Pomp & Surkanstance: October 2009

31 October 2009

Round table economics discussion - 2009-10-30

In this episode of the Optimistic Bear round-table economics discussion Matt Stiles joins us as a guest, filling in for our regular participants who are unavailable this week. We talk about the paradox of a declining stock market at the same time that the economic news was so positive this week and the financial stresses that local governments are experiencing with pension obligations. If the global economy is indeed about to head to new lows emerging markets that have been seeing some of the largest gains recently could catch the brunt of the decline. McDonald's recent decision to leave Iceland may be an indicator of things to come as globalization takes a breather.

Check out Matt Stiles' blog at http://futronomics.blogspot.com/.

NOTE: Tune in to the weekly economics round-table discussions to hear the latest from the Optimistic Bear. You can view the complete list of Practical Economics podcasts to hear conversations with the experts.

30 October 2009

EPNW: marymac outlines a complete web marketing strategy

Get your pens ready. In this episode of "Entrepreneurs Northwest" Marymac walks us through a complete web marketing strategy for aspiring web startups. Any web marketing strategy starts by understanding where your money comes from, and will incorporate a variety of tools and activities. There is no single solution (like search advertising) for a successful marketing strategy. It's all about integrating your various efforts into an effective whole.

You can follow marymac on twitter.

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NOTE: Check out the complete podcast directory of discussions with entrepreneurs. If you would like to be a guest on Entrepreneurs Northwest, to talk about your business venture, contact Michael Surkan.

EPNW: Eric Goldman explains B2B inbound marketing

In this episode of "Entrepreneurs Northwest" Eric Goldman explains business to business marketing, and describes how effective inbound marketing can help generate the qualified leads that companies are looking for. Good content, search word optimization, and asking a few questions all play a part in finding customers.

Check out Gossamar's web site for advice on BtoB in-bound marketing strategies.

29 October 2009

EPNW: Rajeev Goel finds finds invention out of necessity

In this episode of "Entrepreneurs Northwest" Rajeev Goel talks about how necessity is the mother of invention. His efforts to build a web site to manage his own daughter's science fair inspired him to create a service that any school could use. For now he is going it alone, creating http://oursciencefair.com/Home.aspx as the one-stop solution for managing and promoting science fairs. The challenge now is getting the word out, and Rajeev has been taking advice from fellow entrepreneurs about getting active in communities and reaching out to bloggers.

NOTE: Check out the complete podcast directory of discussions with entrepreneurs. If you would like to be a guest on Entrepreneurs Northwest, to talk about your business venture, contact Michael Surkan.

Job search tales: John Polhill gives an insider's view to corporate recruiting

In this episode of "Tales from the job search trenches", John Polhill gives an insiders perspective to the world of corporate recruiting. Amongst many other gems of wisdom, John explains that on-line job applications aren't a complete waste of time, but you have to know how to game the system and prepare your resume to make it through screenings. He also gives guidance on the questions you need to ask before heading into an interview, and to be very wary when you are applying for a completely new position.

You can ask your job search questions to the renegade tech recruiter at http://askjohnpolhill.com/. John also offers http://www.cgtpa.org/ as a great location that not only provides heaps of advice on job searches, but has feeds from all the best job listing services.

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NOTE: Please contact Michael if you are interested in being a guest on "Tales from the job search trenches" podcasts. Michael would like to discuss your job search strategy, and brainstorm ways to improve it with you.

27 October 2009

Job search tales: ponkabonk pays for placement

In this episode of "Tales from the job search trenches", Mike Hogan talks about how his desire to have more control over his own job search led him to create http://www.ponkabonk.com/, where job seekers can offer to pay commissions for successful placements. Friends and acquaintances have more incentive to take a bigger role in your job search when they stand to get paid for their efforts. Recruiting professionals have even been getting involved with Ponkabonk, using this as a resource to find great candidates (and make a little extra).

NOTE: Please contact Michael if you are interested in being a guest on "Tales from the job search trenches" podcasts. Michael would like to discuss your job search strategy, and brainstorm ways to improve it with you.

