Archive for category Development
Interview With Tech Ranch Austin
Posted by Mike Gromer in BG Alert, Development, Entrepreneurship, Small Business on September 1, 2009
Last week, I was asked to be interviewed by Jonas Lamis from Tech Ranch Austin about BG Alert, and the impact that Tech Ranch has had on BG Alert and myself. For those who don’t know what Tech Ranch is, they are an incubator of sorts, helping entrepreneurs get the help they need, as well as provide office space, mentorship and classes to help launch the next big thing. Jonas has an interview with Kevin Koym from Tech Ranch explaining this more in detail.
Unfortunately, I haven’t done much video before, so I look a bit stiff in the interview, but it worked out. Tech Ranch has been a great help to me. It’s nice being around people who just want to help others. Also, make sure you check out the other video entries on Jonas’ site.
BG Alert Update
Posted by Mike Gromer in BG Alert, Development, Entrepreneurship on August 30, 2009
In the last week, I’ve been working constantly on getting BG Alert ready for the public. I have migrated from ASP.Net webforms to ASP.Net MVC, as well as integrated with a beta testing manager, called Prefinery. This is a very exciting time for BG Alert, and we are making a major push in marketing and advertising to get as many people registered to beta test as we can. Our plan is to start the beta test on September 14th. All of the testers will be using it for free during the beta test period, and will recieve 3 months free once the service finishes the beta test.
BG Alert would love to hear any comments or suggestions, as it is still in development. Our goal is to help as many families with children with type 1 diabetes as we can. I have a 12 year old with type 1 diabetes, and this service has helped our family a great deal, and I want others to be able to benefit from this.
Lessons Learned – Perfectionism
Posted by Mike Gromer in Best Practices, Design Patterns, Development, Entrepreneurship, Small Business on August 4, 2009
As a software developer in the entrepreneur world, one of the biggest quirks I’ve had to overcome is perfectionism in my software, mainly for BG Alert. A key part of launching a successful venture is your speed to the marketplace. This is especially key if you are trying to be first to market, in front of any would be competitors. Who knows what the mobile phone market would be like if Google had launched the Android OS before Apple came out with the iPhone? Could that have given them the edge they needed to dominate the marketplace? We’ll never know. Currently, I REALLY want to make BG Alert with the new ASP.Net MVC Framework, but I have the site almost all the way done with ASP.Net WebForms. Going the MVC route would be a bad decision.
For us entrepreneurs getting close to a launch, make sure you keep this in the back of your mind. The product is not going to be bulletproof in your first version, at least with software. There will be bugs. People will have change requests. You can always take the time to go back and improve a software’s architecture. Don’t take this as an excuse for lazy coding or poor product design. The architectural phase of a project is vital to maintanability of the software and will have a big impact on the overall time it takes to create it. Concentrate on a good design, then implement it as fast as you safely can.
After all, there’s a reason people use the phrase “first to market,” in press releases so much…
