I'm an Italian web developer and (almost) entrepreneur based in London.
Hey guys, just a quick one.
WG Comunicazione, a digital agency based in northern Italy, has just published an article about NiftySchool, the online tool I created to manage language schools.
You can read the full article here. Thanks to Roberto Bogo and the whole WG Comunicazione team.
View CommentsAs you probably know I’ve worked in the software development industry for about 10 years now. I’ve covered different roles such as developer, teacher, consultant, and product manager.
In the past year I realised I’m not only interested in the technical side of software development; Over time I’ve become more and more interested in all the other activities related to the creation of a product.
As any other software developer, I have started and abandoned over two dozen projects, giving up every time I came across something more exciting, and this started getting on my nerves.
How come I’ve succesfully worked on a multitude of projects and products for my employers and customers but I’ve never completely owned a product? I strongly feel I’ve missed the whole point of my efforts.
It’s important to me to prove I can create something meaningful and useful, something good, that people are willing to pay for.
I want to understand why certain things work and others don’t. I want to understand where the real value of a product is, no matter how complex or interesting the underlying technology.
The opportunity to create a product from scratch struck me about a year ago, when a language school here in London asked me to build a new system to manage their students.
I’ve taken this chance to get exposed to the whole lifecycle of a product, and in the meanwhile waste a bit of my free time.
So far the journey has been quite interesting as I’ve been involved in:
(1) I’ve not been alone through all this, as I needed the help of a few programmers, designers and copywriters to actually bring something to life while preserving my habit of sleeping eight hours a day :-)
The project is a software-as-a-service that helps schools manage their classes, attendances, payments, documents and so on.
It’s still in its infancy but it’s up and running and currently used by a few schools.
You can take a look at it at http://www.niftyschool.com.
I’d love to know what you think, any comments or suggestions are more than welcome!
Wherever my career may take me, I’m sure this experiment will be a valuable lesson in better understanding the web product business.
And just in case you’re wondering: No, it’s not profitable yet.
And again no, I’m not going to quit my job.
PS: My colleagues might find the UI quite familiar. Don’t complain, it’s been borrowed from previous work done at SeeSaw.
View CommentsAs you know, I’m into monthly resolutions.
I want to find out new goals as this way to improve my lifestyle has proven really successful and rewarding.
Here you’ll find a bunch of ideas from which I’ll choose my September’s resolution:
They’re just Ideas and I’ve got only four months left this year so I’m pretty sure I won’t be able to do them all, but they can be inspirational for you as well. Once you’ve compiled your own list you need to go through it and ask yourself the following questions:
My answers to these questions are:
I decided to go with the “Email twice a day” resolution, as I’ve been fascinated by:
What’s your September’s resolution?
View CommentsIn the past couple of months my eyesight has worsened quickly.
It has worsened to the point that I now need to wear glasses on a daily basis. I know this doesn’t sound too serius as there are millions of people wearing glasses or contact lenses but I consider it quite bad after 30 year of perfect eyesight. The worst thing about it is that I now get tired easily and I suffer from occasional headaches.
I just want to share a couple of tips which are helping me to reduce eye strain:
Looking at the computer screen is like looking at a light bulb. The less white light hit your eyes, the better. I used to use editors with a black background but there are a couple of applications that do not support color customization (Word, Excel and the like).
Nocturne is a little application that invert the colors on your screen, so that white becomes black and viceversa. I can assure this is a lot easier on your eyes and you’ll feel the difference if you just try it for an hour.
I’m used to look at close objects and my optometrist suggested to regularly look at things far away, and of course I forget to.
This software (Anti Repetitive Strain Injury) remind you to take short breaks every now and then, to make sure you don’t stare at the computer screen for too long without giving your eyes the chance to rest.
AntiRSI is smart enough to understand if you’ve already taken a break, monitoring your mouse and keyboard activity.
These tools are only for Mac, please feel free to reply with Linux/Windows equivalents.
View CommentsBefore relocating to the UK I used to run my own business. I co-founded SeeSaw, an Italian consultancy firm. About one year ago I sold my shares to a partner, and the company hasn’t done much since.
