Well, it's been a long time since I wrote a proper update, and it's about time I gave up all kinds of information about what the company is doing, and its secrets and all that, which I shouldn't do.

I always thought that capitalism promoted openness. I mean, compared to the alternatives (like tyranny, communism, etc.) it certainly seems open enough. But I guess I never realized just how secretive companies are. They're constantly hoarding their knowledge against their competitors. It's the competitive advantage — one of the competitive advantages — you know something that the other guy doesn't know.

What are the competitive advantages anyway? Well, you can have better talent, better technology, better marketing, better ideas, better execution. As far as talent goes, there's no particular need for secrecy there, although most companies would consider their employee list to be worth keeping quiet (so their competitors can't steal them). On the other hand there's a whole league of professional recruiters out there who make it their job to know who works for whom, and they're only moderately successful. Most people will stay at a job they like.

Better technology — is it secret or not? Everyone knows that Semacode has some good technology. You can check for yourself, you don't have to believe me or anyone else. Just try out our software and compare it to the others. Of course, source code itself, and the specific algorithms inside it is a "trade secret". Even if I were to sit here and write out a one-page description of how our system works, it would still be damn difficult thing to reproduce, because much of the devil is in the details. But protecting the source code itself is not hard and anyway, talking about it would be very very dull outside of a highly academic environment.

What about marketing? Marketing includes how we take our technology and turn it into a product. And it includes who we are talking to, what industries, segments of industries, specific companies are we talking to, who are we "going after" and who is "going after" us. I mean that not just in the sense of who do we want to have as customers and who wants to be a customer, but also who do we see as competitors and who sees us as a competitor (it's not always the same people by the way).

Common practise in business says you don't reveal these things. Why not? Because unlike source code marketing strategies are easily transmitted, understood, and acted upon . If I gave you a list of my target customers, you could go and talk to them. Right now I might be the only one at their ear, but you could change that pretty quickly. Is that good for me, or bad?

Actually I think that's a good question, because competition can be very helpful to companies that are working in new technology areas. Maybe I should give out my contact list in the hopes that my competitors will sell my product for me. How does that work? Well, there's two phases at least to a sale — first your prospect has to decide that there's a market here worth pursuing, and then secondly they have to decide which technology provider / integrator they're going to tap to help them pursue it. You're competitors definitely help with the first half. If you've got a lot of competitors then it's a good sign that you've got a valid market. So I don't mind having competitors. Maybe I should tell everyone who my prospects and customers are.

But wait ... there's another problem with that. You see, your customers might not like you to broadcast that they're working with you . They might have reasons to want to keep your affiliation a secret. They don't want to pre-announce what they're doing. Again, it's all about competition. Here's a simple one. I'm working with X, and let's say that I go out and tell everyone. Now company Y, who are located near to X, think "hey that's a great idea why aren't we doing that" and they come to me, give me a better offer, buy an exclusive and shut down X completely. That would sure suck for X, eh? (Although it might be good for me...)

So yet another reason why I shouldn't go around broadcasting my marketing efforts is that I run the risk of pissing off the very customers I'm talking about.

So what's a business person to do? Must everything remain a secret?

I don't know.

Ideas wise, it's also tricky. I've come up with a new industry that we could market semacode in. To translate that into plain english, a bunch of new people who could really use semacode that we never thought of before . It happened kind of organically. Someone approached us to work on a project that seemed a bit out in the left-field. That particular customer / project hasn't really gone anywhere. But in the process, I realized that this industry, that they were talking about, is pretty profitable and could really use our technology. It's a very simple pitch and we have a pretty simple strategy to test it out, we know who to talk to, we've started to talk to them, etc.

Now I think to myself, I think ... hmm... have my competitors (I'm sure you know who they are) thought of this? Because if not, I could steal a march on them by getting into this new market, making some deals, and then I wouldn't have to announce them to the public until I'm good and ready. It's not like any of the people I'm talking to are blogging it.

On the other hand ... maybe if I did talk about it here, then I would attract even more interest.

But one thing I can tell you is this: I have some very good business advisors and they say keep it quiet . That's the traditional way to do it. So if I broke the mould I'd be taking a good risk and I'd have to be pretty confident that it was going to be good, or I'd have to feel strongly that it's the right thing to do.

Comments welcome, email me or even better, blog it :-)