Running your own business means you’re always looking for work. I sometimes get a reprieve from constant sales when I’m in the middle of a months long project, such as the current one for the genetics testing laboratory. As the end of that project is now in sight, it’s time to prime the sales pump again.
I need a retainer for my next project by December 1st. In the 13+ years I’ve been doing this, there’s been a few immutable laws. One of them is that it takes two months to find, sell, and start a new software project, which means I have just enough time to do this. I’ve got October and November.
At the start of a sales cycle, pretty much anything is possible. The beauty of software is that I can pretty much target an industry of choice, using the tools of my choice, aiming for that most desirable of states: gig bliss.
I’ve been really enjoying Java EE 6 during the genetics testing gig, so I most definitely want a project using JSF/JPA/EJB and friends again. Luckily, these tools are very much in demand these days, by companies in all industries. Given my past experience on three large-scale medical projects, it’s likely I’ll be targeting this industry again, simply to ease with sales. It also helps that medical companies typically have ample budgets and ample need. I’m also very interested in combining my non-profit educational aspirations with a for-profit software gig, so I’ll be targeting the education industry as well.
Beyond Java EE6, I’m very much interested in returning to semantic web technologies, since all signs point to Web 3.0 being about ready to really take off. It’s been 8 years since I first started working with those tools, and roughly 4 years since I stopped using them, so there will be a lot of catching up to do.
I’ll also be looking for a project of sufficient size that I can work with two or three other developers. My solo work on my current project was fun for a while, but it really does get a little old without chaps to chat with in IRC throughout the day. Ultimately I make less money this way, but everything else scales much more nicely.
So, where to start? First thing is to finish my company website revamp I started a few months ago, since the thing looks about ten years old, which it is. Updating the showcase with information on more recent projects, updating the people page, the tools page, etc, will help greatly with first impressions.
After this I need to make a new sales brochure, both print and PDF, to convey the benefits we’ll bring to a project and what we’ve done. Often working on a brochure helps galvanize the new sales rap.
While doing both, I’ll be doing recon on prospective companies, entering their information into my leads database, which is part of Storymill. When I’ve finished feathering my nest (the website and brochure), it’s time to start sending emails and making calls. With an hour each day for two months, I’m bound to find not just another gig by December, but a fun, profitable, and meaningful one.
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I’m minutes away from starting a new software project for a genetics testing laboratory called CTGT. We signed the contracts last Friday, thus ending two months of mid-project limbo wherein three very different companies were vying for my summer. I went with CTGT for three reasons: 1) it’s local, which means I can stop by whenever needed, 2) the spec was very detailed, which means I can jump right in and start building, and 3) it’s scoped to let me continue picking my daughter up from school, rather than the usual pacing on the phone till after five.
Another big difference is that I’m doing this one solo rather than bring in contractors to help. After all the talk-talk-talk of recent years, it’ll be wonderful to slip on my work gloves and simply code for a solid long time. I’ll be using JEE 6, switching between Glassfish and JBoss, which means I can use some best practice technology, particularly JPA and JSF.
Anyway, it’s time to start. I’ve blocked out 7am to 11am each morning till August. Can’t wait 
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Thirteen years ago today, I woke up with no work in sight. I’d just left my cush job at Lotus Development, having recently finished my part of Lotus Notes & Domino R5, which one might think would lead to better things, but no, I just couldn’t take it anymore. Somehow I managed to escape with my passion intact, thanks largely to my wife Paula who let me quit and start a new company with no money and no clients.
Recently I’ve been dusting off the website and other long-neglected tasks, preparing for new sales. I’m also reconnecting with some of the many who have worked for Immuexa (a quick count yielded 50!). Dan Brickley of FOAF and RDFS fame caught me up on all things semantic web. We talked about projects we’d like to pitch, hoping to work together again. He and several others wrote very flattering recommendations for my LinkedIn profile.
The future feels bright, though details are as sketchy as that first morning thirteen years ago. Other than going live with the updated Immuexa website in a few days, I can honestly say I have no idea what’s next. Great things are possible!
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With a whole wide world on the other end of this phone, with millions of people needing help to decrease their drag and increase their profit, how can I now connect to Immuexa’s next project, one that’s soulful, innovative, and lucrative for all?
My Haiti work has brought me to a precipice I haven’t seen since Immuexa’s early days, almost thirteen years ago: no work in sight. In all that time, I’ve always had a billable project on the horizon. With ongoing sales & networking, I managed to keep the Immuexa fires burning without much effort, even through the 2001 downturn.
Now my Haiti work has allowed Immuexa to nearly burn out. With nine of the last twelve months spent on Haiti’s behalf, it’s easy to see why. With our latest workshop complete, it’s time to get back to making software. Humanitarian work is a worthy endeavor, but it doesn’t really pay the bills.
I’ve been here before. Time to pick up my worn tools and begin again.
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And then came Haiti. The very day after my last blog post, I was invited to a think tank at the MIT Media Lab to discuss my experiences with Haiti and the OLPC laptops. Since then, nearly all of my time has been spent organizing and supporting our current seven Waveplace pilots in four locations with 200 XOs. This of course meant three more months of delay for everyone that’s waiting for me. “Everything I do is instead of something else I should be doing.”
After some soul searching since returning from Haiti, I decided to bring on Beth Santos full-time, a woman who impressed me with her resourcefulness and initiative in Haiti. She starts today as Immuexa’s Support Manager and Waveplace’s Outreach Coordinator. I’m confident she’ll help free up our time so that people aren’t waiting as long as they have in recent months.
