Ntractive - Blog

A Casual Customer Service Experience

Dale Jensen — 2007-11-15 01:20:03-0600

Last night, my wife and I went to a local electronics retailer (local to many, I'm sure,) to purchase a laptop computer. We'd looked at the various offerings earlier in the day, and, after my wife had done a fair bit of research as to which model would be best suited for our purposes, we headed back in to pick it up.

Frankly, this is how I like buying things -- sort out your options, do a bit of leg work to determine what the best option is, then decisively swoop in to make the purchase. Fortunately, my wife is of the same thought, and thus, we presented ourselves to get our computer, no selling or promotion necessary.

However, decision made, the sale continued. The sales person gave us a healthy diatribe on the virtues of turning the computer over to them, to "remove excess bloatware", install anti-virus and spyware software (replacing an application previously defined as "bloatware") and optimize the computer's applications (despite my comment that only IE and Outlook would be used.) Net cost to us, $130.

To my wife's dismay, I'd been amusing myself with a game on a neighbouring laptop, but once she'd pulled me away with a "my husband is a computer guy, let's get his opinion," I quickly put an end to it with a "no, that doesn't sound like a good idea." Noodling in, I found that the software they would install was selling on the floor for $50, and he had no answer for "so it costs $70 to remove a bunch of junk and install this program?"

He did, however, make a ludicrous statement, in an attempt to save the upsell. "I'm required by law to tell you about this service." Only the foot stomping of my dear wife prevented my innocently asking "Oh, and what law would that be? Federal or state?"

Don't get me wrong -- I understand, even respect, on some level, the need for a service upsell. Computer manufacturers make a bit of coin loading up their boxes with junk, and certain platforms (ok, Windows,) have some issues with spyware and virii. Neophyte users (and I'd count the eventual recipient of this computer to be among them,) would benefit from someone cleaning it up and putting a valid security program on it.

However, I don't couch, even for a moment, anyone using deceit, even ridiculous "it's against the law for me not to tell you this" deceit, to try and sell these services. If someone doesn't want them, let it lie. There's no need for the added claim of legal responsibility. Anyone who has any sense of these sorts of issues (and, frankly, they're the ones that would be hard sells to start with,) knows that it's a load of bull, and you lose credibility.

Ultimately, sales pales to the case for integrity, among those who represent recurring revenue. I dismiss this sort of thing, out of hand, as being ridiculous, but it diminishes this company, to me. This statement wasn't made in a vacuum, the sales person was told to say it, or heard it from someone else.

Ergo, it goes to character -- if this company, or this sales person, under the aegis of this company, is lying to me, and in such a ridiculously indefensible manner, what other fantasies am I being told? Should I trust anything that I'm being told?

Sadly, the answer is, probably not.

Cocoa -v- Carbon: Battle of Macland

Dale Jensen — 2007-10-23 10:30:00-0500

There was a bit of a blow up on the Carbon-Dev mailing list this summer, when someone noticed that the previously mentioned 64-bit Carbon was missing from Steve's keynote at WWDC. Was 64-bit limited to Cocoa, the Carbon developers asked, or was this simply an oversight. Shortly, someone from Apple got on and said "no, no oversight."

To many, that spells the inevitable death of Carbon, which is, effectively, legacy code that has been being carted around since 1984. You could call GetMenu on the 128k Mac, and, thanks to Carbon, can still call it today on an Intel based MacBook Pro.

For what it's worth, Carbon saved Apple's bacon in the transition to OS X. I was at the first WWDC that announced what would become OS X, and the prospect of full rewrites to support the new system didn't have too many zealots. When Carbon was announced (effectively, a way to get OS 9 applications running under OS X with minimal changes,) the mood was a lot lighter. I, too, benefited from Carbon, and still use it here and there (though not on any Ntractive project.)

But, several years ago, my Evangelist at Apple said "use Cocoa. Forget Carbon for new projects. Use Cocoa. Don't know how to tell you any other way, Dale. Use Cocoa." I wised up, spent a few days learning Objective-C (the language of the Cocoa framework) and have been happy with the transition.

Orphaned code aside, there are plenty of reasons to use the framework. For me, one of the biggest is the inherent organization of the class based system. All of the junk associated with menus is in NSMenu. Strings? NSString. Arrays? NSArray. You get the point. When you have an enormous amount of framework to deal with, organization is the key to being productive.

The connections between Interface Builder NIB files and your Cocoa classes, while confusing at first, are so much more powerful than similar Carbon implementations (and let's entirely forget about ResEdit!) The run time binding and pass through structure of the messaging system is similarly tricky, but eminently useful.

Finally, the support that Apple puts in place, though Cocoa frameworks, to utilize Apple technology, is what makes an application like Elements possible in the first place, never mind how long it takes to create. Whether WebKit, Address Book, syncing, .Mac integration, or any number of other features, Cocoa makes development of a complex system a whole lot easier.

I give a nod to Carbon, on its passing. Almost every Mac application of the last twenty years has some basis in it, including a number that I've written. But, with the arrival of the Cocoa era, Apple has put together a framework and development system that greatly simplifies writing insanely great apps, and that's good news for every developer.

The Most Important Entrepreneurial Asset

Dale Jensen — 2007-10-18 12:30:00-0500

I'm frequently asked what it's like to start a company, to strike out on your own and make your dreams of running your own business possible, and what it takes. I often counter with "is that something that you're interested in doing for yourself?" and am almost always met with "no."

On some level, that kind of answers the question of what it takes -- the simple ambition and drive to make it happen. If the idea intrigues you, but the sacrifice, risk and needs of breaking out on your own isn't something that you're willing to swallow, even on a limited basis, then this sort of life isn't something for you.

The entrepreneurial life requires a lot of things. Do you have an idea, and the ability to bring it to fruition? Lacking that, do you have people willing to work with you that do? Do you have the connections needed to make things happen, or at least the ambition to go out and make those connections?

At all stages of starting your business, whether it's raising capital, recruiting employees and business partners, or gaining customers, you need to be the company's biggest salesman. Although, on some level, self promotion is necessary, I think that it's more important to be outwardly supportive of your idea, and simply let your self confidence radiate out through your words and actions.

Faith is your biggest asset. Unwavering faith in yourself, your company and your idea. Faith that what you are doing is right, important, and will find inevitable success. You will be instilling this faith in your investors, partners, employees and customers, so it must first live in you, a deep, invigorating faith that flows from you with every presentation you give, every conversation and everything you do.

Henrik Ibsen once said "If you doubt yourself, then indeed you stand on shaky ground." Your self confidence, built up over time, is the very foundation on which your entrepreneurial enterprise will be built.

Back to the Blog

Dale Jensen — 2007-10-03 09:30:57-0500

Well, it's been a long while since we had a blog entry. So long, in fact, that we dumped the old ones, because it looked like we weren't really doing anything any more. I'll see if Justin can't scare up the old posts and put them back.

Partially, the lack of posts has been a result of a lack of time. Between this, that, and the other, there just doesn't seem time to sit down and write something up. It's also been something of a lack of news... short of some events like InnovateND, most posts would have been along the lines of "writing code" or "working on a presentation I can't talk about" or other equally engaging topics.

However, I had a meeting yesterday morning with a blogger of note, and he said that it was an important thing to do and keep up on. And the timing is good, as we're just about to come out of a quiet period, so there's a fair bit to discuss. I'll try and get something posted here and there, and will ding Justin and Amy to contribute when they can.

As an introduction, I'll go over where we're at. In May, we won the InnovateND entrepreneurial competition in Fargo. That opened the floodgates of local and regional funding opportunities, and we've been largely focused on that since. We're pretty much in the last stages of Round 1 Series A investment, and should have that done by month's end. I'll talk about fund raising, particularly in a non-high tech geographical area, in a series of future posts.

In June, we presented Elements at a national conference. Due to confidentiality agreements, we're not really able to talk about how that came about or what it worked out to be, but it was a great opportunity and we received a lot of great feedback on the product and the innovative way that we're writing and designing it.

We've also had the opportunity to do some networking with a variety of talent at the University of North Dakota, resulting in improvements to our business plans, presentations and product, as well as identifying some great candidates for future hires as the company moves forward. I'll touch on networking, both business and personal, and the benefits that a start up can derive from seemingly innocuous connections, in a future post.

Finally, we've been working on continuing technical development of Elements, both the hybrid desktop piece, and the web application itself. It's mostly done, feature wise, for the beta release, we're just pending the hardware infrastructure and the migration from a dev system to the production release.

Benefiting from Thinking Different

Dale Jensen — 2007-10-03 10:30:20-0500

After a presentation before about 150 investors last week, I was approached by one attendee who told me "I've been watching presentations for 25 years, and I wanted to tell you that yours was the best I've ever seen." That was really nice to hear, and it got me to thinking about why it is, as this wasn't the first time Justin and I have been complimented on our message.

I think that, fundamentally, it's a result of two things. First, we've got a very interesting story to tell. Secondly, we tell it in a way that stands out from other presenters. I'll ignore the first part, for now, and talk a little about the second.

When we were first getting ready for InnovateND, with the presentation that was the precursor to the one I give today, one of our mentors, Bruce Gjovig, said "Don't focus on the product. You're selling you and the company as an investment." In terms of your presentation, the product is almost irrelevant to the discussion.

That radically changed what our initial talk was (largely a product demo,) and sent us down the path of "problem / solution / investment opportunity," which is part and parcel of everyone's pitch. It gets the message across, answers the inevitable questions, but, ultimately, the same old, same old runs the risk of getting lost in the noise of multiple presentations. "Was that the software company?" "No, I think it was the bio-med guys."

