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hypothetical scenario: ok, so we take our tiny budget and devote a significant portion of it to pay for industrial designers, graphic artists, NRE on custom molded plastics, extrusions, fancy sales literature, etc. Sadly, we now don't have enough money after that to pay for another software engineer and software QA person that we desperately need. We've already announced a shipping date and our nifty looking hardware is all done and ready to go, but our woefully understaffed software team is struggling big time. The project ends up being delayed an entire year while they try to finish coding and debugging. Meanwhile, some crank on the internet is harassing us regularly for being incompetent and unable to deliver according to our schedules. We run out of cash, and have to take desperate measures to keep ourselves afloat long enough in order to get our product out. We hold out as long as we can and finally ship anyway even though we know it is not really done. Same internet crank now berates us for shipping buggy products. And to top it all off, same crank still doesn't like the visual design of the product after we spend so much on it, and even complains about that! Apparently you can't win. hmm, wait that sounds kinda familiar.... yet another fiscal reality check: these are small companies doing this. Tiny companies really. Or maybe tiny divisions of small companies. Usually just 3 or 4 underpaid people tops, without sufficient budget. There is not a lot of capital available. There is not a large market available. There will not be a large return for your investment. You have to manage these issues to make money. In fact, you will be lucky not to lose money. You make choices. In Mike Patton's best nasal sneer: "You want it all, but you can't have it." hopefully you enjoy doing it, because you won't be getting rich in this business. No matter what choices you make, some people won't like it and they will harass you with surprising passion. A small number of them will even devote significant energy to trying to disrupt whatever paltry sales you might have made. Do they even understand that there are only two or three people behind the curtain, and how much damage they cause? probably not. But at least there are others that come by and seem to like what you did, and make it seem worthwhile. kim At 06:00 PM 10/15/2001, Mark Sottilaro wrote: >Now frankly, the look of the EDP says to me, "Small company, maybe not >going to be around very long. Ran out of cash and didn't do any >industrial or graphic design." I know this isn't true, but when this is >at your local music shop in a rack of other gear screaming for my >attention, unless I'm looking for it, it may be easy to pass by. Now, >if it looked interesting, a young pre looper might ask the salesman, >"Hey, what does that thing do?" (if it's designed correctly, the look >would elude to it's function as well) A quick demo, and they're running >visa cards. They all live happily ever after. Next year a stereo >version comes out. ______________________________________________________________________ Kim Flint | Looper's Delight kflint@loopers-delight.com | http://www.loopers-delight.com