史蒂文 :: Release 2.0

I'm now a few weeks into my prototyping phase which followed bunch of background work, documents, research, meetings and so on. This is probably one of the hardest parts ofthe business - other than actually getting it noticed of course. However, i figure if you create something that really is useful, it almost sells itself. I've read 2 books on Google in that last couple of months and their story really comes down top the fact the search engine really served hugely missing need.

The first prototype will be released next week and i've been building a suitable datamodel and entity model to reflect what we are doing (more on that soon! - stay tuned). I'm using SQL Server 2005 and C#/.Net 2.0 - the technical advantages, especially server side are just too good to get away from, but as one of the guys on the team loves the Mac, i have assured him the Web Services interfaces will allow integration with MacOS.

Still i expect a lot to happen in the next 2 weeks prior to looking for funding. I am completely free after my amazing Codie awards judging experience came to an end and so now i can concentrate on this business exclusively. We hope to release the technical preview to the public very soon and i also hope to get some Open Source/Open API collaboration around the effort, so keep coming back!!

I will blog "An Entrepreneur's Story" as often as i can and with as much detail as i can without giving the game away (until i am allowed to!).

Oh, I will be numbering each post using Roman Numerals, so you even get a free history lesson - don't say i don't enrich your knowledge!
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If any of you folks are successful entrepreneurs and also have kids then you'll appreciate that you may have had coded the sofware product, or designed the cool electronics gadget or scripted a business plan with a 2 or 3 year old singing "Old MacDonald" in the background and generally crawling all over you.

This can start at 8 AM and finish at 8PM. Well, i'm not a successful entrepereur yet - i'm just starting (as i write this i hear "FireMan Sam [me apparently] - there's a fire... come see" - the joys of youthful imagination!!).

Anyway, i'm trying to figure out how to best manage my time so i get plenty of time to build a business, but still have loads of family time too. I'm doing pretty good just now, but i'm still going to bed and don't fall asleep for a while (would users love this feature? Should i get up and write it just now? Who's that guy talking to me ? Oh me...) and then wake up and for some reason best known to child telepathy experts, my son, Xavier, wakes up at almost the exact same time! Even if i make no noise...

I don't have the cash to get an office and so work out of home (at this very early stage i could code on the bus... and i love the romance of bedroom and garage start-ups :) ) and to be honest at the moment, coding at home allows me to work when i want and avoid the tailbacks getting into offices in the City. It also means i can go running and also have family time rather than get home when it's dark. I just tend to work later into the night.

So what am i asking?! Well, I have considered for a while looking at things like polyphasic sleep which allows you to dramatically reduce your sleeping time (Steve Pavlina has been blogging about this for a while in a more general sense), but allows short naps through the day - which to be honest would be ideal for me (if it works!). My enthusiasm can carry me hours after i should have been sleeping and it can make my patterns pretty random.

Has anyone used such techniques on their way to success or is anyone in the same position as me just now figured out some effective technique? I don't want a lack of sleep, i just want to kinda choose when i want to do it.

Put it this way, i have around 1 to 2 months to make what i'm doing start to look like it has potential success and move towards investment, so i'll try anything once!
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