Startup Spark

Learn How To Build a Software Company With Andrey Butov

by Ben Yoskovitz on February 13th, 2007

Andrey Butov runs his own software company called Antair. He’s built a few products, he’s building a few more. They’re all over the map - from printing, to BlackBerry software, to games. It’s an indication of a guy finding his way, working for himself, learning an insane amount and becoming a mainstay in the MicroISV community. Oh, and Andrey’s also an author…

INTERVIEW HIGHLIGHTS

• Andrey tells it like it is, flat out. I get the feeling this is a trait of many MicroISV owners - Patrick McKenzie from Bingo Card Creator was very similar.
• The ways in which Andrey jumped from product to product are fascinating. And there’s a lot to be learned there for anyone in the product business. One thing that strikes me very clearly is how important collaboration is with others, and networking to find opportunities.
• Andrey’s warning about what happens 24 hours after you release your first software product is priceless.

THE INTERVIEW

1. In 2005 you went out on your own and started Antair, a consulting company. Why?

At the time, I was working on Wall Street as a trading system developer, and took on a new job as a consultant for a small firm. I didn’t have my own company at the time, so I had to be set up as a consultant for the recruiter who had originally found the job for me. So, essentially, I was an employee of the recruiting firm, writing a trading system for the small Wall Street firm. In this situation, the recruiting firm charges the consulting fee, takes a little off the top, and distributes the remainder to me. Up until that point, I always worked as a salaried employee, and wasn’t aware of a need to have my own firm. But it wasn’t long before it became clear to me that taking 30 minutes out of my day to incorporate my own company would let me present myself as a consultant directly to the client without having to go through the recruiter as a middle-man. This was the beginning of Antair. It was nothing but a formality; a channel for consulting-fee cash flow. I was still working on Wall Street, and had no intention of leaving to do anything else. It wasn’t until around August or September of 2006 that Antair took a different route.

2. In 2006 you went from a service company to a product company with the launch of your Printer Friendly product. Why did you make the transition? What did you learn about making that transition?

Prior to Printer Friendly, I released a .NET reflection utility called Chinchilla. I’ll be the first to admit that it was an utterly useless product, and it didn’t sell a single copy. What it did do was allow me to build the initial infrastructure, professional contacts, and market leads, which proved to be priceless down the road. I released the source code for Chinchilla 1.4 to the public in July of 2006.

It was at some point around that time that I wrote and released Printer Friendly. Shortly afterwards, I left Wall Street. I was burnt out, and needed a break. Initially, the plan was to take a few months off in between jobs. During that time, I wrote a book about the life of a Wall Street Programmer, and it started selling well. Sales of Printer Friendly picked up as well. Antair wasn’t making anywhere near the amount of money I was making on Wall Street, but it started becoming more and more clear that with more effort, I could make the company into something that would at least sustain my family.

In mid-December, I met with Jon, a good friend of mine who develops and sells the excellent ViEmu. I threw a few ideas out over drinks. One of them was a passing thought about building a spam filter for the BlackBerry. I had mentioned that the spam problem on BlackBerry devices is reaching ridiculous levels, and that I could not find an existing solution that satisfied me. His response to the idea was more than enthusiastic. I believe that some of his comments included the phrase “If you don’t drop everything and start writing the spam thing tomorrow, I’ll smack you in the back of your head.” Given the choice, I agreed to write the BlackBerry spam filter. It was released a short time later, and proved to be the most successful product to date for Antair.

I am still uncertain if I will ever return to Wall Street, but I still get asked to pick up an occasional contract job. I can be more selective about the type of contract work I take now, so I enjoy it a bit more than I used to. Still, the focus of Antair as a company is on product development, and so far, we seem to be on the right path. We are in the midst of negotiating for a few investment dollars, so expansion may be in the near future as well.

3. Tell us a bit about the products you’ve created, why you made the, and how much research you did beforehand? And what did you learn from your first product to your second and after that?

Chinchilla was created on a whim. It was done more out of intellectual curiosity than as a result of any market research. It was essentially a visual browser for .NET class hierarchies and allowed you to see a graphical representation of the internal class structure of any .NET, .dll, or .exe file. Like I mentioned before…pretty useless.

