As we build out our product, we try to keep our head down, but perhaps sometimes too much. To paraphrase ZDNet, ‘Where are those guys?’ Our only answer is that we’re working away in obscurity, by choice, trying to build out a revolution.  To that end we always get told to, ‘just hack something together and get it out there!’  Ah, if only…

It’s semantics…

The words ‘hacker,’ ‘hacking,’ and ‘hackathon’ have always been difficult for us to deal with.  We come from a different school of thought and intent.  What we want to build is real software that solves a real need that really scales and has real security and real dependability.  We’re a startup with a product set that we think users will want and we want to be able to deliver an experience to them in a very complicated technology space that will simplify their lives and save them time. We’re also doing this on our own dime, so that extends our timeline and delays our production product deliverable. We’ve talked with our friends in the venture capital and angel investment communities and they (seem) to like what we are doing, but also think that we’ll get run over in the process by the 800 pound guerillas in this market.  Maybe so…?

That word ‘guerilla’ is also trouble, because we’re the guerillas in the revolutionary sense, not the 800-pound players who currently dominate the Tech Top 10.  This is an industry ripe at every turn for disruption and as each guerilla gets entrenched and joins the 800 pound club, other guerillas like Rocket Technology Labs are out there fomenting a new approach.  The opportunity persists because the 800-pound players, even if they get it, are often too encumbered to throw out their sacred code roots and start again.  They also lose a little of that skateboard ’street’ feel and get a little too much Wall Street in their thought processes.

So yes, they might crush us if we’re not careful, but meanwhile we’ll build the best set of products and tools to give them heartburn and scatter some marbles under their feet.  Troublemakers, in the end, are what we are.