yep, but the transformation from "buy our product because they're good, we are a reliable company" to "buy the company because it is valuable but cannot survive independently" is a delicate maneuver.
Our competitor have a quite different framework, the tech integration looks complicated. They could buy us autodesk-style : to dominate the market absolutely. Not sure they have enough money for that.
I never thought about dissociating from the business but I see the reasoning behind it. The 'free mind space' versus sad burnout is really a good image.
Sorry about the email adress, it is now corrected.
About your questions, I am sorry I can't go into the specifics but I don't want to damage our brand. I would be more transparent if the situation was desperate but we are not there yet (that's what I want to avoid).
Here is what I can say :
- our product is a complex (pc/win) software.
- it requires some investment but not much (domain expertise is too strong a word).
- most customers can find alternatives even if much more costly
- our own market could grow (especially under a focused marketing push).
- our company culture is quite informal
- I suppose we could accept outside direction. Not sure, though, I never thought about it.
Because the new market looks like a blind gold rush. Everybody is going to the same place but the maths says that most won't have any ROI.
Maybe you could help with this more-focused question : How to promote a team of (quite) expert python coders ? I've seen some freelancing sites but 1/ indians/chinese/whatever can undercut everybody there and 2/they focus mainly on task that doesn't need good coders.
We are 8, 5 devs including myself. Not huge but still costly.
We do use open source libs (mit license), its the combinations which is quite unusual. But we could leverage some of them like web2py.
About mercenary coding, I am all for it as I know my team would do right and create a good margin on each project. What I wonder is how to promote a team like us.
Delegating the sales at the international level might be indeed the best option. Some of our customer are foreign and in bad shape but someone with more connections could be more successful than we have been.
Open sourcing (even partially) the product is also on my mind. The increased visibility is indeed something to consider.
Our competitor have a quite different framework, the tech integration looks complicated. They could buy us autodesk-style : to dominate the market absolutely. Not sure they have enough money for that.