Quan Zhou

Case Study - ArsDigita

            Philip Greenspun is a semi-retired American computer scientist, educator, and early Internet entrepreneur who was a pioneer in developing online communities and then he founded ArsDigita in 1997. Greenspun was born on September 28, 1963, grew up in Bethesda, Maryland, and received an S.B. in Mathematics from MIT in 1982 and returned to MIT to study electrical engineering and computer science. He had some friends who also founded ArsDigita which are Tracy Adams, Ben Adida, Eve Andersson and Jin Choi.  

He started building applications because he always liked multiuser applications and he wanted to connect people over the world. He thought that it will be the best usage of computer systems. ArsDigita is famous in startup world because it is a picture of a new model for software consulting and as an example of the dangers of venture capital. He made this as a simpler user interface that will be guaranteed to work on any kind of computer and will automatically survive when any changes in the computer systems happened.

            They had this biggest turning point in the life of their startup, it is when they had Levi Strauss as their customer because it took them a hard time working for non-technical companies. But Levi was a great client for them because he gave them the money to build whatever they needed to build. The uniqueness about ArsDigita, it is much faster than any other startups knowing that building software will took a long time.

            If I were Greenspun, I will not also worry about the competition and I will be more confident for the sake of my own company because I was the one who founded it so I believe in the good things that my work can contribute to the world. Just concentrate on getting the right people who has the same vision of your company that who would also be mentored to the point where they could then recruit somebody else and it can also be applied in third world countries. Because I know everyone can contribute to the world of technology even if it is a third world country.

Case Study – Fog Creek

Joel Spolsky is a software engineer and writer. He is the author of Joel on Software, a blog on software development targeted mainly at writers of Windows software. He was a Program Manager on the Microsoft Excel team between 1991 and 1994 and later founded Fog Creek Software.

               Fog Creek Software is a small, friendly software company in Manhattan. They make FogBugz, a web-based project management system for software teams, and Fog Creek Copilot, the easiest way to provide tech support over the internet.

            Actually, Joel Spolsky doesn’t even have an idea on starting up until he realized that people seems so incompetent but after all they still having a huge valuations. He thought that people were doing much kind of things outside the world and knowing that he is less competent he believes that he can also achieve the same kind of success that other people have because he knows a lot of people or who are just kid who graduated from college goes to public and know nothing about anything as if they were just experimenting. He started to make a start up because of Philip Greenspun of ArsDigita because he had a very great business plan that seems working at the time.

            If I were in his shoes I will do the same thing, like going into a business that you have a full knowledge about it and having an inspiration also is a good thing. Learn things from everyone because it will help us a lot like what he did. Always learn by mistake. Learn by having an experience like when he was still in Microsoft, he learned a lot of things from it and for him there are no software companies that really knew basics of how to develop software in a way that Microsoft did.