A very important interview with someone who knows what he is talking about, this guy talks too fast. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A22249-2004Jun7.html?referrer%3Demail You will have to register with the above to access the information, it is worth it if you are interested in Marc Andreessen's outlook on Open Source, General Industry Issues, the founder of Netscape discusses the rise and quick fall of Netscape in this interview and the history of Silicon Valley.
It is a long Q & A forum type discussion, I am Sure you will be just as interested in the type of setting that was used by the moderators for a "guest star" to appear on a forum Shawn. Just register, since they have many more articles linked to this interview, in fact they have an entire series of articles with this very important software developer. He does discuss software for servers that he is involved with in his new venture. Shawn, this guy sounds like your hero to me.
Yeah Right Shawn, I would cut you down a notch but I won't. I think that this guy could help you Shawn, just take the time to read what he says, who knows you might get him to guest star on Digital Point Forums one day.
Shawn, you have no time for email, you have no time for reading articles that would help your business with intelligence, can you tell us what you have time for Shawn?
I think Shawn's probably doing just fine anthony- I don't see his software getting over powered and pushed out like Netscape did....
I hope Shawn makes a Billion, I need a loan (grant) Shawn can defend himself if I were picking on him. I was not SB.
Well, haven't made a billion (yet), but working on it. But the software I do sell is pretty popular (in the industries they serve), and is not cheap (minimum cost for a single copy is $2,000, with no upper cap on the price, and I've sold single copies for 6 figures). Actually, I just decided to rewrite from scratch our biggest product (Optigold ISP), so that's going to keep me busy for a year or two.
Shawn you should design software to replace yourself, then you could read email, post here on the forum and read articles. Maybe cloning is the answer for you Shawn, you better find that church that has found out how to do that cloning stuff. While you are at it get that thug wrestler off my back. Maybe you Should contact Andreessen, you should read the article linked Mark might want to invest in your business. You know he was one of the original Google investors.
http://www.digitalpoint.com/products/pricing.html But basically to sum it up, as a base it runs $1,000 + $1,000 per 1,000 customers. So the larger the company, the more it costs. Lets the smaller ISPs/web hosting companies to get into it at a reasonable cost, then they pay for licenses increases later.
I wish I could, trust me. Don't need any investors, company is pretty profitable, and not willing to give up a percentage. I actually get approached by VCs (some well known ones too) wanting to give me money a few times a year, but so far all have been turned down.
Sounds good Shawn but how will broadband affect your future sales, and consolidation of smaller ISP's? There will be fewer ISP's down the road. I use BellSouth as an example.
Definitely has been a shift over the years. Optigold ISP was released initially in 1997 I think it was, which at the time was mostly dialup. Over the years that has shifted more towards web hosting/ASPs and broadband providers. And the product has shifted with it. Supports DSL provisioning and domain registrations for example (which it didn't at the 1.0 version because it wasn't needed). As far a consolidation goes, it been a big factor the last 2 or 3 years. The software also changed a little bit to cater to it. You can use the software to bill as an infinite number of companies. That way you consolidate 20 ISPs into a large parent company, and the end user still gets bills from the company they know, even though it's really all in one system. For new licenses, we sell less units per month, but the units we sell have much larger initial customer licenses on average, so it ends up being a wash since the cost is based on the number of customers. Until users actually give up the Internet, it won't affect the bottom line.
"But basically to sum it up, as a base it runs $1,000 + $1,000 per 1,000 customers." My new ISP has 0 customers, chance I could get it for free? Anyway, any companies you've sold to we would have heard of?