Developing a webdevelopment company

developing a webdevelopment company Adam Zygadlewicz Wiktor Schmidt netguru.pl/en niedziela, 19 października 2008 1

Presentation goals • tips and tricks • from our point-of-view / experience • on how to develop a start-up • PR, Marketing • Team-building • IT niedziela, 19 października 2008 2

netguru is... • web development and consulting company based in Poland • focused on (enterprise) web 2.0 • focused on developing usable, intuitive, engaging applications • focused on supporting (local) community niedziela, 19 października 2008 3

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Timeline • June 2007 - coworking (3 freelancers) • September 2007 - barcamp (11 local barcamps till date, national barcamp) • April 2008 - LLC (Gmbh) / team of 12 people niedziela, 19 października 2008 5

Overall quot;philosophyquot; • bootstrapping (reinvesting proﬁts) • no long-term planning • agile in every possible aspect • specialization - knowing core business and sticking to it (as far as its possible :) = quot;getting realquot; (PR/IT/........) niedziela, 19 października 2008 6

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Team building • hire young passionate people and let them use your knowledge and resources • ﬂexibility (can be quite important for students) • teach, teach, teach and learn from your team • let people evolve with the company - try to see their future in company • let your people promote themselves (blogs, conferences, own projects) niedziela, 19 października 2008 8

“Corporate” Culture • encourage knowledge sharing • web development blog(s) - devguru.pl • barcamp presentations and workshops • quot;friday/omni talksquot; • pair programming • time for experiments • no strict work times niedziela, 19 października 2008 9

Marketing / PR (I) • ﬁnd a niche (or communicate it that way) • get to know people in your industry (barcamps, IT confs) • blog, blog, blog - journalists read blogs :) • constantly evangelize (it sells AND teaches better than selling) • don't be afraid to repeat yourself, repeat yourself... niedziela, 19 października 2008 10

Marketing / PR (II) • be transparent - communicate about (almost) every step you take (be proud of what you're doing!) • monitor new ideas, trends and try to seed it on your environment - we promoted • co-working • pecha-kucha • unconference • life-streaming (lifestreamingday) niedziela, 19 października 2008 11

quot;Customer Relations Managementquot; • sell solutions not your programmers time • engage clients to develop projects • workshops instead of sales presentations • give clients access to yours PM application • programming is just the programming (post- sales cooperation is important) niedziela, 19 października 2008 12

Become an pop-idol • ﬁnd people passionate about what YOU do • support them (attention is the key) • let them introduce you to others • it's good if some of them are your employees ;-) niedziela, 19 października 2008 13

Bootstraping • DON'T PUT THE CART BEFORE THE HORSE, buy when you REALLY, REALLY need it • outsource / rent don't buy • commodity hardware (Linux / Apache / Mysql) • free/open source software • buy services instead of hiring employees (legal, monitoring, administration, PR, etc) • notebooks not desktops • paperless ofﬁce is a mobile ofﬁce niedziela, 19 października 2008 14

Technology • try to concentrate on one technology and master it (it is easier to do evangelism :) • free / open source (look for communities) • release early, release often • automated tests or let your users be a guinea pig • diversify but standardize • don't put quot;popularquot; open source software together with your apps (Wordpress H4ck3d) • make a quot;systemquot; niedziela, 19 października 2008 15

The quot;systemquot; • version control (SVN) • bug tracker (lighthouse, TRAC) • internal communication (gtalk) • coding standards (2-space indents ;-) • design patterns (REST, unobtrusive, DRY, quot;fat modelquot;) • coder / designer issues (HTML, HAML) niedziela, 19 października 2008 16

The quot;systemquot;(II) • development / staging / production environments • database names, db table and ﬁeld names • testing, Testing, TESTING (unit and integration) • continuous integration (cruisecontrol) • automatic deployment (capistrano) • multibrowser testing (browsershots.org) • quot;write your code like a serial killer has to maintain it and they know where you sleepquot; niedziela, 19 października 2008 17

What can go wrong? • burn-out - over-engagement (rm -rf privatelife*) hobbies? supportive family? • quot;5 reasons why all web software projects failsquot; learn to deal with failures, read a bit about emergency PR, stay transparent, be honest • h4x0r5 see above ;-) • wrong hires, decisions, experiments cut your loses fast, don't be afraid to say you were wrong, life goes on niedziela, 19 października 2008 18

Your comments / ideas? niedziela, 19 października 2008 19

Thank you, Q&A netguru.pl/en netguru@netguru.pl niedziela, 19 października 2008 20

Developing a webdevelopment company

by Wiktor Schmidt

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