There's only so much capital out there to be invested. Don't get lost in the shuffle. In the words of a long gone Apple marketing campaign, you need to "think different." And that starts with your presentation slides.

Let's get something straight here. Justin is the designer, the visual guy, of the two of us. Left up to me, our slides would be as bland as Grandma's mashed potatoes, and ugly as well, given my colour blindness. Fortunately, I leave the marketing and image stuff to him, so we have a nice looking slide set, to start with. If you don't have that sense, find someone who does.

Why? Compare this slide with this one. Same information, but one leaves an impression beyond the information, while the other does not. It's subtle, and might not even outwardly resonate with the viewer, but the first slide definitely has a value that the second lacks, and the overall presentation benefits from it.

We combine the visual presentation with the vocal presentation. When possible, I don't speak from a podium -- you run the risk of lecturing to your audience, rather than engaging them. Wander around, gesture with your hands, reassure those around you that you're comfortable and confident with the material. Use your slide as your reference, skip the presenters notes or written notes.

Remember that, when you're pitching an investor, giving this speech is your job. Your role is to create confidence in the company, the venture and you, and the presentation might be your sole avenue to do so.

Leveraging the Resources Around You

Dale Jensen — 2007-10-05 09:59:36-0500

A common complaint with a pre-revenue start up is that there is never enough. Enough time. Enough money. Enough anything. There is a constant struggle to set and meet priorities, and often times the need is something that you, the entrepreneur, can't react to.

We were in much the same place last winter. We'd worked like mad for a couple of years, put together an awesome product, but we were miles away from having a viable business, because we didn't know a lot about the investment side of getting a start up going. Having read the books, we had a sense of the steps to follow, but that was where it ended.

This, I think, is a position many potential entrepreneurs get into. Technically, no problem. You're a box of ideas and a crate full of innovation. But, without a sales side, a business side, and a clear plan of how you're going to get from idea to product to profit, you're not going anywhere, and neither is your idea.

Pity moreso, then, the programmer entrepreneur, whose network likely consists of fellow programmers and not a lot else. To raise money, serious money, you either need to get the experienced executive team in place, or assume the position yourself and do a darn good job of building confidence.

In the case of Ntractive, I've always been a bit of a universalist (more the Alexander von Humboldt than Carl Ritter,) which helps. I don't mind standing up in front of 3,000 people and yakking away, even though my strong suit is in programming, not pontificating. With Justin, a creative and image wizard, it's a decent enough team, able to raise first round, at the least.

But, moving forward, we needed help from people that we didn't know, and didn't really know how to get in touch with, short of joining some sort of local business social club and hanging around, waiting for someone to ask what we're doing.

One of the great things about starting a business, though, is that it's really interesting and exciting, particularly to people who haven't done it or been around someone who has. Tell your story to enough people that you know casually, and you're likely to start to find help where you never expected it.

I told a friend of mine at church about Ntractive earlier this year. He was able to help me with insurance rates and ideas about common policies that we would need. He also connected me to another church member, who was a retired banker with great local money connections and the ability to help review our financial statements. He, in turn, suggested someone at the University of North Dakota as another resource.

One of the best resources that we met up with was a senior level class in the Entrepreneurship Department at UND. More about that in another post.

Whither Goest Thou, SaaS?

Dale Jensen — 2007-10-09 10:30:26-0500

We've been through technical revolution after technical revolution in the software industry. There are few, with the age to have seen it, to not muse at the full circle that we've come... mainframe/terminal client, to desktop PC data islands to groupware to software as a service, which is, effectively, the mainframe/client scene all over again, though removing the "elegant priesthood" from the equation (or at least changing their role.)

But, with each transition, comes the cost of change. Both the real cost, of ditching your hardware and software in favour of something else, and the assumed cost, of training, support, lowered productivity, as your employees sort out how this new system you've set them with works differently from what they were using last week.

That, in a nutshell, is a bit of the thinking behind the Elements interface. By giving a web application the look, feel and functionality of a desktop application, we have made the transition from a collection of desktop applications to the unified set of Elements modules much simpler and cost effective.

There are, of course, differences in how we expect the web to work. Buying books on amazon.com isn't the same as buying them at the local shops, and playing a game over the Internet isn't quite like playing it by yourself on your computer.

But, in the case of business applications like Elements or NetSuite or SalesForce, the expectation is that you're replacing something that used to run local with something that runs over the wire. So, as a replacement, doesn't it make sense to make it as similar as possible?

Ultimately, that's probably where a lot of this cutting edge web stuff is going. Blurring the lines between what's running locally, and what's running "out there." Elements is getting there today, but if that's where things are going, you'll begin to see other players emerge with similar methodologies. Which is really best for everyone.

Until the next revolution comes along, and we start over again.

A Name Defines Everything

Justin Bartak — 2007-10-08 02:00:00-0500

Back in late 2003 I was brainstorming for a name of a product I was about to start working on. I wanted the name to be simple and something that described my overall vision, and what came to mind were scientific names such as Elements, Formula and Particle.

The main reason these type of names came to mind is because my dad (Duane Bartak) is a Chemistry Professor and I have heard terms like these all my life. I must confess that I never really liked chemistry, but as you can see some of it did stick with me. My dad was also the one that got me interested in computers. When I was in 4th or 5th grade my dad brought home this wonderful new thing called an Apple II. This was the start of my love affair with computers and Apple in particular (but that is a story for another blog post).

The name I chose, "Elements," was just perfect for this new product. It described the modular and expandable aspect of the product, the name was simple which was really important to me, and it had really good marketing potential. In 2007 we added the SBM (Small Business Management) to the Elements name to better describe our evolving product..

Once I finalized the product name, I needed to come up with a company name. Once again, I was thinking about what my overall concept of the company was going to be. The system I was architecting and building was totally different than any other web application out there. It looked, felt and ran more like a desktop application than a web application. Another one of the main differences was how the user interface was going to be fluid and interactive (I was already thinking about an AJAX interface before the term AJAX was even used). I kept gravitating towards the word "interactive" becuase it just felt right, so I came up with and interesting way to spell "Ntractive".

Now you know how the company name "Ntractive, and our product name "Elements SBM" were conceived.

Why Build a Hybrid Web SaaS Application

Justin Bartak — 2007-10-16 01:30:00-0500

Back in early 2004 when I was designing, programming and architecting Elements, I was really paying attention to these two new companies SalesForce and NetSuite among a few others. These companies in my opinion understood the future of software development (especially SalesForce), however I really never liked how these applications worked in the browser.

All of these SaaS applications (On-Demand as they were called back then) were just a bunch of web pages glued together. These applications did not look or work like your traditional desktop applications at all.

I thought these new web applications did not understand UI (User Interface) design at all and most of these applications were not very attractive either. These new apps also had really poor workflow and had zero fit and finish which made it hard to believe they were suppose to relace your desktop software.

So what I wanted to build was a CRM, PIM, ERP SaaS application that looked, felt and worked like a desktop application and had a top-notch user Interface to boot. This concept posed a bunch of technical issues and frankly was quite ambitious (but with a lot of work all the pieces came together).

Initially Elements manipulated the browser window to make this all possible but in 2005, Dale built a custom browser for Elements so we could stop having to manipulate the browser window (Thank You Dale!). This was awesome, because now we had full control over the environment and this is what the original vision of Elements was, now fully realized thanks to the custom browser!

Once we had the custom browser we realized the potential of what we had just done. Now we had access to desktop resources, the operating system and 3rd party applications. The Hybrid Platform was born.

The Hybrid Platform has allowed us to do things you could never do in either a traditional desktop application or a web application. If you want to see some examples just look at our "Integrate" page on our site to get a taste of what I am talking about. If you really want to see what we have done and you are going to be at MacWorld 2008 in San Francisco stop by booth #4524 and see Elements SBM in action, or if you are interested in beta testing Elements SBM just sign-up on the website. We are currently looking for Mac based companies with 5-10 users for the next round of the beta..

My Intro and Finding the right Angel for you

Amy Indridason — 2007-10-06 02:30:45-0500

I am the new intern at Ntractive. Currently, I am an MBA student at the University of North Dakota and part of Dakota Venture Group, a student managed venture fund, which has been working with Ntractive since spring of 2007. I hope you will enjoy my blog posts which will be related to my specialties, including business development activities and investing in start ups. I’ll also be writing about the things I learn “on the job” related to helping develop and grow Ntractive.

Angel investing has long been a hot topic in the private equity world. Recently though, as the size of venture capital deals have increased, the niche for angel investors has grown. Guy Kawasaki provides some insight for entrepreneurs in The Art of Raising Capital. He especially highlights some factors that make angel investors different from venture capital investors. I think that both entrepreneurs seeking angel investments and angels themselves will find his comments as interesting as I did. I’ll hit of few of these points now.

First, make sure that your angel is an accredited, sophisticated investor. A solid business attorney should be able to help you make the right decision about who to work with. The SEC has regulations about who is considered an accredited investor. The sophisticated part relates to having investors who can offer you advice to help you grow your company.

Next, don’t underestimate angels, remember that even though they want to help an entrepreneur get their business off the ground, they are investing their own money and expect to see a return. On the same note, be sure to understand the angel’s motivation and overall expectations, especially expectations on returns. Also remember that angels typically invest in start ups because they were once entrepreneurs themselves. Get a feel for how much they want to be involved in your company and how often you should be asking them for advice. Chances are, they will be more than happy to offer a word of wisdom in tough decisions.

