConceptShare's drawing tool was a giant leap over what Pudding would be offering. (Before I saw ConceptShare I actually debated with commenters on this blog over it was a good idea to allow your clients to draw on your comps. ConceptShare is doing it, and they seem to be doing well!)

I knew I needed more help. I recruited a couple of friends to work on Pudding with me. There was a few discussions about what we were going to do, and a bit of code written. Unfortunately, I think they both lost interest. So I was back to just me.

Early last year I was ready to shut Pudding down. I was just completely burned out and I knew I couldn't keep up with the competition. They were working full time. They were a team of (I think) 3. I was still working a full time job during the day, and hacking away on Pudding at night and on the weekends. Before I threw in the towel, a buddy of mine offered to join the company. I accepted and we set the course to build an amazing Pudding 2.0. This kept me going for months. My partner was writing a bunch of code, and we were really headed down the right path.

Unfortunately, life once again got in the way. My partner hasn't been able to spend time on Pudding since about March or April.

This caused me to de-scope the 2.0 plans into a 1.5. Around June of this year I was about 95% of the way toward having a release ready. Unfortunately, around the same time I became very unhappy at my day job (well, I was always kind of unhappy at that place of employment). I started aggressively looking for a new job, and I found a fantastic position with Disney's Interactive Media Group, supporting the Walt Disney Resorts & Parks Online division. The down side of this transition was that the first 6 months on the job had me working on getting a gigantic project out the door, and man was it exhausting.

I've essentially done nothing with Pudding for the past 6 months, and I've decided that I need to stop lieing to myself. I'm just not going to be able to build a competitive product "in my spare time". I know it has happened for some people, and I commend these people for their accomplishments, but I've literally proven that I can't.

Not to mention, ConceptShare isn't the only source of competition these days. Recent entries in the market are Getsignoff and proofHQ.

I've had various subscribers to Pudding over the last year, just never enough to cover all my costs. My biggest thanks goes out to one client, Mr. John Lanza. He was incredibly patient with Pudding. He'd report bugs and provided a ton of feedback on the application. He was even nice enough to give me some quotes for my marketing site.

"I’m so glad I found Pudding. Pudding provides a cost-effective, super-simple solution to a sometimes complex problem – getting feedback and approval from clients. It’s VERY easy to get up-and-running with Pudding and the service is INCREDIBLE. I can’t stress this enough – the SERVICE IS TERRIFIC! I made a suggestion to change how text was displayed and the site was changed within a day."

-John Lanza of Snigglezoo Entertainment

"I really like the website and I think it is a very efficient way to communicate about changes and approvals for different products. I like the fit to screen/real size option and the comments section. Overall I really think the website is an effective way to communicate. ... I love the site!"

-Jaclyn Marcella, a client of Snigglezoo Entertainment

AtaraxisSoftware.com, ProjectPudding.com, and the main Pudding application at AtaraxisPudding.com should all be going offline soon. (Maybe by time you read this blog post.) I canceled all my clients subscriptions and informed them of this about 2 weeks ago.

I've learned an incredible amount over the last 3 years. I read a million articles and books on entrepreneurship, running a business, managing software and marketing. I became a better programmer and UI designer. I've been able to funnel all of these learnings back into my day job, which I attribute to my continued upward climb in my career.

I feel really weird about letting Ataraxis Software go. I had such a burning desire to start a software company, build an amazing product, and grow them both over time. That desire is still in there somewhere, but I think I'm going to take a few years off and focus on family, my day job, and my Xbox 360. :)

The next time I try building a product, I'm going to seek funding, quit my day job, and build it full time. I know funding has a bad rap, but it's better than just working a regular job-type-job, right?

Well, I guess it's time to say good-bye.

Thanks to everyone who has commented on this blog over the years, tried and paid for Pudding, and entertained the idea of joining Ataraxis Software. An extra special thanks to my wife Amy for putting up with this dream of mine for so long - I love you honey!

