Newsgator has acquired FeedDemon and TopStyle and will bring Nick Bradbury on board with the title of Architect of Client Products. One of the questions I asked Nick when I profiled him was about the possibility of being purchased as had previously happened with HomeSite. His response was,

I would, but it would have to be a helluva offer to get to give up my independence. And I don’t just mean dollars - I mean the position itself would have to be very interesting.

After reading his post it sounds like he got exactly what he wanted. Congratulations Nick!

I know a lot of readers want to go full time with their microISV but you have young kids who play a major factor in the decision to go completely independent. journalism.co.uk has an article that looks at freelancing as a journalist with children and there are many parallels to microISV developers.

The first quote under the ‘Children as Inspiration’ section sums up the goal that many of us have.

“The flexibility is the biggest advantage of being a freelancing mother. It allows me to take my girls to school and pick them up, to be able to take them to doctors when necessary or to see their school play without having to explain or make excuses to a boss,” says Linda Jones, owner of PR company Passionate Media.

Microsoft is licensing technology to startup companies that has been created by Microsoft Research but has yet to be brought to market. Each deal will be negotiated individually and Microsoft will take an equity stake in the startup or work out royalty payments with the company.

Some of the technologies available are:

• BioCert - Biometric identity authentication and authorization
• Counterfeit-resistant labels - Secure identification for physical media
• Face detection and tracking - Robust detection of facial images in real time
• Wallop online community - Social network for sharing photos and blogging
• LaunchTile - A simple and consistent UI navigation system for mobile devices
• Microsoft Portrait - Dynamic display for variable bandwidth teleconferencing

See more at Microsoft IP Ventures

via SeattlePI.com

Paul Lavalee explains how he built a successful software venture with good old fashioned bootstrapping. He is now an advisor to software companies looking to grow through IPO’s and mergers and acquisitions. Some of his suggestions for funding:

There are many ways to raise money which are outside the now traditional angels and VC channels. Start by looking creatively at savings, friends & family (but understand the implications if you fail), credit cards, home equity loans, bank loans, federal and local government money, SBA…

In the 1990’s Dan Farmer was an independent developer who created SATAN which stands for System Administrator’s Tool for Analyzing Networks. Through buzz and word of mouth, SATAN became a popular tool which eventually led Farmer to form the company Elemental Inc. In an interview with Business Week Farmer says the following about the success of SATAN.

I’m a really huge believer in marketing and messaging. Part of SATAN’s reason for success was its name: System Administrator’s Tool for Analyzing Networks. That acronym propelled it to a lot of places where it wouldn’t have gotten much visibility. I think the power of names, the power of messages, the power of how people perceive things is really crucial. The technology by itself, if no one knows about it and no one uses it, is pretty useless.

A software engineer named Eric has decided that doing software development for a big company in California isn’t what he wants anymore. He has started to chronicle his attempt to become free from 9 to 5 by developing a software application. He’s quickly realized that finding freedom has meant giving up the freedom he may have had previously.

Jean tells us The best and most powerful software marketing tactic.

It appears that the Mac-centric blog, Macketplace.com, has just come online but there are already several great posts for all software developers.

Sun Microsystems is boosting partnership opportunities by investing in ISVs and helping them with marketing and revenue generation. Sun is also encouraging innovation is by making the source code to OS 10 freely available to developers.

Sun drives successful ISVs though partnership

We are very proud of what we’ve accomplished, being that it came out of desperation.

Sarah Lacy of Business Week profiles Mike and Bettina Jetter, founders of mind-mapping software company, Mindjet, that is now a $20 million per year business. What makes this story remarkable is that Mike started writing the software while he was in the hospital receiving treatment for leukemia with only a 50% chance to live. After two relapses, Mike is now recovering and the software business has over 500,000 customers worldwide. This truly is an exceptional microISV success story.

In response to the pricing and licensing changes to one of the shareware apps he was using, Zaine Ridling writes:

One-trick utilities should never cost more than $20-40 per version.

I certainly respect Zaine’s opinion as a customer but this is quite possibly the most absurd thing I’ve heard in quite a while. There is nothing more powerful than a customer being able to choose where to spend his or her money, but any business owner is free to price their product any way they choose. The market will eventually determine the fairness of the pricing model.

Zaine also states:

I support developers who want to make a living from their work, but there are very few one-trick-utility apps that one could do that with…

I’m sorry Zaine, but I think you’re just trying to justify your point of view and that you don’t really care if the developer can support themselves from their work. This is also a very uninformed statement to make, as can be seen by simply reading the microISV Profiles.

And finally…

Most often developers build a variety of supporting, or different apps to make money rather than overcharge for their only app.

Ignoring the fact that you make a sweeping generalization that is not true, you propose a business model that is simply not maintainable by most shareware companies. Doing what you suggest would be doing even more of an injustice to the customer because the developer will not be able to provide adequate support due to time constraints, all the while making even less money because you want things so cheap.

Last year Six Apart showed us that communication is the key to deal with problems and to turn a negative into a positive. The best thing to do is to get the message you want out there immediately to set the tone from the very beginning. If you’re wrong, your customers will let you know and you can adjust accordingly. Most customers will respect that you’re willing to listen and adapt as necessary.

by way of Jason Calacanis

Giles Turnbull documents how a simple request on the 43 Folders mailing list for a software app led to a quick solution by part time programmer Sam Devore.

Robert Scoble points to tips from David Hornik, a venture capitalist who attended the recent DEMO conference, about the do’s and dont’s of presenting at DEMO. The participants who are invited to demo their software are given 6 minutes to present to a room filled with venture capitalists and journalists. Even if you never aspire to present to an auditorium filled with people with lots of money who are looking for places to spend it, Robert points out that David’s tips are good for getting your software noticed by early adopters who could give your software an early boost.

Greg Gianforte, CEO of RightNow Technologies, gives us 8 reasons why bootstrapping a business is best. It seems he’s speaking from good experience:

And I started RightNow Technologies - which went public August 4, 2004 and as of this writing has a market cap of $350 million - at my desk in Bozeman, Montana without any external funding whatsoever until the company was well-established with 400 customers.

via Business Opportunities Weblog

REAL Software is providing REALBasic 5.5 for Windows Standard Edition completely free of charge in response to Microsoft’s discontinuation of Visual Basic 6.0 support. The offer is good until March 31, 2005.

Scott Kane, moderator of the comp.software.shareware.authors newgroup, recently linked to an article about the issue of software cloning. The article appears to be from 2000 but the issues still exist today. The author states:

I am also amazed by the fact that the people who create software clones do not seem to realize that their actions undermine the very software that they are cloning.