25 October 2009

EPNW: Tim Ellis has the eyeballs but little revenue

In this episode of "Entrepreneurs Northwest" Tim Ellis explains how he has built http://www.seattlebubble.com/ into on of the most popular real-estate web sites in the Pacific Northwest bust hasn't figured out how to generate significant revenue from. Pre-packaged advertising services from Google and Microsoft are of marginal value and direct advertising sales look far more promising. Tim also hopes to explore affiliate programs with select partners. Now, if he can only find the time to continue creating winning content while holding down a day job.

EPNW: Pandu & Harish seek success by giving

In this episode of "Entrepreneurs Northwest" Pandu Rao talks about how he and his partner (Harish Kulkurni) have built a social network bookmarking service (http://iter8r.com/) that they hope to give away to the community. They count on their public spirited business model to attract users and set them apart from the competition. Success for iter8r won't make Harish and Pandu rich, but it will teach them about how communities work, and enhance their credibility for future ventures.

24 October 2009

EPNW: Denis Altudov goes it alone

In this episode of "Entrepreneurs Northwest" Denis Altudov has struck out on his own to devote all his energies to his iPhone applications that are already selling pretty well. He is excited about being able to examine, and analyze, the entire end-to-end user experience, from product acquisition to support. As fun as it is to be working on his own Denis does want to find some colaborators to help with design and marketing.

Check out Denis' software at http://www.memengo.com/.

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NOTE: Check out the complete podcast directory of discussions with entrepreneurs. If you would like to be a guest on Entrepreneurs Northwest, to talk about your business venture, contact Michael Surkan.

EPNW: Bruce Roberts thinks people trump ideas

In this episode of "Entrepreneurs Northwest" Bruce Roberts talks about the search for his next startup venture. Now that he's helped make a success of startups as a key contributor, he is now looking to become a principal, getting the venture going from the ground up. There are plenty of ideas for businesses around, but Bruce is focussing on good partners to complement his skills. The ideas will come on their own.

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The blog Bruce mentioned he likes for startup advice is http://www.startuplessonslearned.com/.

NOTE: Check out the complete podcast directory of discussions with entrepreneurs. If you would like to be a guest on Entrepreneurs Northwest, to talk about your business venture, contact Michael Surkan.

23 October 2009

Round table economics discussion - 2009-10-22

In this episode of the Optimistic Bear round-table economics discussion Elliott, Jeremy and Kevan talk about whether the dollar is set to fall even further and if the tech industry has turned the corner. Is Windows 7 really the engine that will "save" Microsoft? Has Apple found the magical formula to success even in a recession? The law of supply and demand is called into question, with concerns that it might not be sufficient to explain why currencies rise and fall (or at least the way most people interpret the law to work).

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Here is the link to the article about innovation in a recession that was mentioned in the podcast.

NOTE: Tune in to the weekly economics round-table discussions to hear the latest from the Optimistic Bear. You can view the complete list of Practical Economics podcasts to hear conversations with the experts.

Job search tales: recruiters aren't all bad

In this episode of "Tales from the job search trenches", Jordan Shaw talks about his life as a recruiter. "Good" recruiters really are willing to go the bat for quality candidates, and job seekers can make fast friends of placement professionals by lending a hand with introductions to employers. His suggestion that it is better to focus on a handful of potential employers, and really build relationships, er than applying everywhere is something every job seeker should heed.

Jordan also offers a lot of great advice as to which internet tools to use for researching employers and finding recruiters. Don't just blast mail to every recruiter there is, find the ones who specialize in your field and region.

Check out Jordan's recruiting agency web site for information about tech-jobs in the Pacific Northwest.

Here are a list of links to Jordan's favourite tools and networking groups:

NOTE: Please contact Michael if you are interested in being a guest on "Tales from the job search trenches" podcasts. Michael would like to discuss your job search strategy, and brainstorm ways to improve it with you.