Finally, consider who you are asking to invest. Angels may be motivated to invest in a business if their friends or other well-known angels already have. And, even if this doesn’t attract investors, having angel investors who have worked together and created synergies in the past would be a great asset for your team.

If you are currently seeking angel investors, in 2005, Inc.com did a sample list and description of angel investment funds from the around the nation. Specifically in the Midwest, RAIN Source Capital provides infrastructure and support to 23 angel funds. Also be sure to look into Dakota Venture Group, the fund that I work with.

Entrepreneurship Department at UND

Amy Indridason — 2007-10-15 09:30:00-0500

As Dale previously mentioned, Ntractive spent some time in the spring of 2007 working with the senior level entrepreneur students at the University of North Dakota (UND). The class was Entrepreneurship 410: Entrepreneurial Finance and I just happened to be in it. The instructor, Dr. Jeffrey Stamp had met Dale and Justin through the Innovate ND competition, and saw great potential for his students to get involved.

For our final project, Dale and Justin presented their business, submitted business plans, and each student was charged to review the plan and pro forma financial statements as an investor, do a valuation of the company, create a capitalization table, and set a term sheet.

Some of us worked together, making sure to keep a few ideas secret to give our project a competitive advantage and make it stand out from the rest. In the end, we produced over a dozen different analyses full of feedback to give to Ntractive. This collaborative project gave student hands-on experience with a real project for a real company and it sounds like it helped Ntractive quite a bit too.

In 2006, UND’s Entrepreneurship Program was ranked the 8th best undergraduate entrepreneurship program in the nation by the Princeton Review an Entrepreneur magazine. Rankings for 2007 will be released later this month. The Entrepreneur Program is one of the fastest growing programs at UND, with more than 50 majors and more than 200 students enrolled in classes. 50 entrepreneur students are enrolled in the capstone business plan course this semester alone. The program is run by Dr. Jeffrey Stamp, Chair of Entrepreneurship and Innovation at UND and Craig Silvernagel, Entrepreneurship Director.

This is the second time the University has been recognized in a similar list as a national leader for producing and supporting entrepreneurs. Looking back to 2004, UND was ranked 14 out of 25 as a top entrepreneurial campus by Forbes.com and the Princeton Review.

Hidden Resources, a Practical Example

Dale Jensen — 2007-10-11 10:44:36-0500

In my previous blog entry about taking advantage of hidden resources around you, I closed by mentioning meeting up with a class at the University of North Dakota. Today, I'll talk a bit about that experience, and how it changed our approach going forward.

We met with Dr. Jeffrey Stamp at the university, wanting to get some feedback on our business plan and presentation that we were preparing for the Innovate ND competition. He liked what we were doing, particularly the Apple connection, and suggested that it would be an interesting experiment to have us give our presentation and business plan to his senior level entrepreneurial class and have them evaluate the company as part of their final exam.

Well, aside from reading at church periodically, I hadn't given any sort of public speech since I was in graduate school, so the prospect of being able to "warm up" the presentation on a well trained audience before the Innovate ND final was quite appealing. We also knew that any glaring holes in the business plan and financials that we'd put together would be quickly exposed by twenty pairs of sharp eyes.

So, on a warm May day, Justin and I walked across campus, with our presentation and hopes for the future ensconced in a black backpack. Dr. Stamp met us in his office, sent a student into the class to brief them on the procedure and gave us a quick pep talk. Five minutes later, Justin and I entered the room, a bit nervous, but ready to give it our best.

Twenty minutes later, presentation successfully concluded, we had a fairly long question and answer period, and the students quickly picked apart a number of items in the business plan, found areas that needed more information and helped us to define several places to improve. The question and answer period was extremely helpful, as both the students and Stamp critiqued our answers, which tended to be more flippant and confrontational than would be appropriate before investors.

We gave them a quick demonstration of Elements SBM, and adjourned for a week, as they prepared Stamp's final exam.

When we got back together, Stamp started by stating what his pre-money valuation of Ntractive was, and offered up a proposition (theoretical, of course!) As the founders of Ntractive, would you, he asked, take that amount in cash, retain ten percent of the company, and be funded to finish the product?

Several students spoke up and said that they would. He looked at me, and I said "no way. I have faith that we're going to grow this product and company." Well, faith's nice, he said, but there's another answer. From the back of the room, a girl spoke up. "No. The deal is terrible." Why? Seems that she'd spent a bit of the week researching our market, competition and our product and said that evidence was that we'd be worth far more than the initial valuation within a short period of time.

In the end, we gave the students an opportunity to evaluate a real and thriving concern, likely a much different thing than doing something similar from a textbook. But they gave us far more in return -- confidence, experience and a real sense that what we were doing was important, interesting and valuable.

It was just the boost that we needed to bring us to the fore in the Innovate ND finals a week later, and it continues to carry through as we're raising our first round of capital.

We've established a number of great relationships with the students of that class, identified a lot of potential employees (it's too bad that a technology start up doesn't need twenty MBAs and business majors -- I'd be tempted to try to hire them all!) and been able to hone our presentation, business plan and expectations as a result of their feedback.

Without a doubt, the best hidden resource we've found!

Due Diligence from the Investor's Perspective

Amy Indridason — 2007-10-19 12:15:00-0500

As a part of Dakota Venture Group (DVG), I was fortunate to be assigned to the Ntractive due diligence committee earlier this year. Through this process, we spent months closely examining the company. Although each investment fund may have its own approach to due diligence, most have a checklist of important areas that they want to cover. At DVG, we have a nine page checklist that covers every area of the business, a few of which include:

- Management Team

- Business Structure

- Market Opportunities and Risks

- Business Plan

- Product or Service

- Intellectual Property and Technology

- Competition

- Marketing Strategy

- Operations Plan

- Financial Model

We also heavily consider the entrepreneur’s abilities and do a lot of quantitative analysis of how the business would financially perform. Some of our questions get pretty in-depth. We gather as much as we can from the business plan, company website, people we know in the industry, and general information from the Internet, and then we compile a list of questions for the entrepreneur. In our fund we generally have one person who is the liaison between the fund and the entrepreneur. In essence of the entrepreneur’s valuable time, we try to not to bombard him or her with questions every day, but rather only once or twice during this entire process.

At the end of compiling extensive information about the entrepreneur, the company and its market, the company’s valuation (or the estimated price of the company) becomes the issue of the hour. Determining a valuation is really tough, especially for startups because they are usually seeking funding pre-revenue. And valuation models tend to be based upon revenues trends. However, in start ups, valuations tend to be based upon anticipated revenues, which take into consideration dozens of factors about the company’s product, overall scalability, potential customers, competitors, etc. Because these are all based upon assumptions, they can be really difficult for the entrepreneur and investor to agree upon. In most cases some type of negotiation takes place. You can imagine that the value of the company becomes pretty important when a potential investor is determining what percentage of the company he or she would be buying at a certain dollar value. Everyone likes to know what they’re getting for their money.

The Kauffman Foundation has a great collection of articles about Valuing Pre-Revenue Companies written by a number of experts in the field, and should be helpful for both investors and entrepreneurs. There are even some templates you can download to calculate valuations.

My favorite article from this collection is Investment Valuations of Seed- and Early-Stage Ventures by Luis Villalobos. He discusses why valuations take such precedence in this process and how they (if not done right) can create a poor relationship between the investor and entrepreneur. He addresses dilution and how returns on investment are calculated. Expanding beyond purchasing common stock (which most VCs and angel investors do not like to buy), Villalobos digs into warrants, liquidation preferences, dividends, and other things that are commonly outlined in a term sheet that add value to the investment. In fact, these are often used as tools to help the investor and entrepreneur come to a consensus on the company’s valuation. For example, if the investor feels that the valuation is too high, they could ask for long term warrants to purchase shares at the same price on a later date. This give and take between the two parties, I think, really makes the valuation an art.

I’ll go on more about valuations another time.

The Art of Design

Justin Bartak — 2007-10-22 10:30:00-0500

"Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works. " -Steve Jobs, Apple, Inc.

This quote is a very powerful statement and not only one that I agree with, but one that I live by. Design is too often overlooked and rarely ever understood. Software in general is notorious for really bad design, just take a look at what's out there. There are only a handful of companies that really understand design and Apple is one of them. I have watched people like Steve Jobs and Johnathan Ive create these amazing products time and time again all of which had stunning design.

As you can see I am totally fascinated with good design. Every project I have ever worked on has started and ended with good design principals. How things look, work and feel are very important to me because I believe the major difference between a good product and a truly spectacular product is design.

When most people think of design they associate it only with how something looks, which is only scratches the surface of good design. Great design is embedded in every aspect of a product. Take a look at how design fits into our product Elements SBM lifecycle and you will notice without design there would be no product at all.

How design fits into Elements SBM:

- The concept - Design Specification
- The way it feels - User Interface Design
- The way it looks - Graphic Design
- The way it is constructed - Code Design
- The way it operates - System Design

As you can from the list above design is a crucial part of our product (Elements SBM) and a huge part of our philosophy here at Ntractive. So next time you ask yourself why is the Apple iPod so popular? Or why is the iPhone so amazing? And just why is Mac OS X so impressive? Only two words should come to mind "Great Design".

Optimizing a Product Demo

Dale Jensen — 2007-10-25 01:20:52-0500

When it comes to promoting your product, there is nothing better, in my mind, than a live demo. It gives you a chance to show off your wares, in a reasonably constrained arena, and highlight the things that you know will resonate with this person. If you send off a demo, you never know if they even look at it, much less come away with the impression that you want. Do it in person at a trade show or other event, though, and you run the show, you hit your highlights, and you shape your presentation, based on who you're talking to.