I'll probably do 1 more post on this blog before I leave it to collect dust (if it doesn't have enough dust on it already). I want to show everyone what Pudding 1.5 was going to look like. I think it was turning out to be a pretty slick app and I just want to show it off.

Our best are working on Eyeball Revenue

I'm so disappointed in the software development industry. 2 of our largest development companies, employing lots of smart developers, are basically just advertisement resellers.

I know MS is trying to grow their business in more areas than I have fingers and toes to count them on, but to see such a large focus on getting ad delivery deals is just a little disheartening.

I'm really glad the product I'm working on is the exchange-cash-for-delivering-value model. I find it more rewarding. I just can't wait to get this next version done!

TallyHoh.com Launches, Social Feed Reader

Just passing on a little news. My friend Daniel Roop has just launched his social feed reader, TallyHoh. Daniel is a fellow Orlando-based Rails programmer. It's great to see this kind of work coming from another local Orlando developer.

Congrats on the launch Roop!

Pudding marketing web site review by 47hats.com

Bob Walsh was kind enough to perform a review of the marketing web site for Pudding. It was by far the best feedback I've gotten regarding Pudding's marketing site. Thanks again to Bob for taking the time to put this together!

Max and I are still hard at work on V2 of Pudding. I'm really excited about the features we've got planned for the next release. I really believe it's going to be an awesome product for designers.

I think this is the part where I'm supposed to say, "watch this space". :)

Here Comes Another Bubble - The Richter Scales

I damn near died when I saw this. It's so damn funny, I just had to share.

Wasabi, Why?

I honestly can't believe this was easier than just porting FogBugz to ASP.NET or PHP. If they're smart enough to write a compiler, can't they just write a converter? I.e. Read in all the old code and have a little program that spits out the code in the target syntax? Then you can maintain your code base on something other than a home-baked PHP/ASP-branching language!

CaseDetective To Flex

Ian M. Jones, a long-time microISV blogger, is re-inventing his application, CaseDetective, with Flex. He recently posted an update on how he likes working with Flex Builder and Flex 3.

Adobe getting into hosted applications

Word processing
Adobe is acquiring the company that makes Buzzword, a word processor that runs in the Flash player. I found Buzzword through Flex.org's showcase. It isn't quite as feature-rich as Google Docs, but I think the documents look better compared to Google Docs. Read the press release.

Document share/viewing
Adobe is also working on a document sharing and viewing application called, Share.

If anyone is building a spread sheet in Flex, you better let Adobe know about it! :)

Future?

READ THE UPDATE
-------------------------

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....

1. (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.
   
2. 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.
   
3. 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??? ;) )
   

This blog has captured a lot of this crazy "Ataraxis Software" story. I've learned so much. I've met some really nice people via this blog (Ian M. Jones, Ian Landsman, John Topley, Mike Rhode, etc...). But I think I've finally run out of steam.

To be continued.....

Inside look at Google

I love "inside looks" at different software companies. I'm basically taking notes, you know, just in case Ataraxis Software becomes super-successful. :)

MyMicroISV linked over to this possibly-true inside look at Google.

The Eyeball Revenue Model

I'm not really interested in the advertising-based side of web development. Those guys have to deal with so much crap that has nothing to do with the "app". They probably spend more time preventing spam than anything else. Check this out: Next Target for Subvert and Profit: StumbleUpon

Ug.

Awesome Software Startup Blog

I've just read a few really good posts over at Marc Andreessen's blog. It's awesome.

I really enjoyed:

• How to hire the best people you've ever worked with
• The Pmarca Guide to Big Companies, part 1: turnaround!
• The Pmarca Guide to Startups, part 1: Why not to do a startup
• The Pmarca Guide to Startups, part 2: When the VCs say "no"

Thanks to OnStartups.com for the link over to the blog.

Kids these days...

With their free money.... What is this, 1999? (Except it's $15,000 instead of $150,000,000.)

Butov on the Business of Software

True dat.