22 October 2009

Job search tales: LinkedIn is your friend

In this episode of "Tales from the job search trenches", Rob Gelhausen tells us how LinkedIn is the indepensible tool for job seekers. Rob shares the tips he has learned in his years of experience as a recruiter and job coach, in offering advice as to which activities are the most (and least) productive for job seekers.

Check out Rob's web site for lots of free information on looking for new opportunities.

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NOTE: Please contact Michael if you are interested in being a guest on "Tales from the job search trenches" podcasts. Michael would like to discuss your job search strategy, and brainstorm ways to improve it with you.

Job search tales: paying it forward

In this episode of "Anatomy of a job search", Dan Callahan tells us how helping other people, and participating in communities, can yield dividends in both networking and searching for a job. People should be open to helping others as part of their effort to grow contacts, rather than be narrowly focused on activities that have a direct monetary reward.

Dan discusses how the modern employee needs to make a job search a permanent part of their life, always networking and maintaining contacts that will come in handy the next time they are in need of a new job. He also tells us how his varied roles in marketing, finance, and even HR have led him to have a deeper understanding of business needs. Finance people look at business problems in very different ways from product managers, and vice versa.

You can check out Dan's blog for his views on life, business, and gardening (amongst other things).

EPNW: A business thrives in a recession by lowering your tax bill as prices fall

In this episode of "Entrepreneurs Northwest" Charlie Walsh tells us how http://www.valueappeal.com/ was brought to life in six months, and started making revenue on the first day. Even better, his business of helping home owners appeal the assessments of their homes to reduce their tax bills is particularly popular when the economy is poor. With a success on his hands, Charlie is now facing the challenge of expanding his offering throughout the nation, and raising the capital to do so.

Microsoft Program Management for Dummies: the video

This is the video of my presentation of what it takes to succeed at being a program manager at Microsoft. This provides an insider's guide to Program Management at Microsoft: the myth and the reality.

I go into more depth than my article on the subject, relating personal experiences from my career at Microsoft, as well as offering tips on how to apply and interview for PM work.

My thanks go to the Puget Sound Chapter of the Association for Women in Computing, which graciously allowed me to record the presentation I made at their October 2009 meeting.

Job search tales: it's all about networking

In this episode of "Anatomy of a Job Search", Mark Warren discusses how the job market has undergone massive changes in the last year, and that many of the old strategies for finding employment are no longer very effective. Building networks at targeted companies should be the top priority of job seekers, but they also need to continue building relationships with recruiters and applying to job postings (even though these efforts don't yield a lot of results).

Mark has coached many hundreds of candidates on the intricacies of the job search in his 30 year career as a coach and teacher. His deep experience in recruiting and career coaching offer a rich vein of knowledge for job seekers.

You can read more about Mark's suggestions on his blog.

21 October 2009

The world's best financial & economics analyst

I would like to announce that www.surkan.com has just joined the affiliate program of Elliott Wave International. This is the financial newsletter service that I have come to view as indispensable. I have been a subscriber for years, and find that their analysts are the closest to my own views of anything there is.

The EWI view that society, and the economy, moves in cycles (or waves, in their parlance), has had a profound impact on my view of economics and the world. It’s not the “news” that drives the big changes in society, rather it is changes in society that create the news.

I have never fully bought into the complex wave theory that EWI uses, with which they will plot (and predict) trends in the stock market, but their general technical analyses has been dead on the money as to where the economy was headed, even if their timing hasn’t always been the best. EWI is one of the only authorities to call for deflation (which they still maintain is ahead), and they were way ahead in seeing the growing financial storm that was brewing. Astonishingly, EWI has held these bearish views without falling into the trap of conspiracy theories, blaming everything on nefarious cabals and manipulators.

I whole-heartedly recommend EWI to all of my readers. They have a free membership service (Club EWI), which allows you to access some basic articles, and they have various levels of paid subscriptions to the different newsletters they offer.

Right now EWI is offering a free series of courses based on Bob Prechter’s book “Conquer the Crash”, which offers very useful advice on protecting yourself from the growing depression.

