It is very common for us when we talk to customers and attend events for people to ask us questions about our infrastructure and the rationale behind our choices. It is a very common question in the startup ecosystem for different reasons such as getting the feel for the company’s profile or as a source of inspiration for people’s projects.
This post goes into detail on our entire development stack from top to bottom.
At a glance:
More detailed:
Source Control
There are many choices here and all are supported with very good arguments. based on our organizational structure and the decision to support linear development (which means minimal branching), the choice was for traditional source control tools (instead of distributed ones such as GIT/perforce). Because of extensive exposure to subversion and it’s general acceptance, we chose this.
Because we are a SaaS company and we generally prefer using services, we also have an on-line hosting package for it.
Programming Language and OS
This is a very open discussion and there is a nice chapter titled “So Many Platforms, So Many Options”, from The Web Startup Sucess Guide, by Bob Walsh. We had decided before to use PHP on top of linux. Our distribution of choice is ubuntu, with which we are very familiar.
Framework
In PHP, the choices are really endless. We chose Zend Framework for the following reasons:
- Familiarity: already used it in (smaller) projects in the past
- Leverage as much or as little of it as we want
- Supplementary tools available as we upscale, such as the rest of the Zend platform
The best element inside the Zend framework is that a software house can use as many features of it as they want, without getting into trouble. You can use the MVC, or you can just do it on your own with mod-rewrites. This goes all along the framework, which is good both in terms of being able to do custom development on what we needed different, as well as a smaller learning curve: when the project had to do some things urgently, the fastest approach was taken, and then when familiarity and exposure to the framework was better, we re-implemented those features in the framework’s ontology.
Java Script Library
jQuery Simple, easy choice 
. Better supported, large user base, ease of use, number of plugins, nice and diverse community (eg. designers, coders, etc). We could not have thought of anything else, although we considered MooTools because of the Zend Framework integration.
Build System
Given the rest of the choices, the options available are limited, so we used Phing for build automation.
Programming IDE
There are many custom builds for Eclipse, our main one is the following: Eclipse for PHP Developers, which is tailored to our needs and has nice features such as code completion, subversion integration and many others.
We also use Komodo edit from Active state, which may be a good candidate for a future IDE. Both of those are cross platform. In each developer’s platform the following mini-IDEs/editors are utilized:
- Linux: geany and gEdit
- OS-X: TextMate
- Windows: Textpad
Data Base Management System
There is a very old post about that here. Many things have changed since then, but the choice remains the same: PostgreSQL. Now I have more arguments in favour of it:
- Cohesive and easy to find documentation
- Clear licensing – see what’s going on with MySQL/Sun/Oracle
- Feature Set
But most of all it is very dependable and stable. I know that it is not the most popular choice and that we have issues with software that runs on top of MySQL only, but we are very happy and confident for our choice and no company can take it away from us.
Backup and Restore
We chose Backup Ninja because it had a very small learning curve.
We might evaluate more options in the future, when we re-evaluate our backup strategy. Also
Gnu Privacy Guard is being use to encrypt the backups so that they can be transmitted and stored remotely.
On Wednesday and Thursday we went to Learning Technologies 2010 to promote Notion Learning and check out the competition. And the simple take-away is this: Even in 2010, corporate LMSs still look awful. Every single stand displayed the same tab interface across the top, with the same table structures showing competency frameworks and training interfaces. Watching sales professionals demo the systems was hilarious: Page after page of complicated forms, just to assemble simple courses and handle training assignment. Bamboozled visitors watched, realising that they’d have to have 3 weeks of training just to get started with these ugly systems.
Things have moved on. There were some interesting speakers, particularly around mobile. Mobile has moved from ‘beta’ style implementations in 2009 to a must have part of e-learning strategies for organisations. The gold-rush was on with many companies keen to show off their mobile implementations.
Also on Wednesday night, we had a stand at Innovate London Showcase 2010 at the Thames Innovation Centre.
We got some posters and flyers printed:
Nothing like repeating your pitch every couple of minutes at a stand to help improve it!
http://www.innovatelondon.org/
In a previous life, travelling around the US and Europe I came in contact with a large number of companies using learning management systems. I met all kinds – people who had never deployed one before to HR departments who were cyclically deploying a new LMS every 3 to 4 years – still in search of one that adequately met their needs.
A common thread emerged through all of this contact – a need for a simple to use LMS that really was simple to manage, and fulfilled the core role of an LMS properly – ie. deployment and management of training. The epiphany came when an exasperated HR professional threw up their hands and pointed at the screen. They said:
Can I just have one screen where I get my data?
This was after three days of patiently trying to learn how to navigate screens and screens of forms, lists, and general madness in an established LMS. The technical among us may be inclined to scoff at the over-simplification implied in the statement, but it’s point is clear. And it’s one of the main reasons Notion Learning is being built.
Currently, commentators are making all sorts of bad noises about the traditional LMS – as though it’s some sort of awful beast. VLEs, empowering learners and everything else is taking centre stage, and with some (but debatable) justification. But the need for an LMS that does tracking well doesn’t go away. And HR departments screaming at systems that just don’t quite do what they want, or take three weeks of technical training to get them started isn’t the only way it has to be.
The aim with Notion Learning is that one day I’ll be able to go back to that HR executive and give him a system he’ll enjoy using. A system he can learn in a couple of hours by themselves, rather than a couple of weeks. One that just shows him his data.