Printer Friendly was a suggestion made by a friend at work. I was sitting in my cubicle one day, reading a post from the Business of Software section of Joel on Software. Someone had the (now typical) suggestion that you should ask friends and colleagues about the problems that they face while going about their day, as a way to generate product ideas. I turned to my friend and asked the question on a whim. He told me that he never understood why every website has a separate “Printer Friendly” version of their content, when anytime he prints anything off the web, he wants it to be printer friendly by default – no advertising, proper wide formatting, and a black on white, easy-to-read font. It struck me as such a brilliantly simple and obvious thing that I jumped on the project immediately. About a month later, Printer Friendly 1.3 was released to the public as an easy-to-use Internet Explorer plugin. No proper market research was done for this, and I wouldn’t recommend going after such a product for any other small software company.

Printer Friendly goes against the grain in almost every way. It’s a product which has no market; a solution without an easily recognizable problem. People don’t KNOW they need it until they happen to see it with a few seconds to spare. They will never go out looking for it in a search engine, and even if they did, they probably wouldn’t even be able to come up with the right query to describe what it is that they want. Once someone happens to find Printer Friendly, the product has to make it across another hurdle – it’s a middle-of-nowhere product as far as “need” is concerned. People tend to spend money either on something they need (usually for work), or something for entertainment (such as a game). Printer Friendly is neither. Certainly, once you purchase it, you’ll wind up saving hundreds of dollars on printer ink over the course of a year, but the truth is that most people would rather spend the $15 on a game – it would just bring more satisfaction to their day. Printer Friendly is a tough sell.

I’ve already mentioned how the idea for the BlackBerry Spam Filter came about. One thing worth mentioning is that the spam filter turned out to be one of those “right thing at just the right time” solutions. At the time, I was getting blasted with hundreds of spam messages a day. They were being filtered by my desktop and server filters, but most snuck their way through to my BlackBerry before the other spam filters had a chance to act. Not satisfied with any redirection or relay delay solutions, I looked for an existing client side spam filter program online. I couldn’t find any, so I made my own. Almost two months later, there still is no other client side spam filter solution out there. The result is a lot of organic hits from search engines (without the aid of pay-per-click advertising), and a VERY high conversion rate. I’m sure that eventually, Antair will have some competition in this field, but Antair Spam Filter already has a very large customer base, and a second version, with features driven by customer requests, in the works.

5. You’re now working on a game, Temple of Osiris. What made you decide to make the switch into a game product? What’s your target market for it?

I’m working on more than one game actually. Temple of Osiris is my joint venture with Gavin Bowman of V4 solutions. I’ve been obsessed with video games since the days of Commodore 64, but I’ve never had the time to seriously consider making one. Now that I have the freedom to choose my own projects, I decided to take the leap. Gavin wanted to make a game as well, so we decided to take on the project together. Tempe of Osiris is, what has become recently known, as a casual game. In very nebulously defined terms, this means that the target customer is a non-gamer – typically someone who enjoys the occasional distraction of a puzzle game, but is not willing to spend $600 on the latest video card, and has no inclination to even learn what “w00t” means.

Aside from Temple of Osiris, Gavin and I have begun work on a second game, and I am about mid-way done with my next release, which will be a game for the BlackBerry.

6. What do you like most about running a MicroISV?

The freedom of running my own business. I actually couldn’t care less whether I’m running a software company or a shoe store. As long as it’s mine, and I’m not told what to do, I’m perfectly content. Actually, I’m very binary when it comes to such things. I am either extremely happy with my life when I can run things my way, or I literally reach the point of clinical depression when I have to work for someone else – this was the situation I was in when I made the decision to leave Wall Street.

7. What’s your least favorite thing?

The isolation. My wife works in a proper office surrounded by people. For the time being, I work in my home office with the company of my dog. Not having anyone to talk to becomes a source of irritation after a while. As such, I’m thankful for Gavin’s partnership, Skype, and the Business of Software forum.