Incidentally, I had the great privilege of going to lunch with Bob Prechter (the EWI founder) when he was visiting Seattle earlier this year.

In the interests of full disclosure, as an EWI affiliate member I do gain a commission for all subscribers (even the ones using the free Club EWI service) that come from Surkan.com. If you do decide to sign up to EWI (which I highly recommend), please use the links on Surkan.com (in the advertisement banners, or this post) so that I will get some credit.

Re-defining terms: forget inflation and deflation

In this episode of Practical Economics Matt Stiles talks about how the recession is far from over, and that the entire inflation/deflation debate may be irrelevant since the very definitions used for these terms don’t describe the phenomena we are seeing in the global economy. Matt goes on to say that the recession may be part of a generation cycle, and that it is inevitable that boom and bust cycles will persist forever. Check out Matt’s blog at http://futronomics.blogspot.com/.

NOTE: You can view the complete list of Practical Economics podcasts to hear more conversations with the experts. Tune in to the weekly economics round-table discussions to hear the latest from the Optimistic Bear.

20 October 2009

EPNW: The Startup that helps Startups

In this episode of Entrepreneurs Northwest, serial internet entrepreneur Matt Heaton talks about his new venture (http://www.bigstartups.com/), that provides a community and support for startups. The best medicine for aspiring entrepreneurs is to just do it, and build something, according to Matt. All the deliberation in the world is no substitute for getting a product in customer hands. Matt also points out that having a plan for how your new business will make money is pretty important. Just building something that’s “popular” isn’t good enough.

NOTE: Check out the complete podcast directory of discussions with entrepreneurs. If you would like to be a guest on Entrepreneurs Northwest, to talk about your business venture, contact Michael Surkan.

EPNW: Startups on a Shoe-string

In this episode of Entrepreneurs Northwest, Eric Veal talks about how he is recruiting partners with Craiglist for his new venture to create a database modelling tool, and how startups can use a variety of strategies to overcome an absence of capital to get off the ground.

Eric also discusses how he has helped companies better deploy technology (like Sharepoint) to improve business process efficiency as part of his consulting efforts. You can learn more about Eric’s view on applying technology to business problems at http://www.efficitrends.com/.

Profiting from the recovery

In this episode of Economics Unveiled Bill Conerly explains that the economic recovery is going to be a lasting (albeit slow) one, and that businesses should start positioning themselves to profit from it. He also explains that business plans should be robust enough to succeed regardless of what happens to the economy. Don't over-extend yourself when times are good, and don't cut out muscle when things get tough.

Bill tells the Optimistic Bear that he has been around the economics block enough to have learned the humility to know that the future is hard to predict, and that outcome of debates such as the inflation/deflation argument are just unknowable. You can check out Bill's blog here: http://businomics.typepad.com/.

19 October 2009

Microsoft Program Management for Dummies

An insider's guide to Program Management at Microsoft: the myth and the reality.

You can also watch the more in-depth video of my presentation of this same subject.

18 October 2009

Talking about FinancialArmaggedon

Michael Panzner (of http://www.financialarmageddon.com/) discusses his views of the global economic roadmap, and the “end of the American era”. He describes an inflationary future for America as policy makers cave into the pitchfork wielding masses, unwilling to accept deflation. Unfortunately, Panzner doesn’t believe there is necessarily any particular nation for investors to park their money that will remain unscathed from the coming turmoil. Panzner’s view is an expansive one, covering the history of empires and societal trends.

NOTE: You can view the complete list of Practical Economics podcasts to hear more conversations with the experts. Tune in to the weekly economics round-table discussions to hear the latest from the Optimistic Bear.

10 October 2009

Marketing through social networking rewards

Many businesses are trying to exploit the explosion in social networking to promote, and market, their products, but the effort to successfully get the word out about their products is time-consuming, and it is getting harder to be heard through the mounting cacophony of Tweets, Facebook messages, and myriad other messaging venues.

Why not incent individual users to do the social networking for your business, getting all those social networking addicts to do the hard work for you? Just register your business, and promotional deals, with a social networking marketing aggregation service, and any social networking mavens can sign up to get rewards for promoting your business and products.

