We Grow Beautiful Websites
If you can’t understand users, however, you should either learn how or find a co-founder who can. That is the single most important issue for technology startups, and the rock that sinks more of them than anything else.
– Paul Graham, How to Start a Startup
I watched a 37signals video yesterday that challenged my thinking a bit. Jason spoke on the benefits of sharing knowledge and experience in order to create an audience who will buy your stuff. He likened this concept to the food network, where chefs show you how they cook and even provide the recipes. Technically someone could take the recipes, go next door, and start a competing restaurant. The reality is that they don’t and the result is fantastic publicity for the chefs + entertainment for the viewer.
Too many businesses fear disclosing some piece of information which might give something away to the competition. But what happens the next time a potential customer encounters a problem after figuring out the initial challenge which brought them to you in the first place? By then they will look to you for help again as they get deeper into what they are trying to do. To apply this to our blogging at Elias: I think we should post on our experiences – both Magento related and start-up in general.
The principle is to allow whatever you learned today to feed your creativity for blogging. And don’t worry too much about the perfect post. Most people only read the last couple of posts anyway, so if you feel like one entry isn’t great then you can simply cover it up with a few new posts.
And by the way, a great place to find blogging inspiration is your sent folder, which is where this post originated.
Open Source is infiltrating the Enterprise marketplace. O’Reilly radar featured an interview today with Jeffrey Hammond of Forrester Research on the topic. We have been bumping into more enterprise clients in Magento-land here at Elias and were recently approached about writing a Magento-for-enterprise book. This leads me to believe that Hammond’s insight is becoming increasingly relevant for Magento. With that in mind, one of Hammond’s answers is very important to understand for those enterprise retailers who might be considering the wonderful world of open-source with Magento:
James Turner: Just to be balanced, what are some of the perils that companies need to watch out for when they start to adopt open source?
Jeffrey Hammond: I’ll tell you: The number one peril that I run into is an overinflated set of expectations. And it usually goes something along the lines of, “Well, we’re going to dramatically reduce our software costs.” And there are some scenarios where that can happen. But in reality, what open source does, especially at the start, is it tends to shift your software costs. So, yes, you’re reducing the capital expenses and expenditures that you are paying for software bits and bytes. But, in most cases, firms that are starting with open source are still buying support contracts from organizations.
Given the typical expense for ecommerce systems, an enterprise etailer will still come out way ahead in the switch to Magento. But it is important to note that the spending shifts from software costs to labor cost. This is why it is imperative to work closely with your selected development team on the front end of a project to map out a solid solution. As our lead developer at Elias, Lee, likes to say, “We want to have this project won before we get started.”
Nettuts released a basic Magento video tutorial last week. Eric has been a huge fan of nettuts since its inception. If you are curious about Magento and want a basic “how-to” intro, then this is for you:
Throughout my career, I’ve always tried to do my best today, think about tomorrow, and maybe dream a bit about the future. But doing your best in the present has to be the rule. You won’t become a general unless you become a good first lieutenant.
– Colin Powell, former secretary of state; retired four-star general