About
Who am I?
My name is Dimcho Tsanov. I’m 33 years old IT consultant with more than 10 years of experience in the IT world.
In the past 6 years I work as a freelancer doing consulting and development about Microsoft SharePoint, Office 365 and related technologies.
In the period 2008 – 2012 I worked as employee in four companies (Weblacners, Telerik, Vereo, ICB).
Now, I’m inspired by the idea to launch a software product company and I’m going to invest my time and money to achieve that.
I’m married and has a baby, born in 2017.I’m located in in Sofia – the capital of Bulgaria.
Why product company?
Being a good software consultant is profitable job. If you can keep yourself updated with latest technology tendencies, develop good solutions, make community presentations and you are correct with the clients – you be well well paid.
But at some point, you will need to scale your work by hiring people. Trust me, being a single consultant is easy at the beginning but with the time being it requires more and more time. And when you have children – the decision where to spend your few hours free time (work vs family) become very difficult.
And let’s not forget that the IT world is full with good freelancers and starting companies which makes the “getting project” competition harder and harder…
The most logical and easier solution in the situation of single consultant getting overworked seems to be starting a Consulting company. Hiring people, trying to educate and unite them in a good team is not easy task at all. But somehow is very close to what you are doing so far.
I won’t go in details about the nature of consulting\outsourcing companies. My personal reason why I don’t like this type of business is the “reselling people” moment.
On the other hand, Product company looks to me the better business model. You hire people and together try to build product with a lot of “added value”. Of course, the variables in the equation of product business are very tricky – what kind of products will be valuable, how to sell them, the initial investment, etc.
At this stage of my life, I decide to try the idea of “product company”. And in my imagination, the success in developing such company will give me enough money and free time to spend them outside of the IT world – being with my family, writing books…
What is my Product?
My area of expertise is Microsoft SharePoint and Office 365. I have worked with several big companies and I can claim I know much about how SharePoint is used in the business ecosystem.
Logically, my starting products will be focused in this area. I’m starting with 2 small apps (SharePoint Online add-ins) that needs to give me initial “launching a product” experience. Then I’ll try something bigger again in the context of SharePoint Online and Office 365.
Besides, Office 365 looks very promising niche. We are in the world of cloud deployments and subscription type of live.
Let’s see what will happen.
Customer Development Model
The book “The Four Steps to the Epiphany” by Steve Blank became my bible.
The described approach “Customer Development Model” is the way I’m trying to develop my products.
The release and support of free products (with limited set of features) is my interpretation of the step “Customer Discovery”.
