Category Archives: Infinity Softworks

Writings on running Infinity Softworks. Lessons learned from over a decade of history.

Introducing FastFigures Mobile for iPhone and iPod Touch

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I’m very proud to announce the release of FastFigures Mobile, our first iPhone/iPod Touch application and the first release of our companion to FastFigures Online. FastFigures Mobile runs on iPhone and iPod Touch devices without requiring an Internet connection. FastFigures modernizes the calculator.

In my time running Infinity Softworks, there have been three defining products. The first was FCPlus Professional version 2, which came out in 1999. This product really introduced the template format to mainstream financial calculator users, making it possible for them to drop their HP-12c and HP-17b and carry a Palm handheld instead. This product was also a great marketing success for us as its younger sibling, FCPlus, was the first of our products bundled with Palm handhelds. We had product bundled on pretty much every Palm OS handheld from that point on, including Sony and other Palm OS manufacturers. During this time, bundling became our main marketing strategy.

The next defining product was powerOne Graph version 4, a full-fledged software graphing calculator for Palm OS devices. This was our key product to go after the education market. Educators loved it because their students weren’t spending their entire class time trying to remember which buttons to press and students loved it because they got to carry around a computer. Our education efforts, unfortunately, didn’t work out so well for us. Our three years of effort were killed off when Palm decided to exit handheld computers.

FastFigures is our third defining product. It revives the vision I had for the company’s products in 1999. Calculation is an integral part of many of our lives. We use it to calculate mortgages and investments and concrete slab materials and IV drips and pressure conversions and … well, you get the idea. And we all have our own specialities and needs, independent from everyone around us. But we don’t just run calculations. We need to retain results and share them with co-workers and clients. And we need to be able to run these numbers everywhere and recall these results everywhere, whether in the field or at our desk.

The Online version of FastFigures is already in beta and works with an Internet connection on Windows, Macintosh, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile and Palm computers. And now, with the release of FastFigures Mobile, we release our first version of FastFigures that runs without an Internet connection on iPhone and iPod Touch devices.

I hope you will give it a try (you can buy it here) and tell me what you think.

Waiting on a Winning Streak: Infinity Softworks Closes a New Funding Round

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I don’t like to gamble so don’t usually play cards. Since I don’t play, I haven’t developed some amazing strategy for winning nor do I have the kind of memory that allows me to count cards/play odds and offset my inexperience. But I found myself in a card game anyway. There were six of us playing and I kept drawing lousy hands. I kept folding early and often, before I could lose much money. We played round after round, with me folding with small or zero bets and my chip pile dwindling slowly.

Finally, the cards changed in my favor. With only a handful of chips left, I bluffed my way to a solid pot then started drawing good cards. Before I knew it I reeled off seven or eight winning hands in a row, riding them to a nice pile of chips, and putting everyone else at the table on the defensive.

It dawned on me recently that I have been running Infinity Softworks the same way the last few years. As with cards I didn’t play this strategy on purpose. Instead, my cautious nature led me to it, going after small pots, biding my time for the right opening, staying in the game. Waiting. Other companies were betting all in — on mobile, on the web — and I was starting to wonder if I’d lost my nerve, if I’d be able to see the big opportunity when it hit. And frankly, I almost missed it.

This past summer and fall turned into what I thought was going to happen in 2001: the mobile software market is finally becoming a reality. Amazing hardware powered by Apple, RIM and Google is coming to fruition. The innovation curve is accelerating. Reasonable software distribution is coming back. And all of these devices are web-enabled, connecting our customers to the world.

I have found kindred spirits, people who also see great opportunities and have stuck with me for years. Years of caution finally paid off. Infinity Softworks closed a round of funding that will kick start our FastFigures and FastFigures Mobile efforts, giving us a solid foundation to build from and the ability to power through these tough economic times. (Read the release here.) This, the first winning pot in the latest of Infinity’s card games. I smell a streak coming on.

One Programmer’s Lament

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Since Infinity Softworks had to get small in order to grow, I took on the task of programming again. Before 2007, I really hadn’t written any code since 2000. Since 2007 I have been involved in learning no less than five “development” languages: Objective-C for iPhone; RIM’s special Java flavor for BlackBerry; Ruby on Rails, CSS and HTML for the web version of FastFigures. This does not include the other one I still need to learn. We’ll need JavaScript for FastFigures.com but I was overwhelmed with everything else and couldn’t manage any more programming knowledge in my measly little brain.

I wouldn’t call myself a great programmer. I’m competent and seem to be able to get the job done as long as it’s mainly focused on user interface. I can’t do the hard-core programming. Luckily, my other full-time developer handles all the guts of the applications.

My lament, though, is not over having to learn so many different languages but instead how quickly the knowledge seems to seep out of my head. Being engrossed in Apple’s Objective-C language for the past few months, we really haven’t touched the website. Now we are working on a UI overhaul and new web capabilities and I actually need a refresher course on those web languages. I literally stared at CSS and HTML code one morning for two hours, as if I was trying to read Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. It just made no sense at all. And this is something I have done a lot of over the years!

Albus Dumbledore has this really cool device called a pensive. In the Harry Potter books, he’d just drop his knowledge into this pensive. When he needed it again, he’d pull the knowledge out and put it back in his head.

Either that or I need someone to stick their fingers in my ears to plug the leak.

Loyalty Part 1

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I have to admit that I have been taken aback a bit by the loyalty some of customers feel towards our products. In the past few months, as we have been collecting names and email addresses for our new FastFigures Mobile for iPhone product, a number of very familiar names have been popping up. Some have followed us from platform to platform. Others have been using our stuff on Palm or Windows Mobile devices and are now moving to iPhone or iPod Touch and don’t want to go without us. I have even heard from more than a few that have been carrying around an old device to use specifically with our powerOne software!

There were plenty of opportunities to walk away from this. For goodness sake, Infinity was practically dead at one point before the idea of FastFigures came back to me and a couple of us who are crazy enough to not take better offers decided to rebuild.

And it’s not just customers. Another employee stuck it out with me, riding Infinity from it’s peak to its trough and then being stubborn enough to not give up. Plus the previous investor who believed in the business and me enough to lend a hand when we needed it most.

Since I only know a few of your names and you know who you are, thanks! I hope you realize how much it means to me.

Happy Birthday Infinity Softworks

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12 years ago this month, Dane Avilla and I, in essence, founded Infinity Softworks. It wasn’t called Infinity Softworks at the time, but that’s what it became.

Dane and I were both majoring in something different than what we should have. (Dane was in Chemistry; I was in Accounting.) Both of us were getting a minor in Computer Science and I approached him because he was doing tech support for a software publisher and I wanted programming experience to see if that’s what I’d prefer to do when I graduated. The publisher was looking for someone to write for this new device called a PalmPilot. I said what the heck and started working on a project for him, with visions of experience and cash in my 24-year old head.

Working for the publisher didn’t work out for either of us and by the Spring we had left the publisher and was working for ourselves. Dane’s father worked in the tech industry and helped us get our first deal with Macmillan Digital Publishing. Our first product, FCPlus, was published with them in a retail bundle in March, 2008. In the same month, we released the advanced version of our financial calculator software, FCPlus Professional.

Dane stayed on for another half year until he was almost done with his Master’s in Computer Science and then moved to the East Coast. Obviously, I decided to continue moving Infinity Softworks forward. I never really expected to still be at it 12 years after starting our first product.