My deepest apologies for being somewhat incommunicado lately.

At times like these, I should remind my readers that–in addition to my entrepreneurial ambitions–I’m still happily (and busily) employed in the software business. And sometimes that means I’ve got to focus on projects for the people who actually pay my salary.

In today’s blog post, first I’ll talk a little bit about what I’ve been doing at work lately. And then I’ll grumble a little bit about last week’s lost-blog-post snafu. And then, I’ll talk about a little bit about the final five business ideas in my 30-days-30-ideas project, culminating with an announcement of which idea I’ll be pursuing. (!!!)

Here we go…

So, it’s gotten busy at the office lately. We’re entering the final stages of our release cycle, and code freeze is coming up soon. One of my main contributions to the product is a new domain-specific language, with an accompanying compiler. Most of my actual engineering work is done, though I’m still adding a few tweaks here and there, when the need arises (last week, I added an inheritance model to the language & compiler).

But it seems like now is when the really intense work is kicking in. With a new compiler available, I’ve been conducting training sessions with engineers from some of the company’s other teams. The QA department is going to use the compiler to automate lots of testing that used to be manually conducted (or only semi-automated). And the professional services department is going to use the compiler, in lieu of our config UI, to produce product customizations for our clients.

As author of the compiler, I’m now also the resident expert with the new language. Although I’ve written a few dozen demo scripts to showcase different aspects of the language functionality, I’m assuming my workload will triple (at least) over the coming weeks, as I assume primary responsibility for authoring code in the new language.

And that’s okay. For me, crunch-time can be oddly satisfying, if I’m working on a project that really interests me. When I’m passionate about a piece of software, I don’t mind taking some extra time to make sure that it gets the love and attention it needs.

For some reason, at times like this, I’m reminded of the A-Team, a silly American TV series from the early 1980’s.

After a ridiculous battle with an army of thugs, and after escaping from yet another imprisonment in an abandoned warehouse (using their ingenuity with blow-torches and explosives to free themselves), the A-Team would end each episode back on the run again. Covered in dirt and dried blood, Hannibal Smith (the A-Team’s unflappable leader) would lean back in his chair and chew on a gnarly cigar, smiling into the wind and barking “I love it when a plan comes together.”

That’s how I feel at the end of a successful software project.

And the A-Team metaphor works on so many levels. Most software projects are written by a ragtag team of weirdos (is there a Murdock or a B. A. Barackas on your team?), and most software projects are at least partially welded together from bits of old farm machinery. At the end of the project, we satisfactorily drink a celebratory beer or puff on a metaphorical cigar. And then, immediately thereafter, we find ourselves on the run from the law again, fugitives from sanity and reason, riding around southern California in a dilapidated old van.

Metaphorically, at least.

Anyhow, I was just having a nostalgic moment and thought I’d share it with everyone. Those of you without a background in American pop culture circa 1985 won’t have a clue what I’m talking about.

That’s the kind of feeling I’m hoping to cultivate with my own software business. Sure, I want to produce useful software. And, of course, I have certain revenue targets that I expect to meet. And ultimately, I’d like to contribute something back to the field of computer science. But, along the way, I’d also like to keep that software passion alive and kicking by working on really cool and interesting projects.

Anyhoo…now that I’ve gotten THAT out of my system, I’d like to talk about last week’s lost blog post.

I had written a long, thorough, and contemplative treatise on the topic of pricing. I dissected each of my five remaining business ideas, from the perspective of different pricing models, examining how each business idea supported different kinds of pricing options, and how those pricing options either supported or undercut the inherent strengths and weaknesses of each idea.

And then at the end, for a laugh, I decided to attach this hilarious photograph:

And somehow, in the process of uploading the photo, I lost most of the pricing post.

