Starting a software product company

Over the last 8 years I have only worked in the software and web consulting realm.  But in the last 6 months some co-works and friends of mine started a product division within WA.  Kevin, Kyle, Michael, Matt and I have been hard at work getting www.DNNspot.com off the ground.  This website / division is dedicated to making modules for the popular content management system DotNetNuke.
We have released:

• DNN modules that rotate through content such as photos and text.
• A DNN chatroom module to have live discussion on your website.
• A DotNetNuke store module to give visitors the ability to purchase products from your company.
• A real time live support module.
• And a bunch of other DNN modules.

What have we learned thus far?  That running a product company / division is a hell of a lot of work!  It is amazing how much effort goes into getting a product ready for public consumption.

• Design
• Architecture
• Development, Development, Development
• Testing, Testing, Testing!
• Content writing
• Video production
• Training materials
• Marketing, Marketing, Marketing
• Press Releases
• Contacting people to get reviews and to try your products
• Finding partners to link to or resell your product
• SUPPORTING all the questions people have.  Will it do this, does it do that, question, question, questions…

It’s been a lot of work but we finally have www.dnnspot.com off the ground and really rolling.  Thus far we probably have around 1,000 hours invested in the module development and creating DNNspot.com. As a product company you have to invest up front and hope long term to make that up plus a lot extra. Stay tuned to find out how it goes.

FYI: DotNetNuke / DNN is a content management system that makes running a website much much easier.