To Fail is to learn

I think I have arrived at a point were I am happy to talk about recent events in my business ventures and hopefully allow other people to learn from my mistakes.

I started a business called Tizma Ltd back in Dec 2007 to undertake contract software development and sell my own brand of software online.

For at least a year things went well. I had a decent contract paying the bills and my first product CSV Easy was born. Naively I thought this product would be the making of me….. How wrong I was.

Now without blowing my own trumpet I thought and still think the CSV Easy is a great product. Almost everyone who tried it liked it and found it useful. The problem was theses allies were also reluctant to pay for it.

The software world and publishing model had changed around me and I simply didn’t see it coming. We are now in the age of free web hosted services with huge functionality and amazing mobile apps that cost 99p!!

CSV Easy is just one of those tools people expect to be free or incredibly cheap, plain and simple.

Fast-forward to October 2009 and my first child is born. We’re both excited and happy, but within the same week my main and only contract ceased.

I decided to take it easy until the New Year and enjoy the beginnings of my first born - somewhat burying my head in the sand. During this period I wrote an entire web system I convinced myself was the future, but alas it’s still just on my Hard drive and scrapped.

I expected to have a thriving user base of CSV Easy and the by Jan 2010 the business was hemorrhaging funds with still no real contract work to think of. I’d stupidly registered for VAT, had business mobile phones, top spec broadband and the yearly costs of having a limited company, with accounts and taxes was crippling.

So, in March 2010 I had to do something. I had to get a job and this is where I’m at. A challenging and well rewarded role that I’m thankful for. The business is going through the motions of shutting down and I’ve learnt the hard way that I should have taken baby steps towards entreprise and certainly not put all my eggs in one basket.

I’m still actively supporting and developing CSV Easy and its now available from a new product focused site csveasy.com but its now a personal product rather than a commercial behemoth.