Tradeoffs in the Race to Market

July 27, 2011

Software Developer Pain Points and Tradeoffs in the Race to Market

LiquidPlanner CEO and Co-Founder Charles Seybold shares insights regarding the challenges, pain points and tradeoffs that software developers and entrepreneurs face as they race to market and explains what’s wrong with the traditional project-management approach.

By Charles Seybold, LiquidPlanner

When entrepreneurs and startups ask me for advice, I share two important aspects of our journey developing LiquidPlanner. First, if you’re going to innovate, be prepared to stick to your guns. Second, if you don’t make a plan and work your plan, you’re going to be in a constant state of chaos, and that turns people off.

Every company has to make some tradeoffs along the way in their race to the market. But if you follow these two pieces of advice, you’ll be able to make the better decisions when a tradeoff is needed.

There’s been a lot of tech press recently on the success-factor differences between old entrepreneurs versus young entrepreneurs. Which matters most? Years of experience or fresh thinking?

Sand Hill Group Wants Your Opinions – Take Our New Cloud Survey

Which cloud services and products companies have the ability to make a difference in your organization? Participate in Sand Hill Group’s newest Leaders in the Cloud survey and learn what your peers are experiencing regarding vendors of cloud-based services and products. The 8-question survey should take less than five minutes, and your answers will be kept completely confidential. All participants will receive a complimentary copy of the report findings.

Click here to take the survey.

The SaaS Customer Life Cycle: Seven Pitfalls

Whether you're a SaaS provider or a customer converting to SaaS, you'll benefit from reading advice from Paul Ressler of The Cirrostratus Group and Jim Naro of CustomerCentric Selling on the seven pitfalls in the SaaS customer life cycle in this post to the Sandhill.com blog, SaaS Success Tips.

Enabling the Changing Nature of Software Revenue

Join us in this NetSuite webinar on Thursday, August 4, 2011, at 11:00 a.m. PDT (2:00 p.m. EDT). During this interactive webinar, you’ll hear from guest speaker Amy Konary, who covers the software licensing and subscription businesses at IDC, on how the nature of software revenues are changing and the criteria to consider as your business manages this change. James Jones, VP Business Planning and Analysis at Kana Software, will explain how these changes impact the market and their business and how NetSuite helps facilitate this change. Lastly, you’ll hear how, for over a decade, NetSuite’s SaaS solution has enabled its business as well as hundreds of organizations to successfully manage their subscription-based businesses, including public SaaS companies such as Cornerstone OnDemand and SuccessFactors.

Click here to register for the webinar.

More Musings on Making Software Licensing and Entitlement Management Solutions a Reality

Victor Hoisington of Flexera Software contends that a software licensing and entitlement management project will require involvement by more of the company and touch more people than an SAP project and, furthermore, that it’s more vital to the business success of a company. Read his advice about what’s critical to the success of adopting and implementing a software licensing and entitlement management solution in this post to the Sandhill.com blog, Software Monetization Best Practices.

Five Common Myths about Cloud Hosting

Kamesh Pemmaraju of Sand Hill Group says enterprise adoption of cloud hosting is accelerating – but not all cloud hosting solutions are the same. He discusses myths about cloud hosting in this post to the Sandhill.com blog, Leaders in the Cloud.

Three Ways to Fail at Solutions Marketing

Glenn Gow of Crimson Consulting Group discusses how companies often end up with a marketing approach that’s off target because they don’t understand “solutions marketing” in this post to the Sandhill.com blog, Best Practices: Software Marketing.

Mobile BI – Business KPIs and Dashboards “On the Go”

Shirish Netke of Business Analytics Solutions and Ravi Kalakota of Alvarez & Marsal discuss how mobile business intelligence apps have moved beyond the “shrink-to-fit” practice and to sophisticated dashboard/scorecard apps. They share insights and questions for building a business case for mobile BI in this post to the Sandhill.com blog, Mobile Moves.

Poll: Project-Management Approach

What was your organization’s most recent results with its project-management approach?
Take our Pulse Poll >>

The Latest Software Business News on SandHill.com

News Summary: Cloud Clout – Splinternet becomes a reality, Microsoft borrows from Google, green’s a big win and other recent software news.

VC Activity: Venture Capital Investments Up 19% in Q2 2011.

M&A Deals: Cloud Computing: Dell to Buy Force10.

Executive Moves: New executives announced at AccelOps, Splunk, Zscaler and other software companies.

Quote of the Week

“This level of investment cannot continue if we do not start to see a pickup in exits and, subsequently, fundraising. The money simply will not be available to invest. Ironically, our industry should be much less concerned about a bubble and more concerned about being in a position to adequately fund the tremendous opportunities out there in the next decade.”

- Mark Heesen, National Venture Capital Association president

This Week's Sponsor

NetSuite Inc. is a leading vendor of cloud computing business management software suites. NetSuite enables companies to manage core key business operations in a single system, which includes Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Accounting, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), and Ecommerce. NetSuite's "real-time dashboard" technology provides an easy-to-use view into up-to-date, role-specific business information.
Find out more.

Software Pulse

Software Pulse is a publication of SandHill.com, the online resource for software business strategy.

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Editor: Kathleen Goolsby

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