Merchant Account, Finally

WOW, that took a hell of a lot longer than I was expecting. A full 2 weeks to get "approval" for having a merchant account and the ability to accept credit card transactions. Now I need to setup an Authorize.net account and hook everything up. I won't be stressing too hard about that until after my beta version is live. It's been my plan all along to implement my CC processing while I'm in beta.

I'm going to be at a friend's wedding this weekend, so I won't be able to do any work.

It's driven me nuts that all this business stuff has taken so long to sort out. (bank account, business credit card, merchant account...)

Small Business Finances

I've been spoiled by the world of consumer credit and a good credit score. Need a credit card? No problem, here you go. Need a mortgage, car loan, etc...? No problem, here you go.

The small-business-with-zero-credit-history world is a little different.

I actually got turned down for a (Visa) credit card from Suntrust bank last week. (I had to wait a week for them to tell me that.) I was going to use that credit card to setup all my hosting services for Pudding. You can imagine how crushed I was when it was denied!!! I don't want to put the business expenses on my personal credit cards for obvious reasons!

The same day I got rejected for the Suntrust Visa credit card, I applied for an American Express card. They couldn't "verify my business name" through their online application so after a couple of days of phone tag I finally reached some one on the phone, and got it sorted out. I'm now approved!

Unfortunately, the card won't arrive in the mail for a while so I'm still waiting on that in order to get the Ataraxis Software and Pudding web sites up. I actually finished the "beta" site for Pudding, and created the (ultra-lame) placeholder for ataraxissoftware.com. But the ataraxissoftware.com site will have the "sign up for a beta" system in place. Something which I wish I had setup about 15 months ago.

I'm still waiting for approval on my merchant account, again I'm going with Suntrust. Hopefully, I'll hear back from them this week. That's really the final puzzle piece toward launching. (I still have to write the code to interface with the payment gateway, but I was going to do that during the beta testing.)

Banking, Hosting

I was going to bank with my local credit union, Fairwinds, but Suntrust offers a free checking account. But before I opened an account with Suntrust, I needed to talk with their Merchant servicing department to find out their rates/fees/etc... Those discussions took longer than I expected, but I've finally opened a bank account, applied for a credit card, and submitted my application for a merchant account. Which will let me open an account with Authorize.net and setup all my credit card processing. I'm going to be paying a little more than I would have through the credit union's merchant program, but I like the overall feel of Suntrust over Fairwinds.

Once I've got my "corporate" credit card, I'm going to get my hosting setup at Textdrive. I like Textdrive's Accelerator Hosting option. We use the same technology at my day job and it's totally cool. It's like a dedicated machine, expect it's virtual and I'll have full access to the "zone".

My banker told me it would take 7 to 10 days to get a response regarding my credit card. I'm creeping up on the end of February, so it looks like I'll be able to open a private beta in the first week of March.

Credit Card Processing

I made this post over on the, "The Business of Software" forum. I've been talking with a rep at Cardservice international about charging credit cards. Here are the numbers we've been talking about:

Using Cardservice w/Authorize.net
Setup......................$99
Visa/Mc Discount Rate......1.99%
Transaction Fee............$0.25 + $0.10 to Authorize.net
Monthly Support/Statement..$10
Gateway Fee................$20
Monthly Minimum............$15

If I use their recommended gateway processor, Linkpoint, which also has an API like Authorize.net, and there would not be the additional 10 cent fee transaction fee. My "Transaction Fee" would only be 25 cents.

Honestly, it was a lot more than I was expecting, but no one on the forum seemed to point out that the fees were out of the ordinary.

Before I had the conversation with someone at my Credit Union I didn't realize how many companies are involved to charge a credit card and for you to get the money.

You need a bank account at your bank, a merchant account with a merchant servicer, and a payment processing gateway.

That's 3 companies!

Now, there is a large player named, First Data, which (I'm pretty sure) owns Cardservice International (merchant servicer) and LinkPoint International (payment processing gateway). But it's still 2 different entities.

I think I'm going to end up using Autorize.net. I've heard good things about their API, and I really need something that's easy to program against.