Posted by Rene Jansen
Tue, 21 Jun 2005 12:14:00 GMT
Capgemini showed to be a good employer when I told them about our ideas. My boss suggested me to take a sabbatical and work on my plans. If it should work, go for it, if it would fail I was more then welcome to rejoin the User Experience Team that I was working for. Thanks, RJ!
I took a nice short holiday with my girlfriend to Tobago to forget about the previous Capgemini projects and get a fresh head and energy to kick start bPerform...
Since I had all time to work on bPerform now, and Marcus and David could make themselves available some time as well, we started to work on a presentation that outlines the breath and depth of our ideas. We will use this presentation to test our ideas on some potential customers. If they will like it, that would prove our concept. If they really don't know what problems we are talking about, and don't understand our solution, we have to reconsider if we are perhaps to enthusiastic ourselves and see the world through nice, pink sun glasses. First presentation is scheduled for this week...
Tags oprichting | no comments
Posted by Rene Jansen
Tue, 21 Jun 2005 12:13:00 GMT
Because I had worked way to many hours in 2004, I could afford myself to work for Capgemini for only 2 days a week. This opened the possibility to start to do something. Our thought was to write a business plan, get some investors interested and kick off the real design and development work. It took us several weeks to write the first version of the business plan and make all the financial calculations. We then presented it to some of our friends who had some kind of track record in the business plan area. Their very useful input was used to update the business plan.
We managed to present our thoughts to two informal investors. They were enthusiastic about the idea. But, they expected this investment to be pretty risky: we had only a plan and our blue eyes, no customers yet, no product yet... They suggested us to come back later. Perhaps, we will, perhaps we won't...
Tags oprichting | no comments
Posted by Rene Jansen
Tue, 21 Jun 2005 12:11:00 GMT
If you are on the web, you are alive! May 9th, our web site went live at
www.bperform.com.
Sorry, for now the site is only available in the Dutch language. As soon as we have stuff to share to a broader, international audience (I expect around August this year), we will of course upgrade the web site to serve your needs :-)
Tags oprichting | no comments
Posted by Rene Jansen
Tue, 21 Jun 2005 12:09:00 GMT
I started to share my thoughts with friends. Lot's of them recognised that they spend hours and hours a day behind their e-mail program, and yes, they all had thoughts about improving their current tools (most of them use Outlook).
It was just a few weeks later that I bumped into an old mate, let's call him David, who happened to have his own ICT company. I told him about my thoughts, and he was pretty enthusiastic about it. Let's work on this together!
Once in the office, I used to work for Capgemini those days, I shared my thoughts with some colleagues as well. One of them, let's call him Marcus, was already a sparring partner for me for years. We worked together on several projects over the years, and Marcus happens to be one of the best usability and interface designers I have met so far. So, that would make a perfect trio together: having the ICT and business knowledge from Dave, Marcus for the design of the software, and myself for the main concept, business and marketing stuff.
Since we all still had a full (or more than full) daytime job, and were based in different locations (I used to live in Brussels those days) we met several times in the evening hours. We ate a lot of Chinese and Pizza to discuss if we would really like to start a company around our thoughts. Looking back, those days were necessary to build our interpersonal trust, but we didn't really make lots of progress yet. It turned out to be pretty difficult to make progress late at night, especially since we were all pretty tired from our busy daytime schedule. Something needed to change...
Tags oprichting | no comments
Posted by Rene Jansen
Tue, 21 Jun 2005 12:08:00 GMT
About a year ago, it must have been May 2004, I woke up at night with a thought...
Isn't it sad: we are working hours a day on our computers, but computers are still based on some computer metaphores that were designed more than 20 years ago. Computers just know about:
- Files
- Folders
- Applications
Our desktop is actually nothing more than a combined “file browser and application launcherâ€.
I am a knowledge worker, and I am using my computer to manage my daily work. I am not really interested in files or folders. To me, relevant concepts in my work are things like:
- Projects
- Tasks
- Meetings
- Contact persons
- Messages
- Reports
- Etc...
The gap between the computer world and the user is filled by applications like Outlook, Palm Desktop or Lotus Notes. These programs act like the “new†central desktop: We find ourselves managing our daily life from an email program.
So, what's the big deal? Well, I think we would benefit from having something like a next generation email program, that would be build based on concepts and tasks that I am familiar with. A program which would not block me, but supports me.
So, there you got it, my idea. Sounds straight forward, right? But I realised myself that this was enough inspiration to consider to start my own company and solve this problem. If I would not succeed, at least I would have created the perfect working environment for myself. And, if I would succeed, well, the world would be at least a slightly better place...
Tags oprichting | no comments
Posted by Rene Jansen
Tue, 21 Jun 2005 12:01:00 GMT
I have been thinking about starting a weblog for quite a while now. I am starting my own company and thought it might be interesting to share my experiences with whoever is interested. We live in a knowledge economy. We compete on knowledge. So, would it be wise to share all my experiences, even with (potential) competitors? We will only know when we are old and wise. For now I hope that sharing experiences will lead to inspiration and cooperation. So, feel free to react on any of my future postings. I might or might not decide to share information that might be seen as my personal "intellectual property". But isn't everyone's knowledge a combination of all knowledge, experience and inspiration that was offered by others? So, wouldn't it be fair to share as much as possibly appropriate? For now I think so! Let's go out and have some fun...
PS:
I have to give my warmest regards and thanks to the guys from blogger, they have created a really excellent environment, a school book example for usability!
Tags oprichting | no comments
Meer poëzie
