The long & winding road
09/03/12 17:13 Filed in: Business
I’ve produced well over 400 products in almost 25 years in business now, but never anything like this before. Typically I’ve always been able to see the ‘bigger picture’ from the start and get the job done ‘to spec’ fairly efficiently. Not with DropSwitch…
It started off being a relatively simple concept. To just deliver a digital product when a code was submitted. We also had a couple of ‘add ons’ that could have been tacked on easily. But then it started. What about the user being able to choose from several products with the code? What about giving them as much info as possible to help decide? That was just the start. The ideas went backwards, forwards and quite often laterally over almost 2 years at un-Godly hours to make DropSwitch what it is today. The whole process was pretty grueling, almost a life within a life. There certainly was a lot of ‘working out’ to be done to make relatively simple things work properly. I’ve logged all the times I couldn’t do what I wanted to over the years and have designed DropSwitch in a way that will at least allow me to take those opportunities in the future. That’s probably the most important aspect to this that I never really appreciated. I had the scars to prove I’d learned the lessons needed to make DropSwitch work.
I didn’t realize it until half way through the process. I hadn’t even considered that it might be something that others might be interested in either. I started out building something I needed for my business. As we reach the end of that process it’s the least important thing now. It became apparent that DropSwitch really needed to be used by many people in order to work properly and that virtue alone is probably what is needed to make DropSwitch all it can be.
There have been many points along the way where it might never have got this far, not least the final stages when the toughest choices have had to be made. But it’s almost here, and the fun will now really begin and perhaps it’s potential will be fulfilled? It’s time for the monster to come to life!
It started off being a relatively simple concept. To just deliver a digital product when a code was submitted. We also had a couple of ‘add ons’ that could have been tacked on easily. But then it started. What about the user being able to choose from several products with the code? What about giving them as much info as possible to help decide? That was just the start. The ideas went backwards, forwards and quite often laterally over almost 2 years at un-Godly hours to make DropSwitch what it is today. The whole process was pretty grueling, almost a life within a life. There certainly was a lot of ‘working out’ to be done to make relatively simple things work properly. I’ve logged all the times I couldn’t do what I wanted to over the years and have designed DropSwitch in a way that will at least allow me to take those opportunities in the future. That’s probably the most important aspect to this that I never really appreciated. I had the scars to prove I’d learned the lessons needed to make DropSwitch work.
I didn’t realize it until half way through the process. I hadn’t even considered that it might be something that others might be interested in either. I started out building something I needed for my business. As we reach the end of that process it’s the least important thing now. It became apparent that DropSwitch really needed to be used by many people in order to work properly and that virtue alone is probably what is needed to make DropSwitch all it can be.
There have been many points along the way where it might never have got this far, not least the final stages when the toughest choices have had to be made. But it’s almost here, and the fun will now really begin and perhaps it’s potential will be fulfilled? It’s time for the monster to come to life!