Tag Archives: FastFigures

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.

Economic Downturns Are Good For Business

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A few years ago, at the end of Infinity Softworks’ second act as an education company, we decided to raise a round of funding. To make a long story short, I concluded early in the process that that was not possible and abandoned the idea. But two years later, as I watch the news wires for funding deals, a whole bunch of education companies have raised money. While the timing didn’t work out for Infinity Softworks’ education plans, here’s hoping it does for FastFigures and our re-focus on business customers.

Well, that left me thinking. Some of our biggest markets for FastFigures include real estate, financial and investment services. Could we have better timing? Let’s see. A busted real estate bubble, the banking system struggling, and Dow Jones sinking like a lead balloon… great time to sell to those folks!

But the truth is it is a great time to start this business. These problems won’t last forever, and when these problems fade then we will be in a great position to grow with our customers. When everything was easy — when a house sold in a day — no Realtor needed to care about educating their customers about mortgages. The only expertise they needed was to get the offer in fast. Now, with Realtors fighting over a small collection of buyers, education and experience will be the key.

Seth Godin wrote in his post “Looking For a Reason To Hide” a very interesting piece of information: a large chunk of the Inc 500’s fastest growing companies were born in the days following 9/11. From the darkest moments springs new life. It’s true with the tech companies I have watched all my life, too. Apple, Microsoft, Oracle, Google, just to name a few, all born in the dark days of recession.

So we start slow, we put the pieces in place, we learn and listen and take action on that. And then when the market shifts, if we’ve done a good job of learning and listening, then we will be ready and waiting to grow!

A Tail of Two BlackBerries

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Any minute now, RIM will launch the BlackBerry Storm here in North America. There is quite a bit of excitement around this device. Personally, I have played with the simulator and it looks nice. But the most important thing most of us do with a BlackBerry — email — requires a very good keypad. We’ll see if this one lives up to the hype.

I have bigger concerns, however, for RIM. The release of a touchscreen model splits the company. Now, resources need to be divided between non-touchscreen (keyboarded) devices and touchscreen devices. And this is dangerous territory. When device and OS companies have split their attention before, it has not ended well.

Let’s start with some examples of companies who have attempted to bifurcate their attention and struggled to maintain their leadership position:

  1. Palm: Every company that licensed the Palm OS added their own changes. And then to compound the problem, Palm developed both Windows Mobile and Palm OS devices.
  2. Microsoft: There are actually two completely different versions of Windows Mobile, one for touchscreens and one for keyboarded devices.
  3. Motorola: Linux, Windows Mobile, Android, Symbian… Motorola has licensed all of these at some point and at least released devices with two of the operating systems.

Even big companies struggle with split attention. (Think of what it does to start-ups. I should know!) There is just no way to do something really really really well, like RIM has in the past, while trying to do two completely different things at the same time.

On top of this, it splits the developer community. All of a sudden, we are forced to make decisions about which individual devices to support rather than supporting a platform. Not only is it harder to make a profit, it’s also harder to support the customer who gets confused in their own right. (I can’t tell you how many conversations we have had regarding Windows Mobile: “We support this one but not that one.”)

Is this sour grapes? I don’t think so even though our powerOne for BlackBerry Smartphones doesn’t work very well on the Storm and that to fix it will take a major re-write of the application (to support one device from one carrier). It works fine on every other BlackBerry device.

The good news for RIM — and their potential salvation — is that they are still working on one operating system. From all indications, they did a good job of melding the touch interface and the non-touch interface together into one operating system code base, something Microsoft never did. And as we move forward and turn our attention once again to BlackBerry after we finish FastFigures Mobile for iPhone, we will already have a touchscreen device on the market to test against and will be able to re-write the application to support both touch and keyboarded devices.