One of the things that I enjoy most about attending trade shows and other public events is being able to put together a demo script. You start with some of the highlights of the product, and, by listening to what the person you're showing it to asks, you quickly figure out how to talior the demo to meet the needs of their business.

After you've done a dozen or so, you've pretty much run the gamut of what people are going to be asking you (aside from the more esoteric requests, which are always fun to try and sort out,) and you'll have a pretty good handle on how things are going to go. A platform specific show will have different demo paths than a regional show will, so what you learn in one place won't necessarily pass along to another.

It's best to have an impactful piece that you work into every demo. It's the bit that makes the customer say "cool" or "wow." You'll most likely sort that out beforehand, but you might not until you've run through a few demos and been able to gauge the reaction.

For Elements SBM, that's an easy one. First, you ask the customer "how would you create a new contact in another CRM SaaS product?" Don't wait for an answer, just say "well, you go to the Contacts area, find an 'Add' button someplace, click that, type in a bunch of stuff, click 'Add' or 'Save', then refresh the screen to see the new record."

Then you say "well, in Elements, we thought that was a little complicated, so we do this instead." I then drag a VCard into the Elements window, and it creates a new contact and loads it in. That usually gets a "wow." Next, "so, how would you attach a picture to this record? Well, find an 'Attach' button, click that, find the file on your hard drive, click 'Upload', wait, then hit 'Refresh' to see it.

After all that, I drag a picture from the Mac desktop or iPhoto into Elements, where it's uploaded, attached, and only the picture is refreshed. That gets a "cool" from the appreciative audience.

When you're doing demos, make sure that you engage your audience (find out what is important to them and figure out how you help solve it,) show, in a compelling way, how your product is going to meet their needs (in a generic sense -- most everyone has the same mundane needs,) and make sure to "wow" them with something that your products does.

It's definitely an art and a science, and requires some fair level of personal interaction, but a one-on-one demo is really the best way to show your product. Spend the time to refine your pitch, learn your strong and weak points, and find that "wow" piece that you include in every presentation to leave a great impression.

Identifying That "Wow" Demo Piece

Dale Jensen — 2007-10-29 08:00:31-0500

In this previous entry, I talked about the importance of having an impressive bit in your one on one technology demo. Today, I'll expand a bit on that, as well as what sorts of things can generate this reaction. I believe that any product can hold such a factor, your job is simply to determine what it is.

Let's start with more about the benefits. First of all, the dynamic piece of your presentation is the differentiator that the viewer is most likely to take away. While you should tailor the demo to react to what the person you're showing is asking about, when all is said and done, the sizzle is often more of a take away than the substance.

Secondly, it's the sort of thing that this person is going to pass along to someone else. More than one person has commented that Elements SBM has "an amazing interface," seemingly oblivious that it's the face of a powerful small business management application. They're probably well aware of the practical uses of the application, but it's the cool interface that they want to tell others about.

So, what constitutes this "wow" piece, and how do you identify it with your own product? I'm convinced that it's one of three things:

Automation

Consolidation

Innovation

As a an example, showing off the drag and drop facilities of Elements SBM demonstrates both automation and innovation. Showing how the call centre in the application allows a user to create customers, invoices, packing slips and other items "on the fly" and the data flows into the appropriate other elements (shipping, sales, etc) shows both consolidation and automation.

Before your next one on one demo, carefully examine your product and try and find your "wow" piece. The reaction you'll receive is well worth the preparation time.

Location, location, location

Amy Indridason — 2007-10-26 05:14:56-0500

Paul Graham, a programmer, serial entrepreneur, and author, wrote 18 Mistakes that Kill Startups. Though he identified a lot of issues that could make or break a company, there was one that really stood out and generated some comments by entrepreneurs in the blogosphere: Location.

Throughout his blog, Graham talks a lot about cities being start up hubs and how some cities are better suited to be start up hubs for particular industries than others. The greatest number of start-ups per capita are in Silicon Valley, Boston, Seattle, and Austin. His reasoning is that this is where the experts are, people in the area understand what you are doing, the kind of people you want to hire want to live there, and other people are running the same types of businesses.

In response to these comments, a number of software entrepreneurs began to blog about starting their successful software companies outside of these start up hubs – and how great it worked for them. For instance, Bill Bithers created his software venture in western Massachusetts, and has a number of reasons why he thinks this location is better for his business than any of the cities identified as start up hubs.

On this same note, there are dozens of benefits to Ntractive being located in Grand Forks, North Dakota. Although statistically, there are more software start ups in certain geographic locations, there are other regions that successfully foster this type of new venture as well. Some factors that make Grand Forks a great place to start a business include:

Low costs of doing business
According to the , the average office space in the city is leased for less than $14 per square foot. In addition, there are a number of tax incentives, including income tax exemptions for first-time corporations and sales tax exemptions for certain types of businesses, among others. In fact, Grand Forks is ranked #6 in the nation for best location in terms of overall costs of doing business.

Strong entrepreneurial culture
As Dale and Justin have already mentioned in the blog, North Dakota offers a venture plan competition called Innovate ND. The program sponsored by the state’s Governor and Department of Commerce is designed for entrepreneurs to receive mentoring during the business development process, with the opportunity to win a cash prize and in-kind services from local businesses. Ntractive was one of last year’s finalists. Other resources in the city of Grand Forks include the UND entrepreneurship program, the Center for Innovation which includes two business incubators and offers entrepreneurial coaching, and the University Technology Park. Overall, state government has a focus on developing programs and policies that encourage an entrepreneurial culture.

Availability of investment capital
In the last two years, three angel investment funds have been established in North Dakota through RAIN Source Capital in Grand Forks, Fargo, and Bismarck. There many similar funds in Minnesota as well. The Bank of North Dakota and the Grand Forks Growth Fund offer a number of financing programs for new and growing ventures. And of course, Dakota Venture Group , UND’s student managed venture fund offers equity financing for start ups as well.

The people
Being a North Dakota native, I have grown to appreciate the people who live here and the high quality of life they create. North Dakotans have a reputation as being honest, self-motivated and hard-working – not bad whether they are you’re your employees or next door neighbors. I can’t claim that all North Dakotans are perfectly ethical, but where else do people open your car door if its unlocked to turn off your headlights when you left them on in the parking lot at the grocery store? Overall, communities here are strong, people work hard, and they genuinely care about those around them.

Cost of living
In the first quarter of 2007, North Dakota was ranked the 15th lowest cost of living by state in the nation , with a consumer price index of 93.7.

Local universities
In addition to the University of North Dakota, there are a number of other colleges or universities nearby in North Dakota and Minnesota, offering a strong potential workforce and resource for developing the business. Specifically at UND, Ntractive has or will benefit from:

-Business development partnerships through the Entrepreneurship program
-Well-educated programmers graduating from the Information Systems Management and Computer Science departments

Another thought about being web-based software companies is that employees do not actually need to be located in our city. In fact, an ideal candidate could potentially work remotely from the city where they already live.

Overall, Grand Forks is a great place to live and a great place to start a company. I have a feeling that there might be some other gems in rural areas of the United States too. You don’t have to be in one of Graham’s start up hubs to create a successful software venture.

Why Doesn't the iPod Have an FM Radio?

Dale Jensen — 2007-11-02 11:29:31-0500

I was reading a thread on digg.com the other day about either the iPod or Zune or something similar, and someone piped up "how can Apple be taken seriously, they don't even have an FM radio in the iPod?" It's a common complaint, but it really misses the point.

Well, to dispel that misconception, you can get an FM receiver for your iPod. Even an Apple one. But, here's the thing... as much as this is a common complaint, you won't find it on the best seller list. The "why" of that is both interesting and obvious.

What is the innovation of the modern MP3 player? We've had portable musical gear for decades -- bulky cassette recorders/players even predated the Sony Walkman, and I have recordings made in the 1920s on semi-luggable devices. Technology existed long ago to duplicate one source to another, converting from vinyl to magnetic tape, live to recorded.

No, the innovation is bulk and accessibility. Two factors that don't really seem to play large in Apple or Microsoft's advertising, but they are truly the revolution before us. Cassette players struggled with anything over a C-90 (hour and a half,) while even a puny iPod holds about 12 hours of music. A tape is linear -- digital gives us shuffle.

I spent a bit of time a month or so ago multi tasking. As I was working, I fed CD after CD into my MacBook Pro. iTunes was happily looking up song and album titles, ripping the CDs and spitting them back out. I have a fairly sizeable CD collection (well over 1,000 discs) and it's mostly obscure stuff like 1970s German Electronica or UK neo-progressive, but when all was said and done, I had my Video iPod stuffed to the gills with music that mattered to me.

The last step was creating playlists. I have a list of my German stuff, the prog, the jazz, Disney music, and so on. Depending on my mood, I either listen to albums, or select a play list, turn on the shuffle feature, and listen to hour after hour of music within the genre I've selected, with no repeats, no talking, and no "geez, I hate this song, what else is on?"

Who needs an FM receiver when your iPod holds the greatest radio station that there is -- perfectly aligned to your tastes, with no commercials, and no annoying DJs?

That's the innovation -- the bit that frees us from other's decisions, other's limits and other's expectations. The iPod is what you are, not what someone else wants you to be.

Due Diligence from the Entrepreneur's Perspective

Dale Jensen — 2007-10-31 01:06:01-0500

Amy wrote a great piece from her perspective as a member of Dakota Venture Group on due diligence, and I thought it might be interesting to look at this process from the business's point of view as well.

