I used to be uptight, but I’m better now.

Something that inevitably comes up in the early stages of starting a company is the subject of intellectual property. The issue of patent trolls has been much in the news recently, but I'm less concerned about that than I am about shaking off my own old ways of thinking about creating and protecting IP. If you're interested, there's a wealth of great content on Jim Moore's blog, regarding the shifting dynamics of intellectual property law, with many posts reinforcing the point that transparency, rather than secrecy, is what creates innovation, and strong protection of the rights of patent holders (although not patent trolls) encourages openness and sharing of important ideas.

But I digress. My first company built its technology using primarily Microsoft stuff (I know, boo, hiss…), and for a while I was stuck on the idea that it was important to use this code to create something unique (still think that's true) and ensure that no-one else got to learn about the ins and outs of what we were doing. If I'd been smart, I'd have ensured that we built our campaign management application so that it didn't try to do everything itself, but rather could, for example, tap into the best analytics and business intelligence applications. Marketing analytics is an area in which integration and transparency are key, and I'm kicking myself that I just didn't see this at the time.

Much of what we're doing at Gaboogie is leveraging great technology and tools (the Rails framework, for example), and wrapping an interface around some technology we think is clever; but it's not clever because it's secret. Rather we think it's clever because it leverages the right tools, builds on our core expertise in IP communications, offers a better user experience, and is extensible so it can talk to the other important web-based business tools that are now part of my daily life. Not sure where I'm going with this, except to say that our focus isn't on locking our code up in a safe, so much as it is taking the right pieces from the right places to make Gaboogie's conferencing application the most useful application for our customers.

If only Dan would move his head.

OK, so this post is a little self-indulgent, but we're genuinely excited about how close we're getting. Here's Erik and I reviewing the GUI and getting to see the app really come to life.

 

So close, it hurts. Now if only Randy would get himself that MacBook Pro he keeps talking about, Erik and I wouldn't be the only ones with embarrassing pictures for all the world to see. I really need a haircut.

Burning the midnight oil

It is truly awesome when the pieces that you have cut so carefully start to actually fit with the other pieces that you have been cutting. We have been working very hard on this project and the finish line is now in site. Another 72 hours or so and we will hand this puppy over to the designers.

 

CRM Hell

So after posting about my experience with Highrise, a client I'm doing some consulting for asked me to assist in cleaning up their Netsuite implementation. Netsuite is obviously a far more complex app than Highrise, in that it deals with every aspect of the customer lifecycle — from sales force automation, pipeline management, quotes and orders through to customer service, trouble-ticketing, financial accounting… I expect, for a large fee, their professional services team can get it to do your laundry.

But even though it's complex, why does the interface have to reflect this? As a neophyte user it would in most cases be literally impossible to figure out the functionality, which means expensive training and frustrated users, many of whom are sales people who should be outside getting orders not inside learning software.

There's a great article here addressing the challenges of interface design. I was particularly interested in the points the author, Mike Padilla, makes about the balance between too much information on the screen so that the user can't process everything he sees and too little information so that the user needs to work too hard to find the functionality she needs.

Netsuite is firmly in the too much information category, and benefits from the extent to which users have been conditioned to expect complexity, and those making buying decisions budget for near-endless professional services and training. There's all kinds of song and dance on their corporate site about the use of AJAX in their interface, but that's missing the point on an epic scale: I don't care if I can drag and drop in the browser window if I can't figure out how to use the app!

Not that Netsuite are the only ones. I've used salesforce.com and a few other competing applications and found the same story there. I'm fairly tech-savvy but it's just too frustrating to figure out the inconsistent navigation and arcane labelling of functions. There's a list here of some more intuitive alternatives, but I don't think any of these has fundamentally solved the user experience challenge.

My primary hope about the promise of Web 2.0 (yes, yes, I know it's a terribly cliched term these days) is that there will be a from-the-ground-up demand for better user experiences as they are delivered at the consumer and lightweight business application level. We've all been sadly mistaken in expecting the supply side to deliver what we want, so let's keep our fingers crossed that this demand trickles upmarket.

Us Gaboogers

A small (less than 6 more than 4) software company based in North Vancouver. We are working on some very useful and cool apps that will make any small business drool, that may be somewhat biased. Our Audio Conferencing application is live.

The Founding Team

Erik Lagerway, Co-founder

 

Erik Lagerway is a VoIP entrepreneur with a long history of innovation in IP communications. As co-founder, President and COO at Counterpath (formerly Xten), Erik was responsible for product strategies, marketing, sales and engineering. Erik designed the first softphone products and go-to-market strategies for Xten. He was instrumental in growing the company from 2 to over 40 employees and bringing the company from startup to over $3 million in sales in less than two years. Xten customers acquired during Erik's tenure include Yahoo!, Vonage, Deutsche Telekom and over 55 other carriers, OEMs, and portals. Erik's understanding of the VoIP industry and his ability to uncover market opportunities provided Xten with award-winning industry leadership for SIP softphones. Before Xten, Erik founded Vocalscape, a successful Canadian VoIP and eCRM start-up that also won several technology awards.
 

Dan Gibbons, Co-founder

Marketing and technology executive and entrepreneur with extensive experience in brand strategy, online and offline marketing. Particular focus on leveraging new technologies into relevant, pragmatic solutions to business problems. Marketing analytics and optimization, return on marketing investment, branding and identity.