BKBASSB.RVW 940516 O'Reilly & Associates, Inc. 103 Morris Street, Suite A Sebastopol, CA 95472 800-998-9938 707-829-0515 fax: 707-829-0104 info@ora.com or nuts@ora.com "Building a Successful Software Business", Radin, 1994, 1-56592-064-3, U$19.95 radin@ora.com 73234.3712@compuserve.com In the preface, the author points out that even if you get only one good idea from the book, it will pay for itself many times over. The operative word, however, is "good". There are a great many ideas in the book: some will be appropriate to what you want to do, some will be useless to your situation, a large number contradict each other. As those of us in technical fields know, if you can tell good advice from bad advice, you probably don't need any advice. The software business is the modern day business success story. For one thing, the independent programmer can generally stay alive with contract programming while working on his or her own product. The single idea/single programmer product is still a possibility. Mostly, however, it is the almost instant rise of single product companies, like Lotus and Microsoft, to corporate status that fuels the dream. And, dream it generally is. For every Lotus, there is a VisiCalc whose rise and fall were equally meteoric. And for all of those, there are hundreds of "companies" who never rose at all. Radin purports to cover marketing, finance, and operations for the entrepreneurial startup. As befits a former salesman, his material concentrates heavily on marketing: about half of the total book. Finance is covered broadly, if not deeply; you will definitely need some additional help in preparing statements, cash flow and business plan documents. As far as operations go, you are probably on your own. Miscellaneous chapters on physical plant, funding sources, staff, legal and other matters are similar. The chapter on hiring does give some pointers you might not have thought of, but almost nothing on the actual practice of hiring, such as writing "help wanted" ads or conducting an interview. Examples tend to flit back and forth between the high volume software producer and the contract "one-off" specialist programmer. Certainly, both types of businesses need advice, but the lack of address as to audience makes it difficult to decide on the importance of a given suggestion to your own situation. As well, the book states that a balance between the various factors is necessary, but never attempts to help define that balance. Indeed, the book often contradicts itself; in one paragraph, stating that Lotus is both a good and a bad business model; stating in one place that the software business is the perfect "level playing field" and, later, that the "level playing field" is a myth. It is definitely true that the majority of those with a good technical idea do not have the business acumen to turn it into a success. This work has lots of advice and good points. On the other hand, it nowhere guarantees success. To counterpoint the author's many stories of success and failure, here is one from the computer virus research community. Two researchers have each developed sterling antiviral products, in slightly different and complementary fields. Neither has gone after venture capital. Neither has done any marketing, beyond remaining active (indeed, leading) in the research community. Both released their products as shareware. Both have gone after existing software firms with licensing options; one made a couple of sales and a couple of bad mistakes, the other couldn't get sufficient interest at the necessary level. One is now a million dollar business, the other is still a hobby. Both broke all of Radin's rules. copyright Robert M. Slade, 1994 BKBASSB.RVW 940516 ====================== DECUS Canada Communications, Desktop, Education and Security group newsletters Editor and/or reviewer ROBERTS@decus.ca, RSlade@sfu.ca, Rob Slade at 1:153/733 Author "Robert Slade's Guide to Computer Viruses" (Oct. '94) Springer-Verlag