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I’ve always been proud of coming from a very entrepreneurial family, and one that has been astute at picking trends.
I’m not one for regrets either, but if I did have any business ones they would be these …
#1 In the early 90’s after years on Compuserve I discovered the web through that service. It was slow and horrible, so I wanted direct access but that was usually only available through the universities. Any way after telling my wife that “This is going to be huge”, and after months of negotiating access and developing a business model so that others could also benefit, I went back to my day job.
As we all know, we call them ISP’s now, and the people who didn’t get comfortable got very, very rich. It’s interesting to note that many people that did start ISP’s in the early days were kids in Mum’s garage, who didn’t yet have much to lose.
#2 When working at Xerox my father and I developed a piece of software called Patch Manager (I still have a copy of my proposal to Xerox). As I read the Larry Ellison book Softwar
Xerox went on to spend millions on an alternative option that seemed in many ways a knock-off of our original idea. Although I believe that option was completely inferior, it was picked up by many corporates around the world.
My boss, however, said that I was “an Account Manager, not a software developer” and made me get back to work. Unfortunately I was young and wanted to keep him happy rather than take a risk. I wonder if we had continued would we be an SAP or Oracle today?
#3 In approximately 1997 I started a website called Photojunction for our industry where “everything photographic” came together. Long before anyone even thought of social media and social networking we had a site where photographers could share links, do reviews, rate sites etc. Although limited by the technology of the time and way off what is available today, it had the potential for a real community to develop. The problem was photographers at the time didn’t have computers :-)
We were caught in The Dip
Being first is only useful if you “stay in the line”.
Anyway life is like that. You make choices and move on. Sometimes however making ‘good choices’ involves not being scared, not trying to keep everyone happy, taking risks and going for it.
No regrets though. I am excited about the journey we’ve had despite these learnings.
Tags: Action, Business, Go For It, Lessons, Regrets
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August 10, 2008 at 7:45 pm
Ian Baugh
“Regrets I have a few, but then again, too few to mention” – Frank Sinatra OK, here’s another one…
In the late 70s I helped run a boatyard in the Solomon Islands with a group of other Kiwis and Trevor Holmes, our English Boss. It was a great place and we loved it, and loved the people. But living miles from everywhere, we had to import everything, from hammers and nails to Caterpillar engines.
And once we’d bought it we had to stock and keep track of it. We had a very busy warehouse in which everything was recorded on 5×3 file cards. The good old days!
I still remember a guy from the Asian Development Bank telling me on the boat trip back to Henderson Field, “Ian, have you heard of computers? Man, you could really use an Apple II here to run that warehouse!”
Anyway, that‘s just scene setting. When we got back to New Zealand I went to work for the naval architect who designed the boats, one of nature’s true gentlemen, Jerry Breekveldt. In those days boat design could be a tedious business, with seemingly endless calculations designed to ensure that everything necessary fits in the hull, and that the vessel gets along economically without sinking, rolling over or breaking up.
Jerry was and is a very bright guy and he must have been one of the first people anywhere to write his own code (executed on a HP programmable calculator with a tiny screen) to develop the hull shape and run the stability calculations etc.
I had never forgotten the ADB guy and the Apple II. In fact I’d bought a IIe and tossed it for a Morrow running CPM (!) so I could run some decent software for what was to become Queensberry.
So I felt totally qualified to say to Jerry, “Jerry this is gonna be huge! Rewrite your program for the IBM PC and sell, sell, sell!” Another green field.
But Jerry didn’t like MS-DOS (who did?) and preferred making a decent living, going home at night, and hiking at the weekends. Who wouldn’t? I was just grateful that at least I didn’t predate the age of calculators.