A new beginning, a new direction

My new little one isn't sleeping through the night yet, but she's sleeping well enough that I can get back to work. The good thing about the time off is that I could step back and evaluate how I've been doing. And my conclusion is that I've sucked pretty bad when it comes to getting something done.

Why? I kept asking myself that, and I finally figured it out. I don't care much for the book web-app idea. Not just from a business perspective either. I simply don't like the idea of coding something like that up. Put better - I'm not passionate about the idea. And I really need to be passionate if I'm going to be carving time out from my family on nights and weekends. It's a big sacrifice. I just can't make myself do it for something I don't care about.

So what do I care about? Honestly, I really like building tools for application development more than apps themselves. Now you're probably thinking something along the lines of "idiot! That market is saturated! And competing against big development companies in such a strategic area for them is suicide!" But I think there is a gap.

In particular, I haven't found a simple, cheap, agile requirements gathering tool centered on the case where the customer and developer are working together through the net. Note I mentioned cheap. I do so because I actually think the requirement tools out there are too expensive for microISVs and small startups. And nothing I've seen supports interaction with a community of potential customers over then net. I wanted something like this when I started the book web-app. Best I found were generic tools like wikis. I like the idea of a web-app focused on agile requirements gathering.

Is this a huge opportunity? I doubt it. But I am passionate about this idea, because I know that I'll use it at least. Collaborative development with potential customers seems like an edge microISVs will want. We can be fast and nimble, but without feedback on what customers really want its hard to build something that is acceptable - let alone F'ing Amazing. Maybe a tool like this will help us (or me, at least) reach that next step.

To all the other microISVs out there - is this something you'd like to use? Any specific wants/needs? I'd love some feedback. Until the app is built, comments on this blog is the best we can do ;)