To be perfectly honest, this is probably the bit of the investment process that's the most nerve-wracking to the entrepreneur. The counterpart, which is similarly unnerving, is the question and answer session after each presentation. It's the point at which you open yourself and your idea up to unfettered criticism, and no one knows what's going to be coming back from the other side.

However, the best approach is about 180 degrees off from that -- this is your chance to shine! Show that you know your business, your idea, and your pathway to profitability by your reaction to these sorts of challenges. Here are some tips that I think will help you through the process:

When it comes to your idea, you are the smartest person in the room
Your investors are there to learn about you and your idea. While they've read your business plan and other materials, they still might be trying to figure you out. Make sure that you share what you know, as well as your enthusiasm. The best thing that you can leave behind is a room full of educated people.

Speed is a virtue, if you're confident
Although you may or may not be under any obvious time constraints, it is always a good idea to be responsive to any query posed to you. Think about the response, of course, but get back to the question as quickly as possible.

Questions are asked in a vacuum
Realize that the questions you will be asked are most likely those that aren't addressed in your presentation or business plan. The more complete these items are, the easier due diligence will likely be.

Due diligence is more about saying "no" than it is about saying "yes"
Going through this process isn't without expense to the investor. Unless you've stumbled upon some sort of goof that loves riding people, if you've gotten to this point, you've probably already received a favourable rating from the group that you're pitching. That doesn't necessarily mean that it's a "your game to lose" situation, but you should recognize that showing confidence and understanding of the situation is critical.

Due diligence gives you a great opportunity to review your own plan
Take every question as a bit of constructive criticism to consider, or as something that you need to address in future business plans or presentations. You may even realize new information or a new point of view as a result of questions raised through this process. Use the opportunity to revise your pitch and plan.

Although intimidating, and for obvious reasons -- a bad due diligence and/or question/answer session has killed more that one solid project -- due diligence can be a critical piece of your side of the investment process. Learn from it, react favourably, and due diligence will be less a threat, and more an ally on your path to Round One investment.

Design and Development

Dale Jensen — 2007-11-05 02:02:23-0600

Although I've been a professional programmer for over 20 years, and a casual one for probably ten ahead of that, the real value of design based development never really hit home until Justin and I hooked up, about three years ago. In the instances where design issues were left up to me (never a good idea, honest,) I viewed thing functionally, not in a workflow or visual sense.

For a significant part of Elements' early development, a lot of programming resulting in me leaving "orts" (google it if you don't do crosswords) behind as I plogged through code. I'd write a pretty boss sales function, for example, but it would look terrible and I'd leave it to Justin to clean it up and make it usable by someone other than me.

That's really the challenge of classically trained developers -- a great sense of how something should be done, programmatically, and a pretty awful sense of how something should be done, from a user's standpoint. If you analyse the methodologies of many major software developers like Apple, Microsoft or Intuit, you'll see one common thread runs through their successes -- reliance on product review by end users. That's the result of additional resources that are able to be put to the task by these companies.

Unfortunately, most small developers don't have the luxury of this sort of vetting, so it's left to the developer to produce an application that's both powerful and easy to use. That, all too often, results in a capable application that no one but the programmer can take advantage of. I know, I've written a few of them.

Development is the bit that sells the product. "Hey, our program does this!" Design is the bit that not only helps sell the product ("Not only does it do that, but look at how easy it is!") but it also helps keeps costs low after the sale. If it's easy to use, it's not going to cost a lot in support or training after the sale.

As much as you need whiz-bang programmers who can juggle handles and multiply dereferenced pointers, you also need someone with a sense of style to rival Jonathan Ives. Someone who understands control placement and colour gradation and can explain their value. It's a key piece of the success equation.

I don't know that there's an easy solution to this. Over time, many programmers may begin to understand and code to the point of view of the end user, but, ultimately, you'll likely need someone on the team who understands the basic concepts of human interface design. The background of this is a mystery... I've seen people with PhDs, and people with mere obsessions with all things Steve Jobs, become successful, while some who use computers 20 hours a day appear as abject failures in user oriented design.

Lacking that, lock someone in a closet with TOG and see what comes out. With any luck, they'll grok the precepts, dig the design, and get you on the right path.

Ntractive Blog 2.0

Justin Bartak — 2007-10-03 00:00:00-0500

Ok, we tried this blog thing before but were not very successful at it, because we were busy developing the Elements platform, doing business development, and raising investment money. Well, to be honest we are still doing all those things but we are going to give this blog another shot and be more successful at it this time (at least that is our intention).

We would like to introduce Amy Indridason. Amy is an MBA student at the University of North Dakota and is currently interning with our company. Amy is in charge of our "Business Development" (which means she does a myriad of things for us). We are totally excited to have Amy on board, and believe she is a tremendous asset to our organization. Amy is going to be blogging as well so check out her posts.

Dale and I would like to welcome you to the Ntractive Blog and we look forward to blogging about our new start-up and everything that is going on with us. We are also going to sound-off on other topics that apply to our industry, market or just business in general.

So here is the new and improved Ntractive Blog version 2.0

Couching an Evolution

Dale Jensen — 2007-11-08 09:32:32-0600

In an industry filled with cycles, we're towards the end of one of the biggest. Computer technology has become a silicon Ouroboros, in a never ending circle of distribution patterns.

At the advent of computers as useful devices, the model was one to many -- computing power was centralized in a single, large entity, and the power was parcelled out among many terminals, which connected the users to the software.

In the 1970s, visionary engineers such as Ed Roberts, Lee Felsenstein and Steve Wozniak fought to bring computing to the masses with the development of the personal computer -- the Altair, the SOL and the Apple I, respectively. I had the experience of having access to a SOL at an early age, my father having purchased and assembled one himself.

With the arrival of IBM, Microsoft and mainstream business applications like Lotus and dBase in the 1980s, the computer revolution was indeed in full swing, as a PC on every desktop became the battle cry, and typewriters, dumb terminals and paper spreadsheets became antique relics in the past.

Once the PC was as ubiquitous as a pen and paper, though, nothing remained stagnant -- groupware, networking and multi user applications were the latest effect to improve productivity, emerging from the labs of Bob Metcalfe and the PLATO project at the University of Illinois (another early innovation that I had access to, courtesy of my ever enlightened father.) Bringing together all of these PC desktop "islands of information" was the focus of the 1990s.

Finally, we're beginning to see the emergence of the technology referred to as "on demand" or "software as a service," which is, in fact, simply a new distribution method. Applications, running over the Internet, avoid a lot of the problems associated with desktop applications, such as updating, versioning, multi user, and anywhere and anytime access.

Thus, we're back at square one, back to the one to many distribution method, but with two twists -- first, users are accustomed to a certain level of functionality and ease of use, honed by years of PC use. Secondly, rather than the "dumb" terminals of the past, which struggled even to handle a "CLS" call, we are now using incredibly powerful computers to access all of this online functionality.

Which means, I think, that the perfect platform for interfacing with this new methodology is what we're working on at Ntractive -- the hybrid web application, which pulls together the best of both the web and the desktop worlds. It means an easier transition for ingrained desktop users, reduced IT management costs, and incredible functionality and productivity for everyone.

Ntractive Core Values, Part 1

Dale Jensen — 2007-12-12 00:00:00-0600

(Part of an ongoing series of articles, this piece discusses the important values on which our company has been founded. While not inclusive, we think that these values represent who we are, and what you can expect from your relationship with us, whether investor, employee, vendor or customer.)

Innovation and Creativity
Ntractive views innovation and creativity as critical to everything that we do. We don’t believe that “thinking different” is just a great option, we think that it’s fundamental to our success. Whether in support, sales, development or any other role, Ntractive employees should always be free to explore different approaches, seeking the best solution for themselves, the company, and our customers.

Justin and I didn't set out to write "another Salesforce.com ripoff" -- we truly wanted to do something different. It began with Justin's perception of the product design, moved into a complete and complex view of the sorts of functionality and features that would be most useful to a small business, and wound up with a fantastic new way to write applications, the hybrid web application.

It's very easy to "take an existing product and put a clock on it or something" (Homer Simpson) but we really wanted to change the way that a web application can work, or, taken from another point of view, change the way that a desktop application can work. That means a pretty big switch in expectation, that says "okay, a desktop app does this, how do we make that work in a web app?" It isn't an easy solution, but it is the best solution, which makes it the right one.

Ntractive won the Innovate ND competition by thinking outside the expectations of how companies should interact with software to help with management. We encourage our employees, customers and other interested parties to continue to do the same.

In twenty years of interviewing and hiring programmers, I would have to say that creativity is a key component of the successful candidates that I've seen. There is, I'm sure, a camp in the development arena that says that understanding and adherence to established programming standards is a fundamental requirement, but, while I see the value in that, I also see the value in seeing beyond set boundaries.

Creativity means looking at solutions, methods and designs in ways that often defy what the expectation is. Every other web application requires the user to "import" or manually type information in. Ntractive Elements allows you to drag and drop existing information, without duplication of effort or potential of error.

And it's not limited to coding -- it might mean finding an equitable revenue sharing arrangement for a channel partner, or coming up with unique ways to drive critical investment. It truly means freedom to provide solutions that meet the circumstances, rather than forcing circumstances to meet the needs of the solution.

Innovation and creativity launched Ntractive and the Elements SBM product, and we see it absolutely fundamental to propelling the company forward.

Ntractive Core Values, Part 2

Dale Jensen — 2007-12-17 01:28:37-0600

(Part of an ongoing series of articles, this piece discusses the important values on which our company has been founded. While not inclusive, we think that these values represent who we are, and what you can expect from your relationship with us, whether investor, employee, vendor or customer.)

