Yes, I'm rather going for the higher level (like CIO, sales, marketing, etc.). I know Gartner, Forrester, IDC will be a competition. But my idea is to target the tool at companies which don't want to hire rather pricey industry analyst firms but still need to have some insights into what's going on in the industry.
What do you mean specifically by saying: "tailor the product much more for that market"?
Thanks!
And yes, the initial idea was not to sell the tool to tech-savvy people but rather to people who need to understand software developers and need some data and statistics to support their decisions. You can think of it as DYI IT industry analysis and an alternative to industry analyst firms.
1. SO data is available under the CC license. I don't expect this to change in the future. Regarding other data sources, I plan to use API or will need special agreements in hand with data providers.
2. You never know this until you try to sell. This is what I'm trying to figure out right now. If there's a good reason to believe that nobody wants to pay for this, I will proceed with plan "B" and will make the tool freely available and will need to find a different business model.
3. I would target the tool primarily at marketers, evangelists, companies building developer-focused products (books, courses, conferences, it vendors). I wasn't thinking about outsourcing shops to be honest.
By "technology category" I mean: Programming languages, Version control systems, PaaS providers, NoSQL databases, Relational databases, IDEs, etc. - basically different categories of tools/technologies that software developers use to get their job done. I agree this should be explained more somewhere on the website.
- developer-focused marketers (What are developers interested in, so we can build better products for them?)
- developer evangelists/advocates (Are developers adapting the tools we're evangelising about?)
- IT industry analysts (What are the industry trends? What will be popular next year?)
And from the discussions with those groups, I know they would be willing to pay for this kind of tool. Obviously, my goal is to build a critical mass of users and customers. And the dilemma is whether leave it a SaaS tool and earn from subscription or open it up for everyone and make profit in some other way...
Regarding the message and use cases - I'm trying to explain this in a section below the slides. "Technology research tool", "IT buzzword monitor", "Analysis and reports", etc. Isn't this visible/clear enough? What would you suggest to make it more eye-catching? Thanks again for all your feedback :)
Opening up the tool for free is actually one of the options that I consider. Of course, only if there's a good reason to believe that this is the right way to go.
I know of some free alternatives, like http://www.ohloh.net/ but on the other hand there are also pricey reports on technology trends, such as: http://w3techs.com/ This shows that there are companies willing to pay a lot of money for technology insights.
BTW, is there any specific kind of data/insights you would be particularly interested in?
Hi fellow Hackers,Can I ask for feedback on a new product that I am working on: http://www.hackerfly.comHackerfly is a SaaS tool providing analysis and insights into the software programming industry.The intention is to give marketers, analysts, developer evangelists, managers and decision makers a simple tool with statistics and quantitative information enabling them to understand software...
I also like your comment about being happy. Perhaps it may sound a bit hedonistic, but it really is the most important thing in live! Well done.