This Saturday, I will be speaking at the Software Industry Conference in Boston.
Here’s a sneak preview of my presentation on The Art of Ignoring:
The Art of Ignoring
You’ve got your hands full, doing development and customer support.
But then the experts tell you that you should:
Do SEO, run Adwords, split test your site design, fight piracy, fix your trial edition, send newsletters, write press releases, tweet on Twitter, create mac apps, register your trademarks, publish articles, find affiliates, track your sales, do retail, localize your software, create mobile apps, move to web apps, optimize your shopping cart, etc, etc….Where to start? What’s most important right now? What brings in the most profits, the fastest so you can keep moving forward?
The bad news: Everything on the list really is important.
The good news: Depending on the phase your ISV is in, only a few things are important right now.
In this presentation I will go over the different phases of an ISV. I will clearly outline each critical stage and what activities are most important – even essential – during each phase. This will give ISV’s practical, targeted focus points to ensure maximum productivity and profits.
More importantly, I will cover the essential skill of ignoring 80% of the above list, at any time.
For example, in the early stages, you can safely ignore localization and sales tracking.
Later on, ignoring feature requests may be the biggest time saver (and money maker!) ever.
I hope to see you in Boston!
This is going to be an awesome presentation, Alwin… I’m only sorry that I won’t be there to see it! But best of luck with it, I know plenty of people are looking forward to it.
For me, this presentation alone would have made the entire conference worthwhile. For single developer companies, time is our most valuable resource. Your explanation of what’s most important and when will go a long way towards helping other micro-ISV’s become successful. Thanks!
For me, this was such a great presentation. I think we all feel overwhelmed with everyone’s advice (often from people with an an agenda) telling us to focus on Twitter, facebook, AdWords, making your application perfect, adding features, press releases, and on and on.
Of course all these things need to be done, but the great part of your presentation is laying out the priority based on where you are as a business. In a way, it cured me.
Thanks!