Date: Fri, 3 Jan 1997 14:12:03 -0800 (PST) From: Annelise Anderson <andrsn@andrsn.stanford.edu> To: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com> Cc: Amancio Hasty <hasty@rah.star-gate.com>, Michael Smith <msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au>, chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: FreeBSD into larget corp. environment? Message-ID: <Pine.BSI.3.94.970103135245.17913A-100000@andrsn.stanford.edu> In-Reply-To: <22430.852285183@time.cdrom.com>
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On Fri, 3 Jan 1997, Jordan K. Hubbard wrote: > > I think you need more than a representative--you need a real corporate > > entity, a central organization with whom the large corporation can > > contract for various services as they need them, whether it's > > security problems, equipment that won't work, or whatever. > > Agreed. > > At this point, the only thing really stopping us from going for such > an arrangement is startup capital. > ..... Before I'd even consider > setting up a support organization, I'd have to have enough money to > hire a business manager and pay them a decent salary, a small used PBX > and enough office space to house the front-line tech support people. > The "heavyweights" could consult on an hourly basis from their homes, > but you've gotta have somebody who's in a fixed location from 9am-5pm > or the whole concept just won't fly. I'm not convinced about this. It might be possible to do it without front-line tech support people and without an office and a pbx; just with electronic mail. Then it's not 9-5, it's 24/7. Clients would send requests for help to a mailing list readable only by the people willing to take on the work; they'd indicate their willingness and the client would accept or not. Decentralized. Even the billing could be handled primarily by electronic mail. > > >From my very rough estimates, it would take around $350,000 to hire > the first tech support people and the accountant/office manager, rent > a small office in a not-too-wealthy part of town, get phone lines and > a small PBX installed, run a T1 out from a local ISP and buy a couple > of office server systems. And that's being highly frugal at all > times; taking on full-time employees is just plain expensive, once you > add up all the benefits and 401K plans you're required to make > available. > > Operating costs would probably not drop much below $350K after the > first year, either, since you'd need to expand operations beyond the > starting point and probably incur lots of expenses you didn't > initially count on, either. That means that you'd have to sell around > 150 support contracts at $2,500/yr just to keep the doors open without > a second round of funding and more like 300 if you wanted to show any > kind of operating profit for your initial investor(s), something which > they'd probably rather like. :-) > > So, I guess that leads in turn to two questions: > > 1. "Brother, can you spare $350K for a support organization?" > > 2. "Are there 300 companies out there who'd be willing to pay > up to $2,500 a year for the privilege of pestering someone > when their systems have problems?" > > Jordan Certainly you'd have some start-up costs in getting together some standard contracts. You might or might not have to buy some insurance or pay someone to check out the independent contractors for criminal records or whatever, to reduce liability. Billing and paying should scale to the volume of business. Beyond that there might be the desire of potential clients to sit down and talk about arrangements. Or complain. I'm not sure what kind of a demand this would place on already busy people. There's some time and money involved in this, but there's also a good deal of effort involved in writing up business plans, trying to provide an estimate of the market, etc. that would be necessary in order to raise $350,000 of capital that would go primarily for annual operating expenses. Annelise
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