It took a long time but, when we see the light at the end of the tunnel, it’s time to look to the route behind my back.

My name is Augusto.A., Stray Cat for my Internet friends, and I’m the founder of this startup. From now on, I’ll try to discuss with you the adventure I’m living now.

I imagine I should start describing my deeper motivation.
Well, they’re not any special.
I see the middle class, to which I belong, becoming poorer and poorer.
I see my wife spending her best days working long hours because, in our society, a single paycheck, albeit in the middle segment, is no longer enough to provide a family with a decent lifestyle.
I see my parents becoming older and older, and soon they’ll need a dedicated, and expensive, assistance.
I see people climbing the social ladder thanks to political affiliation or plain luck. I devoted most of my best efforts to my employers, obtaining, at best only few nice words.

But what I can not stand any longer that uninformed managers take lame decisions over my head, affecting my future and my life.

This is why I decided to pursue autonomy.

Photo courtesy:  dierken

 The next point is what to do.
I’m a Business Intelligence consultant, I worked for various firms, mainly international. In my career I was lucky enough to meet many good teachers, and now I imagine I have a respectable experience. What I do not want to do is doing by myself the same job I do now , without being backed by the structure a consulting company may provide. This would mean getting the worst and discarding the best. I do not want to hunt for BI customers against the big guys. I’d loose. BI requires such a wide competence range that a single individual can not offer the full service. I do from database administration to managerial consulting and whatever in the middle, but there is a limit to what I can be an expert into.

More, and most important, I do hate kissing butts and making friends just to get the contract. I really can’t stand those soapy salesmen that sell whatever they can to executives barely aware of what they’re buying. I do not want to compete against those people. My strong wish is to forget of their existence.

All this leaves a single option, a product based company. There is a long (as long it could be) tradition of small, product oriented, I.T. companies. Probably you’ll know a few. All the big product companies started small, they started from an Idea, with a capital I. Luckily, I come across one of those ideas. An Idea just to simple to be thoroughly explored by the big guys in the market out there. The idea is …..

(to be continued)