Notion Learning; our easy to use, web based, powerful learning and training management system for businesses has just gone live in alpha.
As we had said back in October, it’s been very quiet on the blog because of the huge amount of development we’ve been doing in preperation for our first release. On Monday evening we deployed the alpha version (0.85) of Notion Learning. This is a huge milestone for us as it’s the first time the software is available on the Internet. Since Monday we’ve been doing a lot of testing to ensure that the application works in terms of performance – it’s vital that the application runs at a capable speed so it’s just as usable as a local, desktop application.
As well as that, we’re also revising the first version of the notion learning homepage. There is still a bit to go on that to really emphasise the benefits that Notion Learning brings to an organisation, but there’s a big difference between a big empty black screen (what was there before Monday) and what’s there now.
Currently we are in private alpha, which means that we are rolling it out ever so slowly to stakeholders and friends, for example, early adopters have already been into our system as student users, taking a course we’ve developed. Soon, those early adopters will be given invites so they can create full Notion Learning portal sites and create and manage e-learning themselves.
If you are interested in seeing more of Notion Learning, do get in touch – while it is a private alpha, we’re more than happy to show demos of the software.
Software pricing is one of the most difficult things to get right. One of the first pieces of advice I got from a serial entrepreneur was ‘take a price, and then add two zeroes to the end of it before telling your customers.’ – It seems at times to be as much an art as a science.
That being said, there is useful advice out there, and Don’t Just Roll the Dice by Neil Davidson is a good place to start.
As it says on the cover its “usefully short” – there’s no nonsense here which is nice. It starts with the briefest of introductions to economics, before moving into the interesting area of pricing psychology. The discussion on perceived value is crucial for anyone involved in pricing. I’d recommend supplementing the reading of that chapter by watching this fascinating TED video: Rory Sutherland: Life lessons from an ad man – which delves into the notion of perceived value.
Another interesting aspect of the book was the concept of fairness:
However you price your product, remember that consumers have an acute, although often irrational, sense of fairness. Think twice before you betray that.
I think this is an often overlooked fact by people setting prices, but it’s something we encounter all the time in every day life. Even if something is expensive, if it can satisfy the ‘fair’ criteria, then it’s ok to pay the premium.
Since Notion Learning is going with a SaaS platform and subscription payment model, the section on versioning in chapter 4 was very relevant. The section doesn’t go into ridiculous detail on user segmentation, but it does point out some really neat things you may not have thought about, such as adding choices to a versioned price plan having two opposite effects depending on how easy it is for people to compare the different versions.
Don’t just roll the dice is a great introduction to a difficult area. Read it, then price away.
Page for Don’t just roll the dice at NeilDavidson.com, where you can download a free e-book or follow links to buy on amazon.
Rory Sutherland: Life lessons from an ad man
It’s very quiet on the blog for one simple reason: We’re up to our necks in development of the first prototype. People have been genuinely impressed to see what we’ve managed to develop in a month and a half of full time (well, more than full time, more like all-the-time) development and to be honest we hadn’t realised it until someone pointed it out but we are forced to agree. The product is now a real entity as opposed to a bunch of mockups and best intentions. Shipping is a feature, and that is our new mantra for the next few weeks as we move towards the alpha release of the batman (we went with superheroes, more exciting than rivers) prototype.
Image credit: From the wikipedia entry for Batman.
As previously mentioned, we pitched at the Techcrunch London event last Thursday. This was one of our first public pitches to industry – before that we’d only done it in university competitions (King’s College London & Imperial – winners at King’s and finalists at Imperial) so it was a really good experience. I wish we had more to show, in that our prototype isn’t ready yet so we didn’t feel comfortable showing work in progress screenshots.
We made some great contacts, and we’ve seen a few blog posts about the event where we’re mentioned (and here) so it’s nice to keep building traction as we get closer to putting up the beta. On twitter, @alanhammond made my day with this tweet:
First 6 pitches at #tclondon were interesting. A couple I would invest in if I had the money. Festbuzz and Notion Learning
Notion Learning is pitching at Techcrunch London this Thursday (24th). We’ll be giving a 3 minute pitch. There’s some good talks and a bunch of other great companies pitching as well. More details here at Techcrunch Europe.
Notion Learning won free office space from the London Knowledge Innovation Centre as part of their Southwark Tycoon boot camp they ran in June. We moved in at the start of September. They are running the competition once again, so take a look, it’s well worth it.
When bootstrapping/doing things on a shoe string, office space is often out of reach so the benefits of somewhere to go and have a proper desk and internet etc. for both of us is huge. We’re very lucky to be here.
Both of us follow Joel Spolsky’s blog, Joel on Software, so when he recommended a new book: The Web Startup Success Guide, we both went off and ordered it.
The author Bob Walsh has crafted an invaluable guide dedicated to everything related to starting a startup in the web space. He covers SaaS, mobile apps, tools, money and funding advice, social media and way more. Sprinkled throughout the book are interviews with various serial entrepreneurs and experts (Guy Kawasaki, Joel Spolsky obviously, David Allen and many more). No matter how much you think you know about starting up, there’s so much more to learn from the book. He provides up to date links to various helpful online tools and resources, some of which Notion Learning will soon be using. His final advice on the last page (I won’t spoil it) is something we both now point each other at whenever things aren’t going so well.
Buy it, read it and tell everyone else involved in a web startup to do the same.
The Web Startup Success Guide @ amazon.co.uk.
The Web Startup Success Guide @ amazon.com.
