Hi Diego,

By all means go for it, have a look at other companies like trolltech and mysql that have managed it and do your homework first though.

The other thing i would recommend is decide on licencing and release the code soon if you are planning on open sourcing it. It will give you a base of potential employees who already know your product. And the quality of someones patches is going to be a much better indicator of who to hire
than any interview.

good luck

Sean

Go for it. I also agree with Sean on open sourcing it if possible (as if you didn't already know that) primarily because it will help boost the developer community around the project and provide a good pool of talent to draw upon.

Sincerely,
Anthony Eden

If/when you do open source as a preliminary to other endeavors, let us know. I would be interested in participating.

Hi Diego,

I would exercise caution in starting a business at this time as the world economy is going through a very rough period thanks to this "war" the USA (my country) has started without UN backing. We have no idea when it will end and what it will cost but it looks like it will plunge us into a second recession (that is if we ever get out of the first one).

That being said, I do think that the present generation of e-mail clients are inadequate. If you can make a product which greatly improves productivity AND it doesn't force users to lose valuable features in their present e-mail programs then people will be more inclined to switch.

But, remember, Outlook Express is FREE and comes with Internet Explorer so that's a huge installed base to try to displace. Your product has to be affordable to entice people to give it a try.

The one feature which attracted me to Spaces was that sent mail goes with incoming mail. THAT is the #1 improvement and I can't wait to have it AND the many useful features of OE combined.

There are also a great many people using the full Outlook client. Eventually you have to emulate them as well as well (the shared network calendar).

What would prevent MS (once your product is more widely known) from copying your features? Gates has wiped out many companies this way. You must assume he won't tolerate competition.

What about the so-called trend to .NET? How will that affect your plans?

If you think it can help you, well just go for it.
It doesn't hurt....

But don't expect too much of this, because there are lots of good projects starting and only fews succeed.

Spaces is a very good tool with lots of potentials (I know I'm using it everyday) but don't bet your house on it.

I agree with the others, you must rapidly decide which license you will use because it can have huge impact on your success.

Gérard

Hi Diego -
I just started my first company, and it's a blast. Many people will tell you that it's a lousy time to start a company because of the economy, but there are two sides to a down economy. The tech crash has left many talented people out of work, and you can find very good people who will work with you for little or nothing, if they believe in what you're doing and you give them a concrete share of future booty. The challenge here is that people have grown understandably distrustful of stock options. You'll have to lay out a clear case for why this will succeed financially, and on what timeline.
-Roy Feague

Have you considered the fact that you will also be competing with Chandler from OSAF?

Good luck
Mark

Deigo,
I think it is a perfectly great idea. Many companies make personal use free, or donation, and commercial use licensible, i.e., MySql. The commercial license comes with Full technical support.

But, a very successful method I've seen is what Eudora does. Eudora has allways given away a "Lite" version, usually 2 - 3 versions old for Free. This gets the app on people's computers.

Eudora then also gives away a "low volume advertisement supported" full feature current version.

Then they sell a "non-advertisement" full feature current version for a reasonable price. Eudora is a very good e-mail app, but has a weak addressbook, No Calendar, No ToDo, No contact management, etc.

A BIG plus I have seen in this is that Eudora is a "Very Well Liked" software. They have a good reputation, I have never heard of a virus being written to attack or compromise Eudora; and, they do make money.

Even though I was recently using MS Outlook for a while, 1 year; I have used Eudora, fully licensed and paid for, for 4 years previously, and currently. It is no where near as feature rich as "Spaces" is currently, or Outlook, and they are content with the niche they fill.

The only reason that I stopped using Eudora was that version 5.0 had some problems with Win95, so I needed a Contact Manager, calendar, and addressbook and decided to try Outlook. Outlook IS so buggy, even running on Win2K with both the O/S and the app being current with ALL security patches and service packs ( 72 in all last year) it still bombed MORE than any other app on my PC. I find this true of MS apps in general.

I've experimented with a few other open source e-mail apps - Columba, Mahogany, Scribe; but so far Spaces offers the most features and looks the most promising. I also like that it is platform independent since sometime in the future I am going to convert from MS PC O/S and as many apps as possible to a MAC/Linux box.

Hey Diego,

Sorry for the delay in responding... you've gotten some great comments from people so far. I've commented on my blog:

http://www.russellbeattie.com/notebook/20030328.html#113301

-Russ