I was thinking it’s time to ‘get down to business’ for the year and it reminded me of an awesome wee tune called “It’s Business Time” by our superstar New Zealand folk legends, “Flight Of The Conchords”. Enjoy!
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Republishing Note:
Anyone is welcome to republish this article as free online content, provided that the paragraph below is included in the full form as shown.
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About the author:
Julian Stone, CEO – Project Management Software specialist for: ProActiveSoftware.com, ProWorkflow.com & Julian101.com
I read a good article in the NZ Herald online the other day called “NZ Entrepreneurs going to town on web” about some New Zealand internet software start-ups taking some promising steps towards international success. In the article, Wellington entrepreneur and Xero founder Rod Drury quotes “There are a number of next-generation entrepreneurs kicking it on the international stage”.
Good on all these guys! Keep up the 20hr days! I’ve met Rod from XERO, and had a few good chats with Grant Ryan from Eurekster and they’re both passionate, and focused. XERO seems to be fleshing out it’s powerful offering nicely and Eurekster looks to be picking up some good momentum. I think in the next few years we will see even more great Internet successes come from New Zealand as more kiwis learn to use the Internet as a massively powerful and leveragable marketing and distribution platform for their ideas. Rod also has some tips on starting a business on his website that may be of interest.
Definitely some great talent being displayed there, however I wanted to add a couple of other promising Internet companies to the list (ours included). Keep an eye on these companies as they’re both growing nicely. They both are keeping a strategic low profile whilst refining their low inertia scalable business models but are set to scale and should make some good ground this year.
I spotted this really clever video about the Web 2.0 bubble (or not?) over on Ben Kepes blog. The tune it’s made to is the 1989 song “We Didn’t Start The Fire” which, interestingly enough is a song that any red blooded GenX’er (or Baby Boomer) should know and love. The video itself though brings back some chilling reminders of the prior dot com bubble which the GenY new business builders may not have personally experienced.
A lot of the new web businesses (especially Web 2.0) coming through these days are started by GenY’ers who weren’t part of the dot com crash a decade ago. I see everyday signs of a looming bubble, and think that the GenY’ers should study what happened in the previous crash and learn from it.
On the flipside, there are quite a few GenX’ers and baby boomers I know of developing new Web 2.0 model businesses and SaaS co’s that have been through the prior bubble and learnt from it. These more experienced folk are developing web businesses that actually do have solid products, markets, business models and revenue streams (things overlooked in the prior bubble).
Have fun watching the video, but I’d like would like to pass some advice to new web businesses to avoid the bubble (if it comes)…
- Ask the customers what they want, and commoditize it
(don’t guess or assume) - Make ‘much needed‘ solutions for ‘common‘ problems
(not stupid/obscure products with gimmick factor for non-markets) - Keep expenses to a minimum
(But spend well to get the right employees) - Don’t take investment until you can scale revenue
(And sell only the minimum amount to investors) - Use SaaS as a key business model
(But make sure you charge enough to cover costs profitably per customer) - Hype does not equal Credibility!
(Customers in a SaaS relationship want to see credibility. If customers buy in though hype based marketing you’ll get high churn. To build credibility, use relationship building approaches to your marketing)
Republishing Note:
Anyone is welcome to republish this article as free online content, provided that the paragraph below is included in the full form as shown.
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About the author:
Julian Stone, CEO – Project Management Software visionary for: ProActiveSoftware.com, ProWorkflow.com & Julian101.com
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Here’s a review from a customer on a well known software rating website called Iterating.com and and thought it was worth a post. On the website the ProWorkflow solution gained an 8.95 rating so we’re happy with that.
I wanted to post this as it’s not often that software companies are transparent. This was written without our knowledge from a long time user and I believe it’s an accurate review. We receive similar comments daily.
Here’s the review: http://www.iterating.com/products/ProWorkflow/
Click below to read the review…
ProActive Software was interviewed recently by www.fastservers.com. This is the server facility housing ProWorkflow.com’s servers. They’re a dedicated team of professionals who we totally recommend.
Here’s the interview link:
http://www.fastservers.net/blog/web-hosting/software_as_a_services_prowork/
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Software as a Service: Proworkflow
posted on November 30, 2007 4:37 PM. by Aaron Phillips
Almost 1 year to date I did an interview with Julian Stone of ProWorkflow to discuss his business model and software as a service. During this interview he discussed the future of his organization and I wanted to follow up with how things have transpired over the last year. In case you didn’t get a chance to read the first interview you can jump over to that post below.
Here’s the original 2006 interview:
http://www.fastservers.net/blog/interview_with_fastserversnet_1/
Q1: What milestones and accomplishments has ProWorkflow made in the last 12 months?
The last 12 months have seen a huge amount of product refinement, with version 5 released and approximately 20+ incremental updates. We listen to customer feedback and have put many of their ideas into the solution.
There has also been plenty of effort put into smoothing out the ProActive Software business system. The ProWorkflow solution isn’t just simply a product, but rather it’s a product, client account and billing area, server technology, backups, knowledge base and our back end license management system. The ProWorkflow product is just part of a larger solution designed to help businesses run more efficiently.
We feel it’s a great accomplishment to have put all this solidly in place so we can offer a great solution to companies needing to manage their staff and projects.
Q2: What’s your take on the buzz around Web 2.0 and how has it impacted ProWorkFlow?
Personally I think there is far too much hype surrounding the subject. I’ve written a lot about Web 2.0 on my personal blog http://www.julian101.com. Everyone seems to have a different opinion on the issue, but I see Web 2.0 as a new phase of web applications. Better usability, better use of technology, tools like AJAX improving user interaction, more community focus, user led solutions etc.
However some people see Web 2.0 as simply big buttons, cutesy roundy interfaces and ridiculously simplistic odd little applications. Whatever we deem it to be, there is a change occurring in the applications market and some great new tools appearing (and some terrible ones :-).
Read the rest of this entry »
