July 2007

Simon is the owner of Datamystic – a software company in Melbourne, and downloadpipe.com – a successful download portal. He had an interesting Aussie entrepreneurship story to share, and I’m so glad I got to know him and make the interview. It’s a story about starting a part-time business from passion, growing it, and doing a fully successful business while keeping his own lifestyle.

Simon, please tell us a little about yourself and your family.

Simon: I manage DataMystic (originally Crystal Software), a software development company based in Melbourne, Australia. DataMystic was a part-time business for years, but in 2000 (after 9 products), it started making more money than my day job! I left my real job and started working from home, which was terrific because I hated feeling like an ant in peak-hour, and the extra 2 hours a day increased my productivity tremendously. Soon after this, my wife and I backpacked around the world for 14 months. This was funded by the business – I answered support emails in unreliable internet cafés, and bug fixes were performed on a tiny laptop – which I even lugged into the pyramids in Egypt because our hotel was so dodgy!

My background – I have a consulting background with customer-facing business analysis, database design, and way too much data correction and integration! Although I have degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, I’ve never used the Engineering side in anger, which is probably a good thing 🙂

Read more

I’ve “meet” Dean Hua on the social networking platform Xing, where he is one of the moderators of the Entrepreneurs Playground group. He is a Small Business Entrepreneur running a Sachi Studio company – Web Design and Marketing Strategies which makes him perfect for an interview on the Entrepreneurship-interviews.com blog. I was amazed to see so many similarities with my own entrepreneurship experience, so here is what I found out (in a random order as the Skype discussion went along):

So what’s the secret ingredient to be successful in such a crowded market as Web design? What’s special about your services to attract customers?

Dean: As you mentioned, Web Design is a quite crowded marketplace, and I’m competing against the World. I specialize in Web and blog design, lightweight CMS and I do localized SEO strategies. So I’m usually the best person to talk to if the client needs all these 3 services coming from only one provider. Not all Web design companies do all 3 things simultaneously. With a decent knowledge base of social media and Web 2.0 related topics, I found that I add a lot of value to businesses who want to position their online presence in that realm. I know there are quite a few web designers with knowledge in this realm, but it’s exciting to see how much of the local customer base don’t know anything about this. Hence, I’ve found it helpful to target my services to some of the localized population here in the Washington DC area.

Read more