ProjectPipe for the Web 2.0 Entrepreneur
When we set out to build ProjectPipe, we were originally looking to bring lightweight nouvelle Artificial Intelligence (AI) to the discipline of agile IT project management. We had some cool demos and prototypes that we shared with a small group of people that we trusted. Nothing earth shattering, but content interesting enough to compel us to spend most of our free time pursuing our vision and ultimately quitting very good full-time jobs to make a run at launching a software startup.
Fast forward to the actual release of ProjectPipe in December, and none of the functionality that we initially prototyped and shopped around to friends and colleagues is present in the user-facing elements of the application. Some is still in the Proof-of-Concept stage, some of it is teed up for future releases, and some of it is leveraged behind the scenes, but none of it is visible to our growing user community.
To a certain degree, we set out to build product A, and ended up shipping product B.
It turns out that this is not all that uncommon. Paul Graham spoke about this phenomena in his presentation at StartupSchool, which he subsequently published in his essay titled Ideas for Startups.
So just as our original product vision evolved, so has our vision of our target market. Originally, there were two profiles that made up our view of our centerpoint customers:
- The “Alpha Dog”, or technical architect/PM that leads corporate IT projects
- The Independent contractor that is often the Project Manager, architect, cook, and bottle washer for smaller projects and/or sidework
It’s recently become evident to us that the feature set of ProjectPipe is also useful to a third market: The (drum roll please) Web 2.0 Startup.
[TODO: Blab about the fact that we’re a startup ourselves, and mention the bit about “eating our own dogfood” for the umpteenth time]
There are a bunch of things in ProjectPipe that we’ve found useful in spinning up our company. Here’s a sampling:
- Most small businesses incorporate some form of To Do List to coordinate their day-to-day activities. ProjectPipe’s Issues tool works nicely for this. It allows you view items either in a flat list or as a hierarchical outline. It also provides assignments and prioritization. Plus, you can also subscribe to a secure RSS feed, so that you’re notified when an item is completed by another team member.
- Subversion is a no-brainer if you have source code that you’re developing as part of your startup. But it also comes in handy for other files that you’d like to work on locally, yet keep synchronized across 2 or more machines. I can see the ad now: Subversion: It’s not just for source code anymore.
- ProjectPipe’s Document Management capabilities allow you to edit documents from within a web browser, or upload existing documents or images. We actually use Subversion for most of our Document Management, since Subversion-managed content is readily accessible offline. But the Document Management tool is still real useful in its own right, and it’s integrated with one of our upcoming collaboration-based features. Stay tuned for more on that topic…
- Lastly, ProjectPipe’s Notes tool is convenient for outline-based notetaking. It’s probably no big secret at this point that we’re huge fans of outlining. While our web-based Notes tool isn’t quite as as fast as a desktop outlining app such as OmniOutliner, it’s more than responsive enough for most uses, unless you’re taking live dictation from the president of the New York Speed Talker’s Society after he shotgunned a Quad Shot Iced Espresso with a Red Bull chaser.The hoisting capability allows you to narrow down your focus to a specific topic while still keeping all of your content in one taggable, RSS-enabled basket.I’ve used the notes tool everywhere from boardrooms to Wi-Fi enabled bookstores. It works quite nicely.
In closing, we’re starting to market ProjectPipe to web startups. We’ve created a new Google Group to support a community of users that are leveraging ProjectPipe for their startups or small businesses. The group is named projectpipe-smallbiz.
If you have any thoughts regarding how you’d like to use ProjectPipe for your startup or small business, please join the Google Group and/or drop me a line at mcoyle@botonomy.com.
Oh, and if you are still looking for that “Killer App” to justify gobs of VC funding for your very own Web 2.0 startup, here’s a veritable treasure trove of ideas.