Costs To Do Business, Then and Now

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I was thinking recently at how the cost of business has changed in the 12 years I have run Infinity Softworks. A brief list of the changes we’ve seen:

  • In 1997, we had to offer telephone ordering and be able to ship products to customers. Many of our customers didn’t even have an email address. Originally, we’d email ordered product to our customers that ordered electronic software. Now none of that is needed. We don’t even offer physical product any more. Just downloads off the web.
  • In 1997, we had to staff both sales and support lines and support an 800 number. Now we really don’t have any of them. We handle all sales and support via email. We try to keep our response time down to a few hours and can do this partly due to the use of a BlackBerry when we are not in the office.
  • In 1997, we had to get a credit card machine to process charges. We kept it in a closet hooked up to a phone line. We would get the card over the phone and put the customer on hold while we processed the card. No one would give us the ability to process cards on the web (and none of our customers trusted it). Now, everything is over the web and there is no human involvement in the process.
  • In 1997, the costs to run a single server was a thousand dollars a month. Now, we pay about $40 per month with better quality and capabilities.
  • In 1997, 70-80% of our support issues were install and reinstall issues. Now, well… it’s the same. But improved software stores means these issues should be eliminated.

The bottom line? In the 12 years I’ve run Infinity Softworks, our costs have been reduced by 90%. I believe, for the first time, that it’s possible to run a highly successful and profitable software business without the number of people and dollars that it used to.

In fact, I’m betting on it. In 2001-2, we raised $550,000 to build Infinity Softworks. We added a number of people, expanded server capacity, and generally used the money to build infrastructure for the future. Now, I think we can build a far more successful business with far less dollars up front and far fewer employees to make it happen.

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 2

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Last time I wrote about my customers, employees and investors who have stayed loyal, have stuck it out with me, and how much I appreciate that. (If you missed it and you are one of the unnamed many, thanks!)

As I have watched these names move from device to device, it makes me wonder which device makers are really creating brand loyalty. Clearly Apple is the king, as the tongue-wagging fanboys get overly excited about every device they bring out. (Frankly, usually for very good reason as they make some amazing devices.) RIM is another one, although their loyalty is more of the cool, upper management variety than the technology geeks of the world. It’s the “look, I can send emails rapid fire while the rest of you slobs are wasting time waiting for the train” variety.

This is where Palm and Microsoft are struggling. It seems that people can’t wait to get away from Windows Mobile, that it’s a compromise when they can’t get something else. The loyalty doesn’t seem to be there.

Palm is a different case. They once had it. The loyalty of their customers was of the Franklin-Covey, life organizer variety. The “you can pry this device from my cold, dead hands” variety. Somewhere along the line that disappeared. Now all those customer names are appearing on lists waiting for iPhone or BlackBerry Storm versions of our software. Maybe they got tired of waiting; maybe they got tired of the horrible support and square pegs in round hole products.

But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe these folks have been waiting for a new Palm — that promised device from those vaunted luminaries of mobile tech. And maybe they will be rewarded. When Apple almost died, they had also almost lost their loyalty base. That group has come back en masse over the past decade and, at the same time, Apple has added a whole new generation.

Can Palm pull it off, too? We’ll see.

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.