It seems like only yesterday when Magesh, Jason and I met at the Oakside Café in the Haight in San Francisco to discuss our plans and vision for Rysigo. Like excited kids in a candy store we spent hours discussing and reviewing designs for our first release and how we were going to “change the world”. Of course, we quickly realized in today’s tough economy it was our strategy that had to evolve as market conditions change.

Looking back at our first year we’re pleased to have:

1.    Released three products:

a.    Rysk Management for Oracle Projects - Our initial product integrated within the Oracle Projects suite  and leveraging its existing functionality without the need for customizations or expensive integration initiatives.

b.   Collaborative Risk Management - A new solution targeted to customers that require a collaborative and structured risk management solution with minimal pre-requisites and easy to deploy.

c.    Rysk Integrator - Our central risk management data hub that can pull in data from numerous sources, validate and process it to ensure data integrity and business logic.

2.   Identified and formed strategic alliance partnerships with Projected Consulting in EMEA and a development partnership with More4Apps.

3.   Reviewed our architectural offering with several large organizations to help refine and validate our roadmap

4.   Presented at numerous US and EMEA conferences

If there were a piece of advice I could offer bootstrapped startups it would be to:

1.    Produce marketing campaigns and build a channel partner program - you can build the best products but it wont help you succeed if people are not aware of who you are, what you offer and how to obtain your services!

2.   Leverage your existing relationships not necessarily to sell your offerings, but to understand their current pain points.

3.   Be prepared to rapidly reorganize or adapt to change in an evolving market place - this is your advantage against the larger or more established companies!

4.   Patience - As Ken Roberts reminded me in November: a farmer spends a vast amount of time preparing and nurturing the field in order to yield a good harvest!

In 2010, we’ll be focused on increasing our product offerings, building a consulting revenue stream and pursuing investor funding.

I’d like to thank all of the people who have assisted or advised us in our first year and of course, our most valuable asset: our people and our partners.