Alex Cowan - Starting a Tech Business: A Practical Guide for Anyone Creating or Designing Applications or Software

Copyright 2012 by Alex Cowan. All rights reserved.

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.

Published simultaneously in Canada.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, (978) 750-8400, fax (978) 646-8600, or on the web at www.copyright.com. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, (201) 748-6011, fax (201) 748-6008, or online at http://www.wiley.com/go/permissions.

Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives or written sales materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a professional where appropriate. Neither the publisher nor author shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages.

For general information on our other products and services or for technical support, please contact our Customer Care Department within the United States at (800) 762-2974, outside the United States at (317) 572-3993 or fax (317) 572-4002.

Wiley publishes in a variety of print and electronic formats and by print-on-demand. Some material included with standard print versions of this book may not be included in e-books or in print-on-demand. If this book refers to media such as a CD or DVD that is not included in the version you purchased, you may download this material at http://booksupport.wiley.com. For more information about Wiley products, visit www.wiley.com.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

Cowan, Alex, 1975

Starting a tech business : a practical guide for anyone creating or designing applications or software / Alex Cowan.

p. cm.

Includes index.

ISBN 978-1-118-20555-6 (pbk); ISBN 978-1-118-22853-1 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-24077-9 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-26568-0 (ebk)

1. Computer software industryManagement. 2. Computer softwareDevelopment. 3. BusinessComputer programs. 4. Computer industryManagement. 5. New business enterprises. I. Title.

HD9696.63.A2S73 2012

005.068'1dc23

2011047545

To Sarah

Acknowledgments

I'd like to thank my reviewers for their help in improving the book: James Brewer, Neil Brewster, Matt Chagan, JoAnn Christiansen, Bruce Cowan, Michael Elisofon, Howard Freidman, Lii Ling Khoo, Jessica Miller, Lee Miller, Madison Mount, Kathleen Hayes Onieal, David Rosenthal, and Nick Vermeer. I'd also like to thank the team at Wiley for their insight, hard work, and patience.

Finally, I'd like to thank everyone else who made the book possible. You know who you are.

Introduction

Abdulrahman Al-zanki, a 14-year-old Kuwaiti boy, is on his way to a million downloads of his iPhone application Doodle Destroy. Abdulrahman used ready-made game-authoring software and sold his product through the iTunes store to a prequalified audience of millions. His first version took about two weeks. Though Abdulrahman is not your average 14-year-old, the point is that he didn't need access to vast development and distribution resources to achieve success in a tech business. The opportunities are real, and they are available to you now.

The fact that you've picked up this book means that you likely have an interest in starting a technology-enabled business, which may mean launching a new company or reengineering your existing company. The point is that you have an idea, you wonder whether you should pursue it, and, if you do, how you'll go about it.

This book's premise is the following:

This book provides that preparation.

It's been obvious for years that technology is transforming existing businesses and creating new ones. Technology-enabled businesses offer one of the today's best available ways to create wealth, and the ability to apply technology is what separates an industry's winners from its losers. The exciting part is that while a decade ago the barriers to creating a technology-enabled business required a pole vault, they've now lowered to where a determined step in the right direction is enough to get started.

The key for a businessperson is to know what you want and be able to describe it. The technology required for your particular business may be as simple as an iPhone application or as complex as a web of interconnected subsystems. Regardless, successful execution follows a set of established patterns requiring the following:

• Rigorous but adaptive business planning
• Careful product formulation
• Well-articulated design
• Economic use of systems
• Adaptive management of technical resources
• Empathic deployment to customers

Starting a Tech Business provides these tools to any businessperson.

Building a technology system and delivering it to the customer is cheaper and easier than ever. While creating a technology system meant grinding out a massive (and expensive) code base in years past, nowadays it's more about assembling the right components and the most important component is simply a good idea. If you've read this far, you probably have that or know where to get it. Innovations in software delivery have simplified distribution for new technology. Platforms like the iPhone and Salesforce.com provide ready access to qualified buyers while eliminating the complexity previously associated with installation of new software components. Where systems development was once the domain of dedicated techies and companies with deep pockets, it has become accessible to the well-prepared entrepreneur with a good idea.

Computer technology has completed a kind of arc over the past 50 years, returning to a place that makes it accessible to the untrained tinkerer. There were many novices in computing's early days; and though experts dealt with the specialized hardware, the lines between user and developer blurred. As a result, many individuals tinkered with these new machines. Over the next few decades, the computer business grew and deep subspecializations emerged. Specialization has been the norm up until recently; however, the underlying power of available computing resources has allowed software/systems developers to operate at increasingly higher levels of abstraction. This means that it's less important to understand the lower-level details of the system. Instead, the casual tinkerer can use fairly intuitive tools to prototype and build new technologies. The chapters that follow provide several examples of this.