Part One

Success on Every Level
Ntractive sees success for our customers, our employees, and the company to be of equal importance. A successful customer is the best evangelist for our products, a successful employee benefits both customer and company, and Ntractive’s successes are key indicators that we are achieving these goals.

Every company views their customers as a "view to an end." All too often, this is seen as a financial determinate -- each company represents "X" income (or income potential.) We've quantified that, as well, but we've also delved a little deeper.

The new economy dictates some level of connectivity between everyone. You can type "microsoft sucks" into Google and find a litany of complaints about the service. These may or may not have any basis in fact, but they represent data that can help mould your decision about the company.

Apple has long had evangelists, both formal and informal. I know that the term "evangelist," in itself, is a little uncomfortable, but it does make sense -- like Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, it's a representative who attempts to convince someone that their way is better than the other. Long time Mac OS adherents are unpaid evangelists (often accused of being "fanboys") who promote the service, based on personal experience, rather than any sort of training.

We believe that our core value of Success on Every Level is an outlet of this behaviour -- if you have received benefit from a product or service, and promotion of it either benefits you, or , at least, doesn't negatively impact you, you'll want to tell others. Statistics tell us that, while 80% of negative experiences are passed on and 20% of positive experiences are, we will drive the second number higher.

Similarly, if our employees are experiencing success, whether career, monetarily or otherwise, we recognize this as being reflective of the success of our customers and the company. Company morale is a key indicator of the success of upper management in meeting the goals of employee, company and customer success.

Finally, we recognize that the company's own successes are reflective of our employees and customers. Profitability best comes from a positive relationship with these individuals, not taking advantage of them, as is too often the case.

Ntractive Core Values, an Introduction

Dale Jensen — 2007-12-05 10:33:27-0600

Like so many entrepreneurs before us, Justin and I had a pretty clear definition of what we wanted our company to be very early on. More than just a reaction to the world around us, the definition of Ntractive's core values has evolved over our lives, as we identified what is important, what is effective, and what we believe to be critical to success.

Success is, in fact, the real bailiwick of our ambitions. I believe that true success comes from within the company, as employees, and external forces like customers and investors. When everyone shares in the successes, it breeds more success.

I am frequently baffled by stories of companies that trade short term gains for long term losses by ignoring this. Consider, for example, the company that outsources technical support, frequently offshore. No one (well, no one normal,) calls technical support because everything is going well. They call because they're having a bad experience.

This encounter, then, is critical to keeping this customer. A good tech support contact, in fact, can not only be a revenue saver, but a revenue generator. Unfortunately, all too many companies view this as an unnecessary expense, open for cost trimming. To save some percentage of profit, these key positions are marginalized, and, long term, both the customer and the company suffers.

Sacrificing future revenue for current savings is the ultimate short sightedness, and we're committed to taking the long view in our planning. And that's just one example of how we're looking beyond the balance sheet to create a company culture that is focused on those around us, the pieces that make up the whole.

Justin and I set out to create a great product, but, even more, we set out to create a great company to develop, sell and support that product. That means our first priorities are our customers, our employees, and our investors. Success on all levels means that we're doing the right thing, and ensures success to us, as well.

This article is the first in a series that will explore the key values that Justin and I have identified as being of foremost importance to us. The articles will give you a sense of what you can expect from your relationship with the company, regardless of what your role is.

Building a Scalable Hybrid Web App - Part 1

Justin Bartak — 2007-11-14 10:30:12-0600

In my previous posts, I talked about how the idea for Elements came to be, how design is very important and now I am going to talk a little bit about the things you need to consider when designing and architecting a scalable web-based solution like Elements.

I have spent a considerable amount of time researching, planning, designing and architecting the overall Elements system so it would scale with ease. Since the inception of the Elements project, I knew that the system had to be scalable, so I did a few things when I architected the system that have saved us a lot of time and headaches. Once again, good planning and design can save you some major headaches in the end.

Server Abstraction:
When building any web-based system its always good to start with a good foundation. A good starting point is to abstract your data, storage and graphics into three separate servers. By doing this each server can be optimized for the appropriate task and also can be scaled out with much greater ease. Below is a basic web application 3-tier server set up.

- Application Server - Logic
- Database Server - Data
- Cache Server - Presentation

Session Data:
All session data should be saved to your database server, not your local server. Saving your session data to your database server will allow all your applications servers to access to the session data in one centralized area. Once again, this is a must for clustering and scalability.

Storage and Files:
All files should be saved to a SAN (Storage Area Network) or NAS (Network Attached Storage) rather than your local drive.Apple and Dell both makes a really good SAN and NAS system so check them out (Apple Xsan ,Apple XserveRAID, Dell PowerValut SAN and Dell's PowerVault Direct Storage). Once again, by abstracting your storage you are ready for scalability.

Database Abstraction:
Choose a middleware language that offers a database abstraction layer such as LassoSoft's Lasso language. Database abstraction will allow you to easily switch from from one database to the next without a bunch of code modifications. Database abstraction also allows your web application to have a huge amount of agility since you are not locked into any single database solution and with abstraction you can connect to multiple data sources at the same time (using your same code-base).

Database Encoding:
Use UTF-8 database encoding so you can adapt your solution for international localization. Encoding in UTF-8 will save you a bunch of time later when you want to deploy your application for other languages such as Japanese Kanji (which has double-byte characters).

Use modern languages:
XHTML, CSS, Javascript, and XML is what you should use when building a web application and this is the standard as of today. Then just choose your middleware language (Lasso, PHP, Ruby, JSP, etc...) and you are good to go.

In my next post (Building a Scalable Hybrid Web App - Part 2) I will discuss the hardware infrastructure pieces you will need in place to build your system.

Building a Scalable Hybrid Web App. - Part 2

Justin Bartak — 2007-11-29 08:33:00-0600

In part 1 of "Building a Scalable Hybrid Web App" I talked about some of the things to consider when designing your system from an architectural stand point, now I am going to discuss some of the hardware pieces you need in place to build and deploy your scalable web application.

When building a scalable hardware infrastructure there are some key ingredients to make everything work. I am not going to go into all the little intricacies of everything because there are just to many configurations and details so I am going to give more of a 500ft view instead.

FireWall:
When considering a firewall just do not look at the stateful throughput, but pay attention to what the throughput is when using IPS (Intrusion Prevention), VPN (Virtual Private Network) and Anti-Virus. Take for example the new E-CLASS NSA E5500 firewall from SonicWall (which I really like) has a stateful throughput of 2Gps however if you are using IPS it goes down to 550Mbps. So make sure that the firewall you choose is going to handle the traffic and services you need.

Load Balancer:
When choosing a load balancer (sometimes called a Application switch, or layer 7 switch) think about a few things, does your application need SSL Off-loading, code compression, or bandwidth management if so you may need to purchase additional modules or hardware for your load balancer. Also can the load balancer handle the traffic and throughput you require. Some of the higher-end load balancers can be clustered for scalable growth this should be factored in as well.

Finally think about if you might need to run multiple clusters in different locations around the US or even around the world. Some of the load balancers have options for global serving which allows you to scale your solution on a global level. Check out Zeus's ZXTM GLB to see what I am talking about.

Network Switches:
Use at least a Layer 2 gigabit switch (I would recommend Layer 3) or if you want some serious throughput use 10 gigabit switches for the connections between your servers. I would also recommend using IEEE 802.3ad (link aggregation) for maximum data protection, and throughout of those connections. Once again look at the maximum throughout of the switch you are looking at and the stacking possibilities for expandability in the future.

On the back end use fibre switches like the QLogic SANBox for connections between your database cluster, your SAN and/or NAS and your backup systems.

Database Server:
When choosing a database think about scalability, performance and security. One of the best databases around (if not the best in my opinion) for web application development is MySQL. MySQL is used by such giants as Google, FaceBook and many others. MySQL can handle anything you throw at is, just check out MySQL Cluster and you will see what I mean!

When building your database server use fast processors (Quad-core), max out the RAM (can we say 128GB). You can NEVER have enough ram, and use the fastest hard drives you can find (Serial Attached SCSI is the fastest right now). Check out Dell's PowerEdge 2950 III and R900 rack servers for your database clustering needs and once again think about scability and use a SAN or NAS for your database storage.

Cluster Nodes:
When choosing your cluster node servers you want to purchase hardware that will run your application to it's full potential. The same rules apply when building cluster-nodes as they do with almost anything else. Use fast processors, max out the ram, and use a fast, reliable, and secure operating system (like Apple's UNIX based Mac OS X Server or Red Hat Linux).

Content Cache:
Think about hosting your graphic and media content throught a third-party source such as Akami or Level (3) Communications. Use can use there global infrustructure to increase your content performance through edge delivery. This can really help increase performance of your web application.

Backup:
Backing up your data and your customers data is ultra-critical so what you will want to do is use a tape library backup system such as the Exabyte Magnum 224 or 448 LTO fibre backup library system to automatically backup your data as often as possible.

Power:
Since you are building a web app you need to make sure all your hardware keeps running in the event of a power failure and there is only one place to look for great power management and that is APC (American Power Conversions). APC is legendary for there power management products.

Bandwidth:
Bandwidth is a critical piece of any web-based infrastructure so figure out how much bandwidth you are going to need then double or triple that number. The good news is that bandwidth is getting cheaper and cheaper each year. There are some some things you can do to make your bandwidth go farther. Use content compression such as the Apache 2 mod_deflate module which will compress your code with gzip before it's delivered to the client reducing the amount of data that is transfered (which means less bandwidth used).