I’ve decided not to rewrite it. The original draft took too much effort, and I think I’d be disappointed trying to recreate it. But here are a few of the salient points, in no particular order:

• Nearly all of the businesses would support some kind of segmented pricing model. This kind of pricing model divides the market into various segments (Community Edition, Pro Edition, and Enterprise Edition) based on the typical budgets of the members of each segment. Although the more-advanced product-types have a few additional features, the different editions exist primarily to allow customers to measure the depth of their wallets and purchase accordingly.
• The WebDelve and Project Artifact Manager products are the perfect textbook examples of segmentable products, since they’re basically just shrink-wrap software applications, installed on the customer’s own hardware, with little need for advanced customization options.
• The VaporTrade product is especially interesting, since most customers would probably also purchase a subscription to a daily data-feed. The data-feed could have its own segmentation (including different aggregations of securities and indices), and I could put together an interesting set of cross-promotions. (Buy the VaporTrade SuperGenius Edition, and get six months of the Omnibus DataFeed for FREE!!!)
• Pricing can be tricky when a competing product, from the world’s googliest search engine company, is available for free to pretty much anyone who wants it. The WebDelve product would have to differentiate itself in significant ways (other than price). These would likely be 1) The data is on your own server, 2) The product comes with a zillion reports, but you can also write your own, 3) Sure, you can see a high-level aggregate of user activity, but you can also drill-down to individual sessions of people browsing your site, 4) Better integration with your product/content database (write queries that JOIN your web analytics DB with your e-commerce DB), and 5) Better time-series charting analytics (moving averages, momentum, relative strength, etc).
• Pricing is basically not a factor, at all, with the Beltway Analytics idea. I can’t think of a way to develop this website without it being entirely funded by advertising revenue. And that makes me nervous as hell.
• The AI-Coder.com project actually has more possible pricing models than any of the other ideas. I’ve already proposed the subscription model to lots of people. Users could participate for free, at a limited level, but would be required to pay a small monthly fee ($4.99 ~ $6.99) for more intensive use of the system. But most of the feedback I’ve received has indicated that people will resoundingly refuse to pay a subscription fee. But what if I offered (daily/weekly/monthly) prizes for top-performing gamebots? What if each game contest is a tournament, with a small cash prize? What if two chessbots each pay fifty cents to enter a tournament, with the winner taking home a crisp, cool, dollar? (They’d also pay me a dime for facilitating the tournament.)

  What if universities wanted to pay a fixed rate for a class tournament? What if companies wanted to host extra-curricular tournaments among the members of their engineering teams? I could rent out my game servers by the CPU-minute.

  I could provide a downloadable version of the tournament platform, so that users could test their gamebots before entering them into live competitions. They could get the basic SDK for free, paying me only to facilitate individual contests. Or, I could facilitate the tournaments for free while also giving away the basic SDK, making money only by selling an advanced GUI interface to the SDK (where users could host their own scrimmage tournaments to develop the AI abilities of their gamebots).

  In all likelihood, the ideal pricing model for this software would probably be a hybrid, segmented approach. Subscriptions should be available for those who want a flat monthly rate. Cash tournaments should be available, for people willing to stake a few dollars on the quality of their AI. And flat-rate, one-time group tournaments should be available, for college classes, corporate tournaments, and other groups-of-nerds.

In the final shakedown of things, I’ve decided to pursue the AI-Coder.com idea. With actual cash on the line, I think there are thousands of programmers who’d be interested in participating. By providing a market-segmented pricing structure for tournament stakes (anywhere from a nickel-per-game to twenty bucks for a best-five-of-seven), I should be able to entice users into playing, while also keeping the skilled gamebot authors away from the absolute beginners.

This is possibly not the most profitable idea in my list. The VaporTrade software probably has the greatest profit potential (particularly because of the accompanying data-feed). And the WebDelve software probably has broader market appeal (though I don’t relish the the idea of competing with one of Google’s principle products).

But, the AI-Coder software really appeals to that side of me that’s passionate about computer science. This is where I think I’ll do the most interesting algorithmic work. This is where I think I’ll make the greatest contribution back to the computer science community. And this is where I’ll probably get to hang out with the ragtag team of weirdos that I like so much.

I think this project will be the most satisfying to me personally.

So six months from now, if everything goes as planned, I’ll be covered in dirt and dried blood, muttering to myself “I love it when a plan comes together”.

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 12th, 2006 at 2:22 am and is filed under biz. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.