Software Business in the Middle East

In his last post, Neil Davidson talked about some of the lessons they learned organizing the Business of Software conference. All the points are very well known but it’s never too much repeating them again and again because they make a lot of sense for any new startup.

Here come some of the excerpts.

“Having a good product isn’t enough. Even if you have an excellent product, you can’t just drop it into the marketplace and expect people to find it, and buy it. If you build a better mousetrap, the world will not beat a path to your door. Of course, you can’t market a dog: a good product is necessary, but not sufficient. Whatever your product - whether it’s software or a conference - you need to spend a lot of time, thought, effort and, less importantly, money on getting people to notice it.”

Especially true for geeks starting up their own companies. Normally we do love programming and technical stuff, and we do not have much experience and passion to deal with marketing and advertisement.

“Ignore other people. Many people - often the same people - will tell you that what you want to do can’t be done; it’s a dumb idea; it will never work. Listen to them, but do it anyway.”

Very-very true. Pessimists are always good because they might help you to look at your idea from different angles, but do not allow them ruin your idea.

Read the rest of the article on Neil’s blog.