

Ask YC: I could use your comments on my project and plans to monetize it - gscott

My project is officezilla.com which I started in 2001 and released the first version in 2002.  It is a 
simple groupware collaboration system it handles a lot of things calendars, projects, forums, and
such.<p>I worked on it for two years but then ran into funding problems. I was able to do a big rewrite in 
2003 and I have been doing small imrprovements since.  About a year ago I started working on it 
more actively again.  I am a single founder..<p>Stats:
OfficeZilla accounts 12,018
OfficeZilla total users 27,740
Signups in the last 30 days 497 (which is average)<p>After thinking about different plans to make this into a revenue generating system I
decided that people will not pay for the basic features but they do want customization 
to fit there needs exactly.  I have enough users to take a segment and develop to there needs
so I decided upon realty agents.<p>So I started putting together RealtyGoLive.com (it looks terrible right now forgive me) which would have:<p>1. The collaboration system customized to an realty agents office<p>2. A website system with websites for each agent, and an office website (the aggregated listing).  I already have the start on this, totally integrated and managed from the collaboration system.  So management is all done in one place.<p>3. A PBX system where agents would have a mailbox for each house, could leave details and recieve 
messages to email, faxing out and so on.  Lots of good stuff, I like the pbx idea.<p>4. And other features too many to list but I think I could get them done in around 3 months or so if I was 
working on them full time<p>I am currently hosting the system on an older server with 2 gigabytes of ram and 2 x 800mhz processors. 
I have a dedicated sql server, again it is an older server dual 1ghz processors and 2 gigabytes of ram.  I
also have two 1 terabyte nas systems for file storage and backup.  People get really mad when I loose there
files which has happened thus I got the two nas systems which cost me more money then I could afford.<p>I sometimes feel a bit behind the times, I am not really into lots of javascript and I am not doing any ajax
type things at all.  On another project I did, I do plan to implement some changes in this regard to make the
system look a little better and save the data differently, as they move from field to field for example.  The 
scripting language for the system is now out-of-favor but I have like 100,000 lines of code and I don't feel a great 
need to go and do a re-write, I can't do it, it would take a long time and everything works fine now. I even have
rss feeds for (nearly) every feature.<p>I applied to YC with the RealtyGoLive idea, but I am not sure if that was the best angle to give YC
so I am expecting to not make the hurdle there but I feel like I can compete with the likes of
<a href="http://www.alamode.com/products/Broker/BrokerXsites/default.aspx" rel="nofollow">http://www.alamode.com/products/Broker/BrokerXsites/default....</a> and turn RealtyGoLive.com into
a million dollar business (at least) and maybe take it world wide because realty is sold everywhere and the 
system is already internationalized.<p>I spent a couple of the years not really working on the system much and that hurt, I am now working on tieing all of the modules
together better they already have a group permissions that run accross everything (which is the whole basis of the system) but I also want tie the different data together.  For example if you open contacts you could also see any other related information in other modules.
There is a lot to do to catch the system up.  It is not bad, people who use it, use it a lot.  <p>I know everyone here is real big on languages running on Linux/BSD (which when I first started creating websites
in 1996 that all I did was apache/linux/perl) but I discovered the power of databases and ASP was the big thing, PHP
was around but didn't seem as good in 1999 when I got ASP heavily and I am still doing things like it is 1999. 
That is so out of character for this board I thought I would bring it up and see what you think of my system and 
see think about my unusual development system in todays environment.  <p>
======
cstejerean
Well, I would recommend moving off Windows simply to save money if you need to
scale to multiple servers. Server grade Windows costs quite a bit and the
licensing is too complicated for me. Because of this I have made an effort to
code in cross platform languages. However I would not start a rewrite of
100,000 lines of ASP (on the other hand 100,000 line is a LOT of code, perhaps
it would be a lot less if written in something more powerful).

I don't want to start another language war so I won't recommend any specific
language, I just wanted to comment on the fact that you are limiting yourself
to one OS and that might hurt.

I like the idea, if executed and marketed well it could really help. Combine
this with great real estate listing and search functionality and you might
have a winning software.

~~~
gscott
I agree with the licensing. I have been using with Windows 2000 and Sql Server
2000 because I don't want to pay MS more money but if I go to 64 bit servers
then I would need at least Windows 2003 and SQL Server 2005. That is one
reason I am looking for money now while I wasn't before,

And I have been officially rejected from Y Combinator... time for plan b...
too bad :(

