I invested a lot of research efforts in the early development stages of Backbone Management System. It was to be my first SaaS business. The short answer is that I do not want to manage a multi-million dollar SaaS start up. That is a stressfull full time job.
Remote teams
Managing remote teams is one of the most sought after skills in this new era of tech start ups. I got the taste of it, and essentially this is what most of the future work will look like, but the magnitude of what Backbone.ms was supposed to become was such, that it would have required over 50 hours a week to keep everything up and running. At least in the firts year or two after launch. I do not want that.
IMS or Hosted Intranet
There are more factors why I decided after several months -of not directly working on the project- that it was time to stop. One being the fact that I did not progress on the prototype. It shifted from being a fully Integrated Management System to a more lightweigth (do I hear Minimal Viable Product?) hosted intranet. That still may work very well, but not under the name backbone.ms. You can have it. Grab it out of quarentine x days after 22 of august 2018. Good luck. The next one will be a .com. I never liked this .io thing by the way and I am totally over alternative domain extensions. Did not learn my lesson with the .cash I registerred some years before, and now this one neither took off as a rocket.
New oppertunities arrise
I do like the realm.li and webapp.li domains I picked up in the process. Not for SEO, but because of there more generic potential in building something big. I just do not know yet what it is. Another potential MVP that stays after this failure that I am proud off is clickablegrid.com. This was supoosed to be a feature of backbone.ms and I might very well develop this anyway as a simple WordPress