Whilst the business was reasonably profitable, the fact that at some point we abandoned our dreams and basically gave up trying, makes me consider the adventure as a partial failure.
I’ll try to analyze what didn’t work and why.
We (the three founders) were Java/Ruby consultants struck with an entrepreneurial seizure. As most good enough programmers do, we just thought “we can do it better” and started implementing projects for other companies. Not that kind of pay-me-by-the-hour consultants, but the risky we-will-deliver-what-you-need kind of guys. We wanted also to build our owns products, but the idea never really took off.
The company mission wasn’t very clear, we wanted to build a product (a financial-analysis tool that we discussed about for months), but not having any money in the pocket we started consulting. And once the money started coming in, we kept ourselves busy with a customer’s project, and another, and another. Along the way we also started doing training courses, open source plugins, speeches at conferences. All great stuff, but we didn’t focus on developing a core business idea.
When you are good at doing whatever you want to, you risk switching between too many topics without maximizing your potential.
I’ll give you a bunch of examples of stuff we’ve done:
Good experience? Sure. Best way to spend our energies? I really doubt it.
Partner A: You’re too slow!
Partner B: You don’t think about maintainability!
Partner C: But the GUI is the most important thing!
Partner A: But that’s not RESTful!
Partner B: But that Kernel module needs to be recompiled!
There’s no way three programmers with the same seniority can agree on everything. This can easily lead to endless discussions on how to implement this and that. Everyone feels entitled to say something about a partner’s work.
Someone needs to be in charge of the decisions, and that’s it. Someone at some point need to say “This is how we do it here”, It’s business, not a pub chat after all.
The roles inside the company needs to be defined and cristal clear from the beginning. The input and expected output for each role needs to be defined in advance as well.
When you work in your own business, you tend to become a maniac. Pixel-perfect alignment here, perfect ruby pattern there and so on. You finally can create the perfect world you couldn’t find in the companies you worked for. The problem arises when you’re overwhelmed and need to rely on employees and contractors. They will never care as much as you do and you’ll be bothered by the ‘not perfect way’ they’re doing their assignments. You panic, and start designing websites even if you’re not a web designer, doing the books even if you’re not an accountant, writing copies for web sites even if you’re not a content editor to just make sure everything’s done your way. You’ll end up doing, checking, and generally speaking, working so much that you’ll hardly find energy to ‘run’ your business. You’ll end up being always busy and run by the events. That’s exactly how I felt when I gave up.
Only recently I could realize how many business decisions we’ve made have been driven by fear. There’s that customer that you don’t really trust, but you think “well, at the end of the day we need to work”… and embrace a project you don’t believe in. That customer, after 1 year and a half, hasn’t yet paid you and you’re still banging your head on the wall.
Trust your feelings, and don’t do business just because you need to survive. It’s better to be employed by someone else and have the time to rethink your strategy.
We kept changing our short term goals to match whatever was profitable at the moment, to not be confronted with the implications and sacrifices of a long term plan.
The business model needs to be robust and if you find yourself changing it too often, or making too many exceptions to your plan, you better take a pause and rethink it from scratch.
At the same time fear kept us inside our confort zone. We only did what we could do or completely understand ourselves. For example we never had a proper marketing plan because we’re not marketing guys. What we should have done instead is identify the roles we needed to make the business succeed and hire appropriate people.
Many people think about entrepreneurship just as having a better or cooler job. I’m finally starting to see the difference between ‘working in a business’ and ‘running a business’. Look at your own boss: is it working in the business (making the products/services himself)? Chances are he’s not. Is he running his business? Probably yes, and he’s definitely making more money than you are.
There are so many activities that my business didn’t properly take into account, from planning to marketing to resource management and task delegation. This first entreprenurial adventure has been a great experience and a good chance to see different aspects of a business and I’m confident this will help me a lot on my next attempt.
If you run your own business and it hasn’t succeeded the way you wanted it to, please share your experience in the comments.
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