Why I'm bullish about starting an open source web company in the recession

Starting a business at any time requires a certain kind of fortitude; turning away from a secure job (or well paid contracting), putting your pride on the line and investing money that you should be saving for your pension or at least a holiday. Not to mention taking little or no salary for the first few months in return for unending amounts of work. To do all this in the deepest recession for decades, might seem like a grim undertaking.

However, I am feeling quietly confident about the task of starting an open source business in the recession, and the future of Cameron & Wilding generally, for a few reasons:

• Open source is attractive when cash is scarce. Let's face it, everyone's favourite price is free. This extends to businesses too. IT and marketing budgets are still constrained, making businesses reluctant to pay for licence fees when open source alternatives are available. Combined with the fact that Drupal is coming of age, means there is an awful lot of demand for Drupal and other open source packages,
• Websites can deliver tremendous value for money vs. traditional media. The constrained budgets mentioned above coincides with a changing advertising and PR landscape. Companies are realising that for a fairly inexpensive sum they can start a conversation with their customers, rather than bombard them with messages they are already deafened to. A great example of this is the way TM Lewin built a social network and blog (on drupal). Here is a brand which would not normally be associated with technology, but has used social media to get current and potential customers interacting with the company.
• Drupal is on the up. This is partly due to increased adoption of open source, but mostly due to the fact that Drupal is one of the most useful frameworks / CMSs / products available. The release of D7 will cement Drupal's place as an accepted enterprise level package and large companies and organisations will increasingly implement Drupal solutions. Once D7 matures, it is anyone's guess as to how Drupal adoption will develop. I think this will depend heavily on how the web is used in the next four years, i.e. the use of smart phones, iPads and other devices, yet to be created. A highly possible situation is that Drupal matures into the "Linux of web apps" and becomes part of the fabric of the web itself.
• Everyone makes mistakes. Anyone that disputes this is either a liar or an ostrich. As a start-up we are prepared for daily, weekly and even hourly mistakes. Most of these will be harmless in-company issues e.g. buying the wrong network disk or mis-communicating with colleagues. Some will have more impact e.g. hiring the wrong person for the job or making errors in our cash flow planning. Very few mistakes should impact our clients as we have a number of systems, both human and machine based, to mitigate client risk. The point is, they are going to happen and for us they are going to happen when the market for IT sevices is at it's lowest. This means...
• We will be prepared for the up turn. As the economy starts to pick up speed over the next few years, C&W will be in the process of changing form a small, lean, energetic start-up to an established SME. We will have learnt a tremendous amount from our mistakes, we will have a great team and we will have a strong, diversified product and service offering. This means we will be able to offer a wide range of services, at much larger scale and with the same, consistent high quality.

So that, in short, is why I am pretty confident about our future. I would be really interested to hear your opinion. Are you starting a business in the recession? Are you bullish on FOSS software and Drupal? Or do you think Drupal will peak with D7? Answers on a postcard or the comment form below.

Photo credit: Judy Li