Market7

Establishing the San Francisco – Edmonton power corridor of software development

Market7 colleagues weary of me nagging with them with, “Can you please put something up on our company blog?” will from now on hear a different favorite phrase from me: “Why can’t you be more like David?” That’s in reference to our newest colleague, software engineer & blogger David Ackerman.

David starts with us as a contractor from Edmonton in what he himself phrases as a sort of “grand experiment” as to how well our software development can work across a 1,000 mile gap. A big part of our mutual determination to try it was spurred by David’s observation that the practice will help orient our own efforts to facilitate collaboration in video production, often across distances. Such deep thoughts, and overall documentation of the grand experiment, are being eloquently journaled by David on his blog http://www.dsackerman.com/.

• There’s always a struggle between being comfortable and being free.
• It’s an amazing time to be a software developer . . . we are the architects of the future, not simply building tools, but rather writing the binary-based rules that will effect the way we socialize, collaborate, create, and consume for years to come.
• information can travel around the world in seconds. Does a programmer really need to be local these days to be effective?
• extra discipline involved in making a telecommute situation work . . . Will it work? Who knows? What I do know is that I’ve got a company that’s doing great stuff and that’s willing to meet me half way on this new grand experiment
• application for a home business license (especially for what I’m doing – nothing that creates loud noises, strange smells, etc.) is relatively pain free
• I don’t have a lot of experience in video production (besides low budget music videos with gaudy effects), I found that I could grasp the necessary collaboration aspects fairly easily. The Market7 product is meant to bridge that gap between business types who want hard data about what’s going on and more creative types who don’t necessarily fit into easy schedules
• a lot of trust was put in me right away, and that helped a lot in terms of making me comfortable working from afar. In my mind, it re-affirmed that, “Okay, we really are doing this thing.”

We really are doing this thing. Welcome David, great writing! We’ll get you up here in video soon too.

Week Of Deep Thoughts Post #2

Today’s deep thoughts in a moment, but first some knee surgery levity. Met a customer this morning who gets surgery on a torn meniscus tomorrow (my op was for new ACL & repairing some femur damage) — best wishes Michael! Anyhow, we arrived at destination simultaneously, from different directions, converging with each of us on crutches. That gets heads in the room turning.

Drawing topic again today from stuff in the small-n news right now. Firm moves being made by big-N News Corp to insist on for-pay journalism on the internet. Closer to our company’s home is the weak commitment and shrinking programming from video content owners for Hulu, despite lots of viewing, is in large part driven by desire to retain capabilities for monetization from viewer pay.  Closer still, as a software company, we face dilemma of maximizing our user base with ability to use our stuff for free versus maximizing revenues by making sure all’s paid for.

Our posture emphasizes for-pay usage, and we prefer maintaining that from the outset of our growth, instead of jeopardizing momentum by switching later. New users can sign up and try the full range of video.Market7 services for free, at decent capacity, but the limitations are set such that usage can’t practically extend beyond doing a single, not-gigantic, video production project. One could argue that by not giving away more during our early existence and maximizing user base we are in fact not optmizing our revenue prospects. We feel differently and think it’s best for start-ups to orient ourselves by intelligently & always understanding how users tangibly value offerings, and to adjust operations with consideration of that.

Lots of people seem to expect News Corp to face some difficult come-uppance  while trying to reverse its own participation in getting consumers to expect news on the Internet for free. That may be a good point. We’re picking a practice of having usage for-pay from the get-go with no switch in model anticipated.