For programmers who are thinking of developing software on their own, I offer my initial marketing effort (a debacle) as a cautionary tale. After that, as helpful counterpoint ”the advice of someone who did it right.
Like every other software developer on the planet, I am what Jason Olim calls the visionary ”the person who invented the product, the person who knows what benefits the world can get out of it, the one who can predict how it might be used twenty years down the line. But how does a visionary make people begin to adopt his or her invention?
That s a question I ve been yearning to see answered ever since I started working on RTPA, my own project, in 1999. Writing the code was exciting and mentally rewarding . But, though focusing intensely sixteen hours a day, seven days a week, is grueling, the code-writing was the easy part. Marketing was the hard part. The really hard part.
My story ”the tale of a visionary who couldn t successfully market-his product through his and his family s mom-and-pop efforts ”is doubtless the story of many basement inventors like me. For programmers who are thinking of developing software on their own, I offer my initial marketing effort (a debacle) as a cautionary tale. After that, as helpful counterpoint ”the advice of someone who did it right ”I proffer the perspective of Jason Olim, who, with his twin brother, not only created the online music store CDnow (see Chapter 31), but marketed it with great success.