8. You’re still doing consulting work. How do you manage between consulting projects and your own projects? Would you recommend that other MicroISV owners continue to do both, or go full-time into product development if possible?

I accept very, very few consulting projects. Nowadays, they are mostly favors for old friends. I understand the benefits of growing from a consulting company into a product company, but having done so much consulting work over the years, I have a hard time choosing to pick up a short-term contract when I know that there is so much to do product-wise. When I do so, they are always very short term, one-off type of things. If it were not for the occasional personal request, I probably would not take on consulting projects at all. As far as recommendation, I don’t think that it’s a matter of choice for most people. If you are comfortable with consulting projects and see this as a viable avenue for growing your company, or you see this as being the overall business strategy for your startup, by all means, go for it. But if your intent is to grow into a product-only firm, and the choice is to take on a consulting gig, or starve, there really is no choice at all. In a nutshell, there probably is too much nonsense noise out there about choosing consulting over product development or vice-versa. You do what makes sense, or what makes you happy. Eventually, service companies who decide to grow into product companies generate more revenue from service contracts either way (look at IBM as an example). There really is no distinction – you roll with the market need.

9. How did writing your book, So You Want To Be a Wall Street Programmer fit into your overall strategy of becoming a MicroISV? Why did you write it? Any plans for future books?

The book was written as a point of catharsis. After leaving Wall Street in a bit of a rage, I had neither the time nor the inclination to visit a proper psychiatrist. Writing a book about my experiences while sitting on my balcony overlooking the water in the warm glow of the mid-summer evening sun was just what I needed – and it didn’t cost me a dime. In fact, it brought in a few pennies as a reward. The book doesn’t fit into Antair in the least bit – it’s something I did for myself. If I am going to write another book at some point (and I will), it’ll probably have nothing to do with Wall Street – in fact, in all likelihood, it will be a work of fiction.

10. I came across a post you made on the Joel on Software message board where you reveal your annual earnings since you started, and throw in some additional thoughts on marketing, advertising, etc. Why did you do that? How important is the MicroISV community to your success and the success of someone just starting out?

The Business of Software forum on Joel on Software is extremely important to me. I probably could not function without it. I would certainly have had a much harder time starting Antair without it. I’ve been an active member of the board for over two years now. I try to post every few days. I guess the pretty green checkmark next to my name on the board means that I’m special in some way. Either that or it’s an indication to others that I’m a big nuisance and to just ignore me. Either way, I’m there until they kick me out.

For someone starting out or trying to gain some motivation, the forum is simply priceless. The personal contacts you make through conversation both on and offline are also invaluable. Occasionally, I try to host a drink-night for all BOS members who are willing to come out to New York City. These gatherings are always lots of fun, and result in stronger personal and professional relationships all around.

At some point, the forum ceases to function as a point of learning. At this stage, my contributions are in the form of advice given with a touch of experience. As to the case of posting revenues and internal strategies out in the open, I loved reading those threads when I was thinking about going full-time with Antair. They may not contain as much ‘meat’ as some of the other threads dishing out practical advice, but when a person is just starting out, sometimes motivation is needed more than anything else.

11. What’s one secret about the MicroISV world you could tell people who are thinking about starting one on their own?

There has to be a zinger at the end of every interview doesn’t there? *grin*

One thing that will always hit you hard even if you were warned before hand, is that about 24 hours after releasing your first product, the only thought that will be in your head is: “Damn, I wish I had paid more attention to the professor in those economics and business 101 classes in college instead of looking at the cute blonde two rows down.” If you think that all those pesky technological problems that you’re having during development are your biggest worry – just wait.

CONCLUSION

Thanks go to Andrey for his participation in this interview. I think there’s more to learn within the MicroISV community than you could learn from a great deal of other places. That’s evident in this interview and in the resources they’re building up online.

And don’t forget Andrey’s MicrosISV software blog which is where you’ll find a wealth of advice and insight on building a small, successful software company.

Tags: andrey-butov, antair, blackberry, blackberry-games, entrepreneur, Entrepreneur Interviews, micro-isv, microisv, printer-friendly, software, technology

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