For even better performance let your load balancer do the compression for you leaving your servers to do what they do best,.. serving content.

Elements SBM... Live at Minnedemo!

Dale Jensen — 2007-11-19 10:13:40-0600

Although the big event that we've been planning for, MacWorld, is still about two months away, we've been invited to present Elements SBM to the public a little early. If you are in the Minneapolis / St. Paul area of Minnesota, or you're so jacked about seeing Elements that coming to Minnesota in December seems like a good idea, we'd like to have you there.

On December 6th, at 7:30PM, Ntractive will present a 15 minute demo of Elements at the MinneDemo event in St. Paul, Minnesota. MinneDemo is a BarCamp Event, a worldwide movement which brings together people interested in emerging technologies in a fun and informative environment.

This event will take place at O'Gara's Garage (164 Snelling Avenue in St. Paul) beginning at 6:30PM, with the demos starting about an hour later. For more information and to RSVP your attendance, please visit minnedemo.org

We hope to see you there!

Thanksgiving Day, 22 November 2007

Dale Jensen — 2007-11-22 10:58:06-0600

It is Thanksgiving Day here in the United States. Our friends to the north celebrated earlier in October (being this close to the border, we get to enjoy a number of extra national holidays,) and there are similar observations, centred around harvest festivals, around the world.

While the holiday has sometimes blurred into a mix of football, feasting and fellowship, the premise of thanks remains at the core. We have much to be thankful for, even when we sometimes lose sight of it.

Indeed, at this time, we look around us and see that we live in a fairly safe and stable society, benefit from centuries of improvement in health care, which results in longer, fuller lives, and we have the freedom to succeed on our own merits, practice the religion (or lack thereof) of our choice, and remain in charge of our destiny, rather than have it imposed on us.

I have always felt that one of the best things about America is that hard work and determination are probably the biggest keys to getting ahead. There is opportunity, of course, but unless you're the sort to allow others to determine your future for you, you really do manage your own possibilities.

But that doesn't just happen. One doesn't need to go too far back in history to get to a point where that was almost unheard of. There are still places on the Earth where it isn't the case. We are the recipients, the beneficiaries, of those who came before us. When we rise, we stand on the shoulders of the soldiers, the philosophers and the dreamers who created, implemented and defended the freedoms that make our lives what they are today.

The economic system that allowed Justin and I to take an idea, build it, convince others to invest, and bring it to market is one that has evolved over the centuries and is unique to our age. It is the engine that fuels the modern economy and allows one vision to change the world.

Today, I say thanks. Thanks to my family, friends, investors and other supporters. Thanks to my country and to those who are responsible for the world around me that makes my successes possible. Thanks to those whose sacrifice has made the planet a better place. And, always, thanks to God, who is a comfort and blessing to all.

And to you, Happy Thanksgiving! May the blessings of the day be yours, as well.

Confusion... Will be My Epitaph

Dale Jensen — 2007-12-03 12:17:09-0600

(With apologies to Peter Sinfield)

I had the occasion the other day to create a new project in Xcode, the premiere (well, pretty much only,) development environment for OS X. It's something that one doesn't do too often, and I was struggling. There was one step that I needed to do to finish creating my project, and I couldn't figure out what to do.

Xcode is one of those applications that does a lot of things, and, often, the more powerful something is, the more difficult it can tend to be. For a company that is generally acknowledged to be at the forefront of user experience, Apple seems to perennially struggle with developer tools -- whether Xcode or MPW (a 1980s era development environment,) ease of use is not always a hallmark of their success.

I remember talking to fellow programmers, way back when, and drawing kudos for being a Mac programmer. "Wow, that's a hard system to write for," they'd say. The Mac toolbox (pre-OS X, of course,) was indeed a wealth of programming power that required a sense of memory, but once you'd cleared the learning curve, you were way ahead of people who needed to "roll their own."

Rather than contempt, familiarity with the Mac Toolbox bred success! The more you used it, the easier it became. Eventually, I got to the point where I could write the shell of a Mac program in a few minutes, right from memory, and then start dropping in the code for whatever the program was supposed to do.

In application design, a critical factor is how often something gets used. Let's say that feature "A" is used 95% of the time, while feature "B" is used 5% (setting aside the pointlessness of a two featured application for the moment :-). The best optimization of feature "A" is time savings. The less time this process takes, the more the savings expand over the life of the product.

However, and this is where Xcode falls a little short, the best optimization of feature "B" is simplicity and clarity. If I'm using something rarely, I shouldn't have to rely on retained memory to figure out how it works. I'm not doing it often enough to have it sink into long term memory, and, thus, will spend an inordinate amount of time trying to remember how I did it the last time.

If you create a project in Xcode and want to change the name of the resultant product, you need to right click on the project, and in the Build settings, enter a Product Name. Then, and this is the bit that screws me up, over and over, you need to right click on the target, and enter the same information.

I'm sure that someone, somewhere, has a really good reason that these two items aren't tied together, but, ultimately, as a developer, I encounter this very infrequently, and it's a struggle each and every time (well, in the future, I can always refer to this blog entry,) as the result of changing one and not the other is an application that doesn't work.

While we may be focused on time savings, and the appearance of things, it is just as important to think through the things that are used infrequently, but remain critical to function. Confusion on the part of your users, even on a minor component, can leave a bad impression on the whole thing. Assuming that everyone will sort things out really isn't a healthy tact to take.

Ntractive Core Values, Part 3

Dale Jensen — 2007-12-27 12:52:46-0600

(Part of an ongoing series of articles, this piece discusses the important values on which our company has been founded. While not inclusive, we think that these values represent who we are, and what you can expect from your relationship with us, whether investor, employee, vendor or customer.)

Part One
Part Two

Community Involvement
Ntractive believes in the importance of being an upstanding and supportive member of the communities that we work and live in. We will identify local opportunities for service, share these opportunities with our employees, as well as providing direct support, and encourage our employees to do the same. Through example, we will present a culture of giving, sharing and caring about the world around us.

Far too often, a business will exist in a vacuum -- it lives to raise revenue, pay employees and shareholders, and get to another day. We believe that there is both a responsibility and a benefit to give back to the community from which the business has sprouted, whether local, national or global.

On a local level, of course, the benefit is pretty apparent. Our employees constitute a representative section of the local community -- the better off that community is, the better off our employees will be. This is both on a direct and abstract view. There is the tangible result of "a reasonable day's wages for a reasonable day's work" but also the intangible improvement of the surrounding community, due to the impact of the company's contributions.

But it is in the abstract that such community involvement truly shines. Support the local violence intervention centre, for example, and you're improving the life of one or many, who may never be in your employ, but whose touch on your organization and individual lives can be felt, even if many times removed. They are the people of the community around you, and the construct of your community clearly impacts you, no matter what your role is.

Whether environmental, political or humanitarian, Ntractive recognizes our responsibility to the world around us, inclusive of the customers, employees and investors who make us successful. It is a shallow company that doesn't acknowledge ties and responsibilities with the world around them, and we declare that we will not be among these... our community is important to us.

We have been told, many times, to "love thy neighbour, as thyself," which is great advice. Even selfishly, ultimately, it comes back to you. A neglected populace is one that will ultimately revolt against those who are perceived as holding them down. Remember, for example, that Lenin cited lack of bread for the success of the Bolshevik revolution in Russia.

We don't think that our community-centric company value is preventing any revolutions, but it is making a difference in many peoples' lives, and that's really all that's important.

Ntractive Core Values, Part 4

Dale Jensen — 2008-01-24 01:07:13-0600

(Part of an ongoing series of articles, this piece discusses the important values on which our company has been founded. While not inclusive, we think that these values represent who we are, and what you can expect from your relationship with us, whether investor, employee, vendor or customer.)

Part One
Part Two
Part Three

Open Communication
The company will present proactive and frequent feedback to our employees, customers, investors and partners. We will emphasize communication, accessibility and openness. This will be accomplished through frequent and regular company and board of director meetings, as well as as annual opportunity for customers and partners to interact with Ntractive staff, from the executive level down.

There is always, I'm sure, the tendency to want to hold back bad information. Usually, we hold it back because we're afraid that it will reflect poorly on us, as employees, managers or executives. Didn't finish the project? Well, don't say anything, any maybe no one will notice.

Sadly, if that works, it only works on the level to protect the person who should be taking responsibility for the problem. The problem still exists, and it is others -- employees, customers, partners -- who will suffer for this lack of information.

We really want to avoid that, which is why we've declared open communication to be one of our company's core values. Regardless of whether you're an employee, a customer, an investor, or another interested party, we want you to feel that you have all of the information possible to make any decision you need to make.

Therefore, we pledge that we will communicate, regularly and often, with these interested parties. Although it may take some time to come to fruition, we want to hold annual meetings with customers, partners and others who need to plan their business decisions around what Ntractive is doing. This is, of course, in addition to annual and more frequent meetings with our employees and investors.

To that end, my email address is dale (dot) jensen (at) ntractive (dot) com, and I welcome your feedback at any time. If you have a question or concern about Ntractive, Elements SBM, or anything else that we're working on, I will welcome your email.

Together, in an open environment, we'll achieve success for all!

Nous Sommes Du Soleil: 1975, Meet 2007

Dale Jensen — 2007-12-14 01:45:13-0600

Though I am wont to admit it, one of my favourite musical pieces is Yes' 1974 classic (well, classic to me,) album Tales From Topographic Oceans. It is easily the most controversial of all albums in the Yes discography (and if you don't believe that albums can be controversial, I welcome you to read rec.arts.music.progressive on Usenet for a while.) I used to write music reviews, and on one such essay, I once wrote:

(T)he four pieces are really a collection of very good two to three minute movements, connected together with an awful lot of filler.