As for Immuexa itself, we’re finishing our part on the years-long insurance portal project and several other smaller ones, which means by July 5th, we’ve have a completely clear slate. This means we’ve got nine weeks to find a lucrative, challenging, and fun software project to dive into again. Nine weeks to find a great gig is more than enough time, and our search begins today.
Our problem is that we throw ourselves into our singular obsessions, which can be very productive and very lucrative, but it comes at a cost: consistent sales, recruiting, and support. Hiring Beth is a first step towards helping with this.
You might ask why we haven’t hired a non-billable person to help in the last twelve years. Well, for two reasons . . . first, I haven’t *found* someone with the right spirit and initiative. I’ve tried in the past, usually for as much as a month at a time, but our peculiar brand of freedom and minimal communication seems only to work with software developers. Others need a great deal more hand-holding to get them to the point where they know the business, what we offer, and how we do things. The other reason is simply that it hasn’t been much of a problem during much of that time. We ran a pretty streamlined shop and so far we’ve never been out of work, despite our absence of sales. Of course, we’re not growing the company or finding cooler projects either.
It’s been a long time coming, perhaps the last three years, but we’ve finally found the right person and the right time to delegate the stuff that needs to be consistent. I’m through “shoulding” myself about all this. I should be focusing on the stuff that I’m actually good at: sales & development.
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“In a capitalist society, there is always an opening for someone who will do the work of three employees for half the pay.”
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Today’s the tenth anniversary of our business, Immuexa Corporation, which makes custom-built software and websites. Ten years ago yesterday, I drove away from my job at Lotus Development Corp. Ten years ago this morning, we started Immuexa.
Here’s a photo from the tenth anniversary of my father’s business, Arthur Falconer Associates, an advertising agency in Englewood Cliffs NJ.
My father and mother are in the photo, which was taken a few months before the first moon landing. AFA went on for another twenty-five years before it folded up shop, though its spirit lives on within my two brothers and me, as we each have their own business now. We grew up watching my dad, who charted his own course.
Happy Birthday Immuexa! Here’s to the next twenty-five years!
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Today Immuexa turns eight, and as before, Jon and I lunched at Bubba’s to celebrate. Last year, we officially launched Tidepool and Storymill, which after fifteen hard months of work, was a big deal to us at the time.
Now a year later, I should probably mark the occasion by writing of the year’s lessons and course corrections, or wax philosophical about persistence and the future of things, but tonight I’m not in the mood.
Suffice it to say that Jon and I had a great talk. We’re both still psyched about the semantic web, particularly the upcoming roles of agents, interop, and “semantic proximity”. We’ve planted some flags in the distance to trudge towards over the next year. We’re having a great time working these last few months with Dan Brickley and Danny Ayers on our big healthcare semweb project. We’re also excited about the four impending new Storymill Engine website launchs this month, with more after that.
Most of all though: we’re still in business. As anyone that’s run a small business knows, eight years afloat is something to celebrate. Year nine should be interesting, so if you’re still listening, stay tuned
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Here’s what I wrote tonight before I took out the snipping shears:
Q) Why should I pay money when other programs and websites are free?
A) Our answer is pretty simple: if you like us better, you’ll want to pay our modest fees. We feel they’re fair and the money lets us keep making our products better and better.
We’re not some corporate juggernaut, throwing money and bandwidth away just to capture mindshare to inflate our stock value. We don’t secretly have an “acquisition strategy”, hoping to be bought out by someone.
Truth is, we’ve all worked for companies like that, and we want no part of it. Something gets lost when the suits take over, and your memories are too precious to let suits make policy decisions that short-change real people.
Around the world, there are millions who wish to remember more of their lives, their loved ones, their communities. We can help them do this, and this is a worthy and rewarding task.
But we need to eat. And $44 for lifetime Tidepool upgrades isn’t a lot to ask, nor is $52 a year for a basic Storymill membership with 250 megabytes.
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Talk as much as you like about sales & marketing, pay big bucks for strategists and research firms, brainstorm your branding and gonzo attention getters, but it all comes down to the simplest of requests: please give us some money.
The natural response is “why should I?” The spectrum of answers can be dizzying: public radio pitches, new car “extras”, “don’t blame us” anxiety inducers, glamour life seduction scenes, and even straight-up “we have something you want” appeals. If you buy into the cluetrain meme, we all want sellers to be straight with us … “here’s what I got, here’s what it does, I think you might like it, what do you think?” Cluetrain says we want authentic human talk, not empty taglines and sterile brochureware.
It’s hard to argue with their points, but there’s a difference between saying, “I believe in parachutes” and jumping out of the plane. It’s easy to say such things, but when you’re betting the farm, when you’re spending your own money, it’s a little bit harder to dismiss long-held market wisdom in favor of what could very well be a trendy feel-good approach. Let all our workers talk directly with customers? Admit our faults openly? Write publicly about personal things? Yeesh!
Well, I’m hoping Cluetrain’s right, cause here’s the thing: we’re gonna be asking the world for money, and we’ve decided to be real about it, which may or may not work. Even though every other successful competitor has encased themselves in marcom talk, we’re gonna let our wrinkles show because we believe it’s the better way to earn your trust.
Standing at the plane door, waiting to jump, heavy with the weight of many thousands of our own dollars at risk, I check my chute one last time and…
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to describe his vision of the Semantic Web (used with permission)
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