
Sales-Driven Side Projects - lloydarmbrust
http://seeinginteractive.com/newspaper-support-group/sales-driven-side-projects/
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necolas
By the article's own logic, the examples of Twitter and Gmail probably
wouldn't have come into being if they were sales-driven side projects.

I don't think Vinicius' article was making a general statement about side
projects being bad. His experience was that they can be dangerous distractions
while you are still in the "startup transition cycle".

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jeremymims
\- Vinicius's article was great advice, so please don't consider this a knock
on it.

\- I wasn't really trying to outline sales-driven side projects in that part
of the article, merely successful ones.

\- For truly mature companies (ones who are out of the startup phase), side
projects are a healthy thing to encourage because they can afford to take
risks with their time and money. We were looking for a standard by which a
startup like ours could tackle a side project. This is the standard we hit on
that seems to be working for us. Of course there are others. And in different
kinds of companies with different kinds of cultures, we'd expect variation.

~~~
necolas
"We were looking for a standard by which a startup like ours could tackle a
side project." \- Thanks for the clarification.

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gfodor
This is a good article, but it goes a bit too far. The concept of a sales
driven side project is a good one, but it's an _attribute_ of a side project,
not a _requirement_.

The value of this post is that it should bring into focus the two types of
side projects: those that are sales driven, and those that are not. Both have
their place when growing a company!

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noworatzky
Can you tell us about what you are working on?

~~~
jeremymims
We're not really in the habit of announcing products before we've launched
them (although we've already pre-sold this product to several customers). If
you work with a newspaper we're not already working with, give us a call at
(888) 850-2497. We'll schedule a demo for you after we've launched our initial
customers.

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trotsky
I think the developer version of this phrase is "getting the customer to pay
for R&D" or, more simply, consulting* .

It sounds like you're suggesting doing fixed price software development
bids... In my experience that's not a great way to avoid painful outcomes.

*with an ownership clause.

~~~
jeremymims
It might seem like it, but it's not. We won't build one-off projects and
nothing we do is a one-time fee. Almost everything we do (except for setup
fees and training fees) is recurring revenue. These projects have to be
generally applicable to our market and it must be sold to at least one of our
existing customers beforehand with others who have expressed interest.

If we were doing fixed price development bids, I would agree that we'd be
facing some serious pain down the road.

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nobody_nowhere
Sales-driven everything.

~~~
yters
Son, sorry, you aren't bringing in the bucks in pre-school. You have a week to
increase sales or you're out on the street.

~~~
nobody_nowhere
Applejuice is for closers.

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jay_kyburz
Can someday confirm, then let the author know that disqus comments make the
article unreadable on iPad because the text is covered with a big white
square. When it loads you cant see the text of the main body. I've seen it on
several blogs now.

~~~
jeremymims
Thanks for letting us know. We'll take a look.

~~~
jay_kyburz
It the disqus element up the top alongside the headline.

