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I calculated the total wait time again. It was an hour and 15 minutes and my fourth visit in less than a month. This was it. I was at the brink of moving out of the service business. My goal had been to build a web software product business from India, from the moment I moved back to India. We already had DeskAway as a work-tracking application our clients were using and I believed that every software eventually would be delivered online. We had already begun this journey. So, seriously, what was I doing waiting? I needed to make the switch right away.
In 2007, I phased out our service business and metamorphosed my software company into a cloud-based product company that would help small businesses around the world track work and grow business.
The switch was a bitter pill to swallow as I was entering unknown territory. But I am glad I made the move and I have learnt and discovered a lot from taking the plunge.

Recycle time
Running a web product company means that most of my meetings, discussions, webinars are over the web. I use Skype a lot. This saves me a ton of time commuting, waiting and trying to convince people why we should build their web application or website. Today, I can reuse this time in product development and online marketing.

Build once, sell infinitely
The beauty of a web product is that you can build once and sell over and over again. In software, there are no manufacturing costs once the product is built (except for the ongoing updates and features). This helps me scale up the business without actually hiring an army of people.

Get lean
A web product in the cloud can be managed by 3-5 people initially with tremendous scalability in acquiring customers and hiring a team. Less people to manage, fewer complications, and reduced overheads.

Get whipped
Revenues in a product business are initially tough to come by since you spend so much time developing the product. It really pushes you and makes you think about the road ahead.

Respect
In India, the client owns you if you run a service business. The same client will look up to you when you provide him your product. Weird but true.

On-time payments
Earlier we had one person just managing payments from our clients. Today, people pay for our products online and if they default the software disables their account (we give them prior warning).

Master of creativity
With a product, you control what you design. Some people will like it and some might not. In a service business, I noticed that different clients had different perceptions on creativity making it really hard for us to unleash our true potential. I look at a product business as a canvas to paint my vision.

Though the road is tough, I am working on building a better product, one that is instrumental in building something businesses around the world depend on. This makes me happy and isn’t that what counts?

Sahil Parikh is Founder and Chief Trailblazer, DeskAway and author of The SaaS Edge.

©Entrepreneur July 2011

Tags:
business, client, cloud, customer, sahil parikh, service, software, web