I tried explaining that to my wife recently, when she came downstairs and asked if I would "turn that annoying song down for a bit" -- unfortunately, but not surprisingly, it was one of the "good bits" that she objected to.

The tour supporting this album sent the band into a bit of a downspin (keyboardist Rick Wakeman, in fact, made a point of his dislike of the effort by ordering dinner delivered on stage when the songs were supposed to be played.) Nevertheless, I spent a long time looking for live performances of this album, as it wasn't one that was officially documented on a Yes album, and was largely stymied in that effort.

However, in 2007, one can find a concert snippet on You Tube, of all places, and zoom back to 1975 to enjoy what once was, with little energy. I wrote earlier about how an ipod allows you the freedom of being your own radio station -- the user content of You Tube kind of allows you to be your own MTv.

Although dismissed often as the realm of the "football in the groin" video, You Tube is a treasure trove of all sorts of copyright violating content that fulfills the long tail of the music industry quite nicely, thank you very much. I can find videos by obscure bands and songs with little effort at all. I sent my daughter a clip of the first song she ever sang along with, "The Last Waltz" by Pendragon, and found out that one of my favourite bands, Marillion, had a reunion at Aylesbury last summer, via a video posted at You Tube.

There is a wealth of content out there that remains hidden on personal video tapes, albums and other media. Ignored, indeed forsaken, by the media conglomerates who are only interested in the flavour of the day. Instead of standard, or even new view, distribution, this entertainment is being passed around from interested person to interested person on a one to many basis. Revenue, lost or otherwise, is ignored in the pleasure of sharing that rare find that will impress, or, at least, amuse, someone else with a similar interest.

While the song "Grendel" may remain an embarrassment for Marillion, tempered by the belief that Recital of the Script is long out of print, die hard fans keep the 18 minute epic tune (based on the highly recommended novel by John Gardner,) alive on You Tube and other video sharing sites. Is this a detriment to the band, or a benefit to their fanbase? Ultimately, it's probably a bit of each.

Information longs to be free, we've long been told by the likes of Richard Stallman. Whether text, graphics, source code or video, the new age of binary sharing shows that, whether current news or thirty year old concert footage, fairly well everything is out there, for the determined seeker.

Get Out and Find a Demo!

Dale Jensen — 2007-12-10 01:58:37-0600

When I was a kid, my Dad was a member of the Elks. The Elks, the Lions, the Bears, the Water Buffalos (though that might be limited to the Fred Flintstone universe) -- these were the social clubs of the day. It was where you went to hang out with other people (males, in these cases,) but they have waned, over the years, and been replaced... with what? Don't know about the general population, but for the technically oriented, in some measure, the equivalent today is the barcamp.

We participated in Minnedemo on Thursday night, the Minnesota (well, upper Midwest, given that a North Dakota company was one of the presenters,) version of BarCamp. The evening started with a dinner, with the event organizers and the presenters, and was followed by the actual event, where about 150 technology oriented people got together to talk shop, life, and see what was new on the technical horizon.

The main focus (beyond catching up with people that you might not have seen since the last Demo,) was new technology -- what was coming out of the community. At this particular Demo, there were five, all effectively web related. In addition to Elements SBM, there was a video encoding service, a targeted marketing platform, the main architect of JRuby (Ruby implementation in Java) and a pretty nifty social site called "Grapheety".

There is lately a lot of talk about the "new social," but the real social is, and will probably always be, getting together in person with others who share your interests, tell you about new things you might be interested in, and listen and interact with you, regardless of how obscure or obtuse your interest happens to be. Asperger's aside, even geeks need to connect with geeks, on a physical level.

Demos just might be the way that that works out. Everyone at one of these events is clearly interested in the topic at hand, and networking, of the social sense, rather than a more binary oriented sense, is the order of the day. Marketers, coders, testers, the ground is leveled at these sorts of social events.

Check out the Barcamp site and see if there's an event in your area. If not, consider starting one. User groups have long been a great introduction into the world of the technical community, and demo is a modern look at that organization. From both a participant and presenter point of view, it's a great event that represents an opportunity for everyone involved.

I'd like to thank Dan and Luke from Minnedemo, along with the other December presenters, and all attendees, for making our participation in the event a memorable one.

Merry Christmas from Ntractive!

Dale Jensen — 2007-12-24 02:23:33-0600

Justin and I would like to pass along our holiday wishes to you and your family at this time. Whether you celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Ramadan or any other sort of holiday, we hope that the season finds you happy, healthy and surrounded by those that love and support you.

Our families, our beliefs and our traditions represent what we hold dear. In our tradition, at least, this season is the season of hope -- hope for a beneficial change of seasons, a hopeful look to the future, and hope for fellowship among all the people of the Earth.

To that end, we hope that the next year brings you success and happiness, and that the problems of the world may be overcome by the strength of understanding right from wrong, good from evil, and that care and concern for our fellow man, whether we agree with him or not, will begin to motivate our decisions.

Peace on Earth, goodwill to man -- it all begins with us. Let's remember that, once the cookies have been eaten, the presents have been opened, and the carols have been sung.

Forecasting by Design

Dale Jensen — 2007-12-19 06:43:34-0600

When I was a kid, I spent a lot of time reading "pulp" science fiction magazines and classic SF books that my father had bought back in the fifties and sixties. One of the things that struck me was how hard it seemed to be to get around in space. Mathematics played a role in a lot of those stories (done by hand, or with a slide rule, of course,) which served to make things seem very complicated.

As someone who's good at maths, but not particularly fond of them, I always wondered why this step couldn't just be skipped -- if you're flying to the moon, just point your rocket there and go. But, when we did go to the moon, it was the trajectory calculus that ruled the day, not my "aim and fly" approach. After a while I sorted it out.

In space flight, because of the distances and physics involved, you aren't flying to the moon, you're flying to where the moon is going to be. On the Earth, we're accustomed to the thought process that, in order to get to, say, Grandma's house, we take this road, then that road. However, imagine that Grandma lives in an RV, going from bingo parlour to bingo parlour. You'd have to know, ahead of time, which casino she'll be at when you want to meet up.

Mathematics tells us that, though the moon is here today, by the time our slow space ship gulfs the distance, it will be over there. Because the moon sticks to the laws of physics, we can just make the calculation, while Grandma moves around a bit more chaotically, based on whether she's winning or not. So we need to ring her up, can't just make a calculation.

Software development is a bit like that. If you want to be successful, you can't design for today -- there are likely already options for the problems of today. You need to figure out what the demands of tomorrow will be. And, like my "Grandma and the moon" example above, you can't really calculate that, you need to make some inferences.

About every ten years, there is a major shift in the computing world, and within those decades, there are plenty of opportunities for growth by predicting and reacting to the needs of the market. If you're relying on technology that's ten years old, replacing systems that were ever older, you might want to rethink what new is out there, and whether there is a better solution.

We designed Elements SBM to meet the needs of small businesses today, but we also architected it to take into account what the needs of tomorrow might be, whether scalability, connectivity, functionality or something else.

Because of the inexact nature of this sort of prognostication, only time will tell whether we've hit the nail on the head, but we're clearly already ahead of that ten year old technology.

Measuring Expectation and Realization

Dale Jensen — 2007-12-21 11:32:37-0600

Shortly before she passed away, I spent a fair bit of time with my grandmother, talking about life "in the old days." Born in Wales around 1900, she told me of seeing her first car, life before radio and when, never mind the telephone or email, a letter in the post was something to talk about. My parents similarly tell stories of the arrival of television, commercial aviation and business automation.

What stories will we tell our children? I can remember when films were things you saw in the theatre, or, for the rare epic, on NBC Saturday Night at the Movies. My first computer was a Data General Nova minicomputer that had toggle switches to load a boot program, and a teletype for input beyond that. I can, in fact, remember my family's first colour television and video game (a Magnavox Odyssey, which had plastic sheets you taped to your tv screen,) little more than a white blip on channel three.

While we still don't have the flying car, we've further evolved to the point of video on demand, computers that are omnipresent, and between cell phones, wi-fi and similar connectivity, we're never more than a couple of clicks away from news, entertainment, family or work. My Dad jokes about the gadgetry that I show up with, although now it's mostly down to a Palm Treo and my Macbook Pro.

We not only demand, we expect, information here, now, and ever ready. Productive individuals (and businesses) need to stay connected, work with others, and take advantage of the knowledge, automation and flexibility that modern systems can provide.

Bruce Sterling wrote, a fairly good while ago, about societies that have the connectivity that we're now experiencing. While his view was a little more fantastic, and perhaps a bit more melodramatic, he's closer to the truth than many writers who predicted immortality, robotics and faster than light spaceships. Progress, it seems, is a little more evolutionary than revolutionary, and founded in practicality.

While the virtual reality envisioned by Sterling, Jaron Lanier and others has yet to manifest itself, we're seeing a new era, wherein the network is the platform, and the power of remote computing means real enhancements in how we work. Products like Elements SBM are emerging, which allow teams to work together, to share knowledge, and to benefit from the constant connection.

The Internet has become more than just a simple way to get around, download entertainment, and connect with others. Applications that are running over the net are giving users all over the world the ability to boost productivity and profitability, simply by plugging in. It's a new platform, a new age, and an era of new opportunity.

At Ntractive, we're committed to our piece of that -- we see the future of SaaS a little differently than anyone else, and we expect that, when the future comes round, methodologies like those we're developing will be a big part of it.