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Now that the world cup is over...

... let's turn to a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent sub­jec­t.

In my pro­fes­sion­al life (that is, not count­ing odd job­s) I have had on­ly three em­ploy­er­s.

I worked for many years for the nice guys at UNL and for about a year for the not so nice guys at Conec­ti­va (now Man­dri­va) Ok, I take that back, they were nice guys, they just were not a good place to work at. Or rather to stop work­ing at.

And the third one has been me.

I must say I am pret­ty hap­py with me as a boss. I have man­aged to go through some very dif­fi­cult mo­ments in my coun­try's econ­o­my, and nev­er failed to cov­er pay­rol­l. Then again, I was very will­ing to take some pay­cut­s, so I am a mod­el em­ploy­ee, at least about that.

But... I have de­cid­ed, a few months ago, that there are clear lim­its on how far be­ing one's boss and sole em­ploy­ee can take you, so with a cou­ple of friends we have de­cid­ed to start a com­pa­ny, sortof.

It's pret­ty ten­ta­tive right now, but we are all three quite knowl­edge­able in many things, and our ar­eas of ex­per­tise over­lap enough so that we can cov­er each oth­er, and are dif­fer­ent enough that we have a var­ied ser­vice of­fer.

Our main fo­cus is sys­tem/net­work/DB man­age­men­t, and a lit­tle cod­ing. So from now on, you will see ev­ery now and then, up­dates about this new projec­t.

Where are we now:

  • We have a few cus­­tomer­s.

  • Each of us is keep­­ing most of their old ones, too.

  • We are us­ing Trac to man­age is­­sues like tick­­et­ing and doc­u­­men­­ta­­tion.

What we need to do:

  • We need to start mar­ket­ing.

Any­one can rec­om­mend a good nerdy host­ing? Un­man­aged, cheap, Lin­ux? We are go­ing right now with Tek­ton­ic, which has some very cheap un­man­aged plan­s.

Any­one can rec­om­mend good lit­er­a­ture on how to man­age a ser­vice com­pa­ny?

Any­one thinks this is a very bad idea? Or a very good idea? Why?

I am pret­ty psyched about this, these are the two per­sons I would trust most in this sub­jec­t, and we have been friends for a very long time. It's go­ing to be fun :-)

Joshua kugler / 2006-06-30 20:30:

One suggestion: get *everything* in writing. Who covers what, how pay is distributed, who is responsible for what things, etc. Not that you distrust your friends. Not at all. But down the road, having an argument (or worse: a fall out) over "I thought you were..." "I thought you meant this," "I assumed," etc. is not fun.

If you want to stay friends, make sure you understand *now* exactly how everything is going to be run. Being able to point to a document is much more likely to keep your friends than referencing a vaguely (and differently) remembered conversation.

Lars Ivar Igesund / 2006-06-30 20:33:

Depending on how "professional" you want to be, ITIL is _the_ management framework for such businesses. I'm sortof in doubt if it make much sense as long as you're only three though. I still think litterature on it might be useful for you, especially for drafting agreements.


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