Author of The 4-Hour Workweek, Tim Ferriss, has posted an interview he did with Matt Mullenweg, the creator of Wordpress. I won’t rehash the entire interview here but there are several good points that you can take from Matt’s experiences in creating one of the most popular software apps in existence today.

What are the top 3-5 principles you focused on that made WP successful as a product?

Besides timing and luck, I’d say:

1. Minimizing startup costs…

2. Being adaptive to user-led changes in product direction

What are the top 3-5 principles you focused on that made you successful as a developer?

…..

2. At the same time, I’m happy to ship a crude version 1.0 and iterate. I find my time is more effective post-launch than pre-launch.

The microISV forums never really took off and more time was spent removing spam posts and spam users so I’m redirecting all traffic from the forums back to this post where I’m recommending that everyone visit the Joel on Software - The Business of Software forums. Most of you are probably familiar with the JOS forums but if you’re not then I highly recommend you visit. The forums there are very active and always interesting. As always, your comments are always welcome on individual posts.

Bob Walsh’s book Micro-ISV: From Vision to Reality is scheduled to go on sale next week. A pdf version will also be made available by the publisher.

Update on release of Micro-ISV: From Vision to Reality

Eric Sink is the person responsible for coining the term microISV and he did so when he created a program called Winnable Solitaire and wrote an article about becoming a microISV. Eric has just announced that he sold Winnable Solitaire which ends his microISV journey but maybe one day after he’s grown tired of that source control thingy he’ll try his hand at becoming a full time microISV business once again.

Eric, thanks for the term microISV. This community has grown a lot over the last year and it was you that kicked it off.

Business 2.0 magazine asked VCs what they wanted to invest in and they responded with what they would invest in immediately. Could be some good opportunities for the right microISV team. Subscription may be required.

via Business Pundit

To follow up the previous post, Nick and Newsgator have decided to not use the subscription model for FeedDemon, as they had previously announced, based on customer feedback.

I’m sure this was a trying week over at Newsgator but we should all be so lucky to have such vocal customers. Coca-Cola would have paid good money for this type of feedback before they introduced New Coke.

Nick Bradbury has announced that NewsGator will be making future versions of FeedDemon subscription based software. As a developer I certainly see the value of a subscription based business model….when it fits. I’m not so sure it fits in this case, especially after reading this sentence from Greg Reinacker’s post regarding the matter.

…we really feel like this was the way to go, given the challenges we were facing selling (emphasis mine) into consumer, business, and enterprise markets all at once.

Decisions have to be made every day when a company is facing a challenge, especially when trying to integrate a newly acquired company but in this case, the decision does not seem very customer-centric. My feelings are that by doing this Newsgator is able to solve their problems and keep investors happy by creating a revenue stream that will be much more predictable. Unfortunately, this is done at the expense of some customers by moving the focus off of the actual use of the software to the tool itself when in fact it should remain transparent. As developers, no matter how much we would like it to be about the software, it simply isn’t.

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!

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

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

Microsoft has announced the pricing and a simplification of the MSDN subscription services for the upcoming release of Visual Studio 2005. Promotional pricing is being offered for developers who wish to purchase an MSDN Universal subscription today which will allow customers to upgrade to VS 2o05 once its released.

It has also been reported that the release date of VS 2005 Beta 2 has been pushed back until April but the product release is still expected in September at Microsoft’s Professional Developers Conference.

When starting a microISV, many people do marketing the old fashioned way. Trial and error. With that in mind, I thought that many of you would be interested in knowing some statistics on things like “which day is best for downloads” or “on what day are most shareware purchases made”. Hint… its not the same day.

Well now you can know! eSellerate, a leading software commerce provider, has graciously supplied microISV with data gathered over the last six months of 2004. I have compiled this information into charts that I think will be very useful when tailoring marketing campaigns for your software.

The following charts are provided in the pdf:

1. microISV poll - Who is your target market?
2. microISV poll - What type of trial do you offer?
3. microISV poll - When did you last purchase a shareware application?
4. Downloads by hour of the day
5. Downloads by day of the week
6. Purchases by hour of the day
7. Purchases by day of the week

Download the pdf, Shareware Statistics from microISV, and feel free to share it with others who may be interested in these statistics. As always, I’m interested in hearing your feedback regarding information such as this so that I can keep the site updated with what is most useful.

With the proliferation of blogs over the last few years, word of mouth advertising has quickly become word of web advertising. With that in mind, I have created the microISV Buzz to track how often several shareware applications are mentioned in the blogs tracked by Technorati.

Personal publishing has become a valuable marketing tool for many shareware publishers because positive blog posts equate to priceless testimonials. Negative posts can be just as valuable, if not more valuable, to help you improve your product. Now the microISV Buzz can be used to show exactly how much word of mouth advertising your product is generating in comparison to many other applications.

Please submit any application you would like to have added to the list. Any application that doesn’t have any search results for 5 consecutive days will automatically be removed so its best if there are already some available results.

The Seattle Times has a write up on MaestroSoft, an eight person company that has offered to help anyone sponsoring a tsunami relief effort the capability to set up a secure and fully functional website to accept donations.

Wired news has a story about the company Delicious Monster whose Delicious Library software was released in late 2004. Even more intriguing than the $250,000 in sales in the first month after the release is that all 7 staff members used a Seattle coffee shop as their office.