I've now been working on my little project tracking application, ZPlanner, for nearly a year now. It's certainly not been a full time effort, rather I work on it here and there when time allows and when my attention doesn't drift elsewhere (to blogging, the book I've been working on, and other random stuff), but I've made reasonable progress on it. It's actually getting reasonably close to being a *uable*. Mind you it's nothing revolutionary. It's just a simple web application, but nonetheless I'm fairly happy with where things are at.
I started working on ZPlanner because I thought I was going to be laid off from my job as a development manager around last March. Due to a reorg, my job was promised to someone they'd relocated from the East coast offices which left me without a position. The job market at that time was so horrible, I felt like I'd be lucky to find a position as a developer somewhere, so I figured I should brush up a bit on my programming skills, seeing as how I do so little for my job these days. Luckily, however, I was able to snag another position within the company--it was a better one to boot. But I kept working on ZPlanner anyway as I think there's a need for a simple, project tracking application.
I've toyed with the idea of actually trying to sell it--at an affordable price--as the only options for project tracking are either free (and kind of crappy) or fairly expensive. But to be honest, I'm not sure how viable it is as a product. There are a lot of entries in the market, even more if you consider that many software stacks that label themselves as "bug trackers", such as Jira, have also incorporated project planning features.
But the idea of starting up my own company, even if it barely made any money is incredibly alluring. Like many developers, the idea of being in charge of things and running a company how *I* think it should be run is an exciting prospect. And in lieu of any better product, I figured, why not try selling ZPlanner.
But the thing is, over the winter break, I had what I think is a really good idea for a piece of software. I won't go much into the details, but from what I can tell from some brief Googling, it's a niche that has not yet been solved, has the potential to be sold to larger companies and deliver measurable increases in profit and efficiency, and is a problem which would not be trivial to solve. In fact, the reason I thought of the idea was because the lack of it caused me considerable frustration. I was dealing with a company I would have assumed to have software as I describe, but they did not and as a result I ended up being one very pissed off customer. I've also found some theoretical whitepapers on the subject, but very little in the way of concrete implementations. I think the potential is pretty large.
Which brings me back to ZPlanner? The product I'm describing above will take quite some effort to implement and I'm anxious to get started. But I really want to polish off ZPlanner. I've decided I will. But then the question becomes do I try to sell it still? Or should I just open source the thing? If there really is no market for "yet another project tracking tool", maybe it's better to open source it. ZPlanner had it's genesis due to the failings of XPlanner, another open source project tracking tool. Despite it's failings, however, XPlanner has seen wide usage and even though it seems to be fairly moribund, with the last release almost 3 years ago there are still a ton of people using it...because it's free.
Even if it didn't profit me directly, the thought that Zplanner might replace XPlanner as the open-source, free tool for choice for tracking is pretty cool and might indirectly profit me in other areas. It's hard, given that I've sunk somewhere between 300-400 hours into it at this point, to just give it away. Though I certainly make use of a lot of open source stuff and maybe it's time to give back.
I don't know. I guess we'll see what I decide.
2 comments:
Start a company tons of people do it. What's the worst that happens, it fails and you are out the invested time and money. Only invest what you are willing to lose and its like any other gamble.
Personally I'd bounce the idea off of people you trust, make them sign an NDA. Even if they all resoundingly call you an idiot, at least get from them why they think you are an idiot.
Reality is there are tons of very wealthy people that had a product that has no measurable reason for making tons of money, but they hit it at the right time, with the right marketing and BAM!, successful company. If you don't try you've already failed.
Hell feed me the idea if you don't have the stones. I'll pitch it in my entrepreneurial studies class and bootstrap a business from it if anyone else likes it.
This blog was more intended to be about whether I try to do something (for profit) with ZPlanner than about the new idea.
As for the "new idea", I wasn't implying I *wouldn't* try it as a product, but I think before sinking any time I should do a little research and see if it's really worthwhile.
And if it is, I'll try to write software. Maybe I'm not enough of a business person, but creating a business proposal, trying to sell it, or that stuff wtihout anything concrete is silly. Particularly, in that such efforts would require more effort (and risk) than just trying to write something. And I have neither the skills nor the inclination to make that type of exercise work.
It's not an obvious Web2.0 (or are we now saying 3.0) idea and has it's basis in real world logistics and planning. A brief perusal does indicate there are products in the space, but from what i can see they don't really solve the problem I'd be attemtping to solve.
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