In this podcast Sam Hanni, CEO of Swiss Made Marketing, gives us his three tip on how to create software.
Listen to Sam's 3 Tips podcast here: Download the PDF transcription of Sam Hanni's podcast here.Article originally posted here - West Town Web Services.
Transcription
Hi Tony, thanks very much for the opportunity to talk about Swiss Made Marketing. My name is Sam Hanni. I am the CEO of this company. And, we have been creating online marketing tools for almost 5 years now.
And, three tips I would like to pass on to you, and if you are into the business of creating software yourself is:
Three Tips:
- And probably the most the important tip for my company is called MVP and stands for Minimum Viable Products, and I will explain to you what that means.
- My second tip has something to do with the speed of your implementation.
- And the third tip, tools to use to organize yourself.
So, the first most important tip I have for you is create the smallest unit of your idea as quickly as possible. And, create it in a way where you can get first customers on-board. What I mean by that is if you have an idea for a tool, try and think of what the minimum number of features you need to develop before you can show it to someone and actually sell it.
Because you are never going to get the feedback you are looking for unless you actually start selling the tool. Unless you actually have one or two customers who have actually paid for the product. Even if it is only a very small fee you are charging. But, that is really the most efficient way you are going to get feedback. Which is going to help you then further develop the tool. Because the tool you have in mind might not be the tool your customers want.
And, you may start off somewhere and end up somewhere totally different. But, if you go along with the path of always developing things where customers are actually willing to spend money. You are going to be much, much more successful in a lot less time. So, that is the way we have been moving forward with Swiss Made Marketing. And, I think that is the most important piece of success. The most important ingredient to our success.
So, onto tip number two. Is then the speed of implementation. If you want to build something within reasonable amount of time which you can sell. You need to be quick at implementing.
And, one thing I have noticed. I mean I am a developer myself at heart. But, I came to the point where I realized marketing is at least as important as creating the most awesome tool. If not even more important.
Because you can have the most flashy, the most amazing, the most modern tool, and yet have not customers at all.
So, having also worked with a lot of developers myself. One thing I have noticed is that developers kind of tend to always go after you know the newest platform, and oh you know there is this newest thing we want to try out with our new product. And, the trouble is that you are just slowing yourself down.
So, my second tip is decide for a platform. Decide for a method of how you are going to build your tools, and stick to it. Stick to it for at least a year. And, you know it's just going to again save you so much time. Because you are never, ever going to have the perfect platform, or the perfect system.
Yet with every platform, with every programming language, with any choice you make. You are always going to have pros and cons. But, if you keep on switching, jumping from one platform to another there is so much overhead. There is so much time you are just losing from making those switches.
And, the most important thing at the end of the day is that you have a product that you can sell.
And, the last tip, great tools to organize yourself. That is, my tip is to use a system called Kanban with was originally invented by Toyota. And, the idea is that you have a big board with different columns. And, those columns they can then contain cards which are the tasks.
And so, for example you may have a column called Backlog all the things you want to do. And, then you have a column In Progress. The stuff you are working on right now. And, a column which is done.
And, so you kind of overflow where all the tasks are moving from one column to the next. And, what is really cool about Kanban is it is forcing you to finish stuff before you go on to the next thing. Because for example in the In Progress column you would then have a rule where you say you can only have five or maybe three tasks in that In Progress column at the same time.
So, to finish or to continue with a new task you have to at least finish one of the three open tasks. If you use this system as a team, and if the entire team uses the same board, it really helps build your team and build a great company. Because you get to start to think for each other. And, you start to think about tasks that other people, other team members have got open. And, think about okay, how can I help my team-mate get that task finished so I can put a new task into the In Progress column?
So, yeah. Those are the three tips from myself and I hope they help you to step forward in your business.
Thanks so much.
About Sam Hanni and Swiss Made Marketing
Sam is the CEO of Swiss Made Marketing, a company focused on building software tools that help small business, web agencies and internet marketers improve their online success. Swiss Made Marketing have been in business for five years and are based in Switzerland.
A passion for providing business solutions
We provide great value software and web development services. If you have a requirement get in touch for a no-obligation discussion:
Email: info@westtownwebservices.com
Skype: tony.radford
Call: +44(0)117 230 0760
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