I started the night expecting another Ducks/Devils defensive struggle when all of a sudden a hockey game broke out. Now, I don’t need to see a lot of goals to enjoy a hockey game; but I do need to see a lot of potential for goals. And I got my money’s worth yesterday. It was a wide open game with pretty goals, lucky goals, disallowed goals, and disputed goals. The only thing it didn’t have was mind boggling, out of this world goaltending. But there’s still time for that in the next game.

Joel writes about the perils of accepting VC funding. And he is basically right, as far as he goes. But the organically grown ISV that Joel promotes is only part of the possible spectrum of software companies. In particular, I think that the young, organic ISV is primarily limited to building better mousetraps in existing markets.

The advantage of working in an existing market is that your competitors have already validated that people will buy. Eric Sink believes you should find someone Big and Dumb and take part of their market away. And if the market is big and stable enough, your competition is stupid enough, and you are smart enough in ideas and execution, then you will succeed. With some luck, you’ll even grow to be big and smart.

But sometimes, your idea calls for a new way of doing business and a new market. And when that happens, you’ll need outside funding. Because it takes money to build a new market, to convince prospects that there is a real problem/opportunity, and to convince them that you can solve it.

5:38 PM Eric Sink chimes in

Tim Bray is getting pushback over his call for RSS subscriber tracking. And while I agree that we need to insure reader privacy, I feel that proscribing ads in RSS is shortsighted.

Consider your favorite music artists. It’s common practice to distribute tour information by mail (both e and snail). And a RSS feed would be a natural extension of that practice. First of all, it is arguable that the entire feed would be one big ad. And suppose early work previously only available on cassette was re-issued on CD, would you want that announced on the RSS feed? How about an announcement that songs are now available via the iTunes Music Store?

Now consider your local club scene. Wouldn’t it be convenient to have the schedules available by RSS? And would you be willing to trade that convenience for ads from those local clubs? How about ads from your local music stores?

I agree that there are limits. Personally, I draw a line at pop-up windows and cheerfully block them. But RSS is a pull technology. If the ads are out of line, then vote with your feet.

Also from the November 2002 issue of the Harvard Business Review, a discussion of the process of disruptive innovation (The Innovator’s Dilemma by Clayton Christensen). The authors identify 6 stages in the process of disruptive innovations and common factors that make the stage more or less likely to succeed.

1. Foothold Market Entry (optional): Can the insurgent gain a foothold (usually in the market below the main one)?
2. Main Market Entry: Does the insurgent face high barriers to entering the main market?
3. Customer attraction: How much value can the insurgent offer relative to the incumbent?
4. Customer switching: How easily can customers switch from the incumbent to the insurgent?
5. Incumbent retaliation: Does the incumbent have high barriers to retaliationg against the insurgent?
6. Incumbent displacement: Does the innovation displace (as opposed to augment) incumbent products and revenues?

Entrepreneurs have been proclaiming their latest idea a disruptive innovation ever since Christensen’s book. It’s good to have a framework to measure their claims against.

From the November 2002 issue of the Harvard Business Review:

• How much should we spend on IT?
• Which business processes should receive our IT dollars?
• Which IT capabilities need to be companywide?
• How good do our IT services really need to be?
• What security and privacy risks will we accept?
• Whom do we blame if an IT initiative fails?

None of these items come as a surprise. But I’ve often found that management pays more attention to the Harvard Business Review. It’s worth marking down the reference just in case.

If I really knew the answer to this question, then I would take Eric’s advice and start an ISV. But I think that I have a pretty good handle on “What will people like me buy?”

E-mail was the first consumer killer app of the internet, I think that RSS will be the next. There is a market for news readers, but they need to be tied to email so that consumers can treat articles as a new flavor of email. And I think that ad-supported and paid subscriber RSS feeds are inevitable.

Digital devices are proliferating in my life. My computer is the hub that pulls it all together. I think there is an opportunity for personal digital asset management like iView Media. And I think there is a market for the fotolog as photo album - not for the internet, but as a personal travelogue on hard disk or CD.

And with device proliferation, I think there is a market for data storage transparency so that data can be accessed from multiple clients. I didn’t realize how useful this was until I started using IMAP email via fastmail, I would hate to go back to a POP based solution.

Finally, the computer has become a bigger part of people’s lives. Both Microsoft and Apple cater to the business market and have made their OS’s more professional. I think there is an opportunity for software that makes computers more fun. Xounds is a good example. It might drive me crazy at the office, but it’s good fun at home.

NewsGator, a RSS aggregator for outlook. The big problem with NewsGator is that it is on the wrong platform. I also wish that it would render HTML web pages in an application pane like sharpreader - I hate having my application focus jump around. It’s a contender because I can share RSS articles via my fastmail IMAP folders.

NetNewsWire, a RSS news reader for the Mac. Like NewsGator, I would like NetNewsWire to render HTML web pages in an application pane (awaiting the release of WebKit - Safari rendering and infrastructure). It also needs better support for saving the syndicated article to the notebook (this may also be awaiting the release of WebKit).

OmniGraffle, a charting and diagramming application for the Mac. I used this while helping a friend with some ER diagrams. A nice application, but I’m not making many diagrams at the moment.

iView Media, a asset management program for digital photos, music and videos. My collection of photos continues to grow and iView Media looks like a great solution. The only thing keeping me from downloading the trial is that I’m planning a DIY effort first.

Microsoft Entourage, an e-mail and personal information manager for the Mac. I’ve spent much too much time in Outlook on Windows. This would be especially attractive with a RSS plug-in.

Merrick discusses the benefits of the act of writing. I agree, writing forces me to distill my thoughts and exposes areas of uncertainty. Even if you don’t find an audience, you’ll benefit from writing about your professional interests.

So Merrick, I appreciate the effort you put into composing your own material. And I look forward to your thoughts to come.

The Ducks pull themselves back into the Stanley Cup Finals with a 3-2 win over the Devils last night. Giguère’s force fields have yet to make an appearance in the finals, but the rest of the Ducks have started to resemble the players that shocked the Red Wings and the Stars. It was beginning to look like a short series, but things are looking a bit more interesting now.

Radio Userland: The desktop content management system that generates this weblog. A great value, software and a year of weblog hosting for $39.95.

Adobe PhotoShop Elements: Entry level digital photo editing. If you have a digital camera, then you need an editing program. Elements is one of the best.

FruitMenu, Xounds, and WindowShade X from Unsanity: FruitMenu allows me to customize my Apple menu with a cascading program menu. Xounds brings back the appearance sounds from pre OS/X, restoring a wonderful bit of whimsy. And WindowShade X allows me to alter the behavior of the window title double-click and minimize actions. I would buy FruitMenu and Xounds again. But the jury is out on WindowShade X.

Norton SystemWorks: Anti-Virus, Disk Utilties, and Retrospect Express Backup. It may not be exciting, but it’s part of the nuts and bolts that keeps everything running.

Medal of Honor: Games are the strength of the market and I try to do my part.

Microsoft Visual Studio .NET: the comprehensive developer tool for Windows. Microsoft is the 900 pound gorilla, you ignore it at your own risk.

1 June: I forgot to mention that I also have email forwarding from pobox and email from fastmail. Pobox gives me permanent email addresses, independent of my service provider. Fastmail provides IMAP, allowing me to share email folders among multiple email clients. If I had it to do over again, I might just get a full fastmail account rather than my member fastmail account paired with pobox. But it’s a close call and cost neutral.