Users can browse this social networking marketing site to find products or services they like, and inform all their friends by just clicking a button. This marketing tool will automatically send tweets, facebook messages, e-mails, and numerous other social networking messages, by tying directly into the APIs of these various services. Users will provide the login information to this marketing service for all their various accounts.

This service will automatically track how many of each user’s friends respond to the promotions and credit their accounts with various forms of rewards. If 10 of their friends clicking on the custom link they sent to redeem a local restaurant’s web coupon, the user could get a free meal. In other cases they could get discounts in buying products, or any other number of incentives.

This marketing service offers easy tracking of responses for every promotion, and every user who broadcast the deals to their friends. Companies using this service to market their products can be charged a fee for every response.

Widgets can even be provided to the companies promoting their products, allowing them to offer a one-click rewards program on their own web sites (e.g. click here to inform your friends about this product and earn rewards).

Instead of trying to navigate your own business’ way through social networking, trying to find ways to gain a broader audience for your products, just start incenting users to do the marketing for you.

Money on the table

One of the most exciting aspects of this business idea is the fact that numerous affiliate and reward programs already exist. There is no need to spend lots of effort to convince businesses to register with this rewards service (although the option will exist). We can hit the ground running by simply signing up to any number of affiliate programs, and passing on a portion of the referral earnings to members. Most affiliate programs are geared towards other web sites. We can re-package those same programs to make them accessible to end-users.

A CRM service, for example, may be willing to offer affiliates $100 for every customer registration they get. Our rewards service can in turn split that fee with the individual members who have promoted this hypothetical CRM web site to their contacts.

It is even possible we could offer discounts to our members who buy products directly through our site by splitting the affiliate fees with them. One financial news web site, for example, offers a 50% commission for all new subscribers. We could easily offer the members of our own rewards web site a 25% discount on the normal subscription fee, just for placing their orders through our site.
Utilizing these pre-existing affiliate programs will allow us to build an attractive inventory of products to promote, and start making revenue from the very first day.

Getting to know you

This rewards web site will gain a lot of knowledge about the likes, and habits, of its members. We can use this to target suggestions for new products to promote (e.g. from the same store, or product category, of things this user has already promoted). Since we know precisely which products got the most follow-through from each member’s promotional efforts, we can suggest similar items for promotion that will have a good chance of success.

Our excellent end-to-end tracking capabilities will also allow us to tell what incentives work best, and fine tune our rewards programs for maximum benefit. We will even know which social networks yield the best results.

NOTE: If you like this business idea, you can also check out my other concept for a code licensing marketplace.

08 October 2009

The next shoe to drop: reverse mortgages

Alarm bells are beginning to sound about the reverse mortgage industry. As I’ve long suspected, these reverse mortgages aren’t nearly as “safe” as many have believed. It is very interesting, that the articles coming out about the growing problems with reverse mortgages don’t really make it clear who is going to suffer. Bloomberg, for example, talks about this as a potential consumer problem, but doesn’t really specify how that would be.

Ironically, it is the consumer that may well have the last laugh when it comes to reverse mortgages. If property prices actually plunge below levels that lenders had thought possible, it is the banks that will take it on the teeth. The seniors who have taken out the reverse mortgages have basically guaranteed that they won’t lose more than a fixed amount on their own homes, regardless of how far prices crash. It is the poor lender who is going to suffer when it comes to selling the property to be made whole when the borrower passes away.

Risks that contributed to the collapse of the subprime- mortgage market also are a concern in the sale of reverse mortgages, said John Dugan, head of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, at an American Bankers Association conference in June.
“While reverse mortgages can provide real benefit, they also have some of the same characteristics as the riskiest types of subprime mortgages -- and that should set off alarm bells,” Dugan said.

06 October 2009

Job search tales: building relationships with employers

In this episode of “Tales from the job search trenches”, Michael Surkan describes how to use LinkedIn to get in touch with the people you want to know at the firms you hope to work for, and offers strategies to build relationships with them. This is far more effective than just trusting your resume to an on-line job application form.

If you like this podcast you can check out Michael’s article outlining his own job search strategy to get more tips. Also, you can listen to my series of my "Anatomy of a job search" podcasts where I interview fellow-job seekers about their search strategies and brainstorm ways to improve their effectiveness.

NOTE: Please contact Michael if you are interested in being a guest on “Anatomy of a job search” podcasts. Michael would like to discuss your job search strategy, and brainstorm ways to improve it with you. Check out Michael’s LinkedIn profile for contact information.

05 October 2009

Declining rents: a practical lesson in supply and demand

The economic concept of supply and demand seems simple enough. If demand for lollipops increases, but the number of lollipops produced remains the same, prices will rise (and fall if some people suddenly stop eating them). However, the application of this economics principal gets tricky. Many people assume that the demand side of the equation is some easily calculable variable, that can easily be extrapolated given the right information.

Unfortunately, demand is a fiendishly complex thing, subject to so many factors that there is often no easy way to determine how it will change, or alter.

The recent decline in rents across the USA is an excellent example of this. Why is it that rents are in decline at the very same time that fewer people are buying homes? I recall seeing articles at the beginning of the housing downturn in 2007 which proclaimed that a real-estate bust would be fantastic for landlords since demand for rental accommodations would increase. Instead, we are seeing that demand for rental properties is falling at precisely the same time that demand for acquiring homes is also down.

Has the USA suddenly been losing population, thereby reducing over-all demand for residential dwellings over-all?

What this apparent contradiction of declining rents simultaneous with declining home sales shows is that demand is far more elastic than many have thought. Demand is actually a highly elastic concept, that has as much (or more) to do with peer-pressure, culture, and income levels than it does with population. In the case of rents, we are clearly seeing that people are down-sizing their housing needs due to a loss in incomes, or even fear of such. 4 person families that previously lived in 3 bedroom homes with a garage, are now content to live in a two bedroom apartment, and having the kids share a room. Increasing numbers of single adults are moving back to live with their parents.

All the old assumptions about how demand for real-estate could be linearly extrapolated from population can be chucked out the window.

Even the idea of supply itself is also a fuzzy concept, that is difficult to nail down. For example, we are seeing increasing numbers of home owners who are now renting rooms in their homes to help make ends meet (adding additional “shadow” supply to the rental market).

The law of supply and demand is still valid, but there is no simple equation that will tell us what will happen to either supply or demand in the future.

04 October 2009

Mish is right on deflation, but wrong on the cause

Mike Shedlock has posted another interesting article on the likelihood that severe deflation lies just ahead for the economy. Over-all, I agree with his points.

Travakoli makes six points about deflation. I concur with all of them. Here
are three of them.
Our fundamental financial and economic problems, i.e. overleveraging, lack of transparency, have not been solved.
Since 2008, capacity utilization has plummeted; businesses have no pricing power; U.S. lost 6.7 million jobs but numbers are underreported; personal income tax receipts are down 21%; corporate tax receipts are down 58%; U.S. deficit will exceed $1.8 trillion; govt. spending is now 185% of tax receipts; 13% of mortgages are seriously delinquent and/or in foreclosure; huge decrease in personal net worth; 15 million mortgages exceed the home value. We’re on a massive debt spending spree.
Income on all levels is not sufficient to make debt payments.

However, I disagree with the explanations for the cause of the current crisis. Mike agrees with Travakoli’s condemnation of bankers and regulators for imprudent, and immoral, behaviour.

At its core," Tavakoli observes, "the mortgage crisis is no more sophisticated
than a schoolyard swindle, and the SEC is the principal."

The debt bubble was a broad societal phenomena, in which everyone played a role. Bankers took on imprudent risks, and regulators let them. At the same time, however, investors were willing to turn their heads to obviously questionable dealings of the firms they put their money into, and consumers were also willing to gorge at the debt troughs, taking on mortgages that they knew they couldn’t pay, in the hope of getting rich with asset appreciation. It is so eye-opening to read about how many of the investors in Bernie Madoff's investors knew he was up to something since the returns were too good to make sense, but they kept their money with him because they simply figured he was breaking the law by getting access to insider information or such like.

The old adage of con-men, about how you can only cheat a crooked person, is very apt. The crazy schemes of the bubble era only worked because there were SO many people willing to knowingly participate in scams. Even if individuals didn’t understand the full depth of the malfeasance that was taking place, they knew full well that something was up. The janitor who got a million dollar loan to purchase homes with 100% financing knew full well that there was no rational reason for the people giving him the loan to do so unless they had some sort of scheme up their sleeves.

My disagreement as to the cause of the debt bubble, and resulting crash, is critical. If my belief is true (that the bubble was a result of a societal wide psychological delusion), then there really isn't anything wrong in the structure of the economy, or regulatory bodies, per-se. We may simply be dealing with nothing more than the ebb and flow of long-term cyclical swings in societal attitudes.

03 October 2009

Source code recycling

One way or another, vast quantities of software gets created which either never gets used or winds up being under-utilized. Organizations may develop software for some internal needs, but it is never marketed to others because those organizations are not in the “software” industry. In other cases, software is created by entrepreneurs which never quite takes flight due to poor business models, marketing, or salesmanship. The result is a vast resource of untapped potential, and wealth, that currently does nothing more than collect dust.

Perhaps the time has come for the creation of a source code marketplace, where abandoned software can find a new purpose, and IT organizations are able to realize added value in the assets they create than the mere use of the applications they created.

Save money through recycling

In a tough economy where capital is scarce and budgets are being cut, finding economies through the use of pre-existing source code is a tremendous way to economize. Organizations with portfolios of internally developed software can defray their development costs, and take the sting out of budget cuts by offering their existing source code for other firms to license. Many IT departments are completely unaware they are sitting on a potential gold-mine.

Reduce development costs by licensing existing source code

Why re-create the wheel, building software that someone else has already created? You can dramatically reduce your development time, and costs, if you can find software in a source code marketplace that fits your needs. The price of licensing pre-existing code will almost certainly be far less than building it yourself. Even better, you can be confident of the quality of source code that has already been used (and ranked) by others.

Where abandoned software finds a second life

Instead of letting cool software created by startups just collect dust, and vanish into history (as so often happens when software firms go bust), the source code marketplace offers an opportunity to actually redeem some of the investment. Someone out there could find a use for your abandoned source code, even if it is in a field, or area, you hadn’t originally anticipated. The source code marketplace at least gives you a chance to find that elusive buyer.

After all, what do you have to lose by registering your abandonded software in the source code marketplace? It’s not as if it is doing anyone any good just sitting in the basement accumulating cobwebs.

The limitations of being Open

Open source software is all well and good for hobbyists working on community projects, or companies wanting to get wide dissemination of their technologies, but it offers little reason for those organizations who made investments for their own needs to just publish for the good of humanity. If you are lucky enough to find open source software that suits your needs, that’s wonderful, but you still have to worry about the implications of using software with an Open Source license in your own commercial products later down the road.

Features of the source code marketplace

Choose your license model
- Do you want to offer exclusive licensing deals? Is it open for use by as many people who want to license it?
Pick your price
- Choose the price you want to sell the source code you register in the marketplace (pick a higher price for exclusive licensing vs common usage).
Rate/recommend the source code
- Tell others how well the source code worked for you.
View popularity for each piece of source code
- Shows the number of downloads, and can list items by order of usage.
Rich search options
- By category, language used, ratings, etc.

NOTE: You can check out another of my business ideas, for a social network marketing rewards program.

02 October 2009

Optimistic Bear Round table discussion podcast - 2009-10-01

Welcome to the inaugural Optimistic Bear round-table discussion podcast. The Optimistic Bear chats with Kevan, Elliott & Jeremy about Economics, inflation/deflation, bond prices, with a smattering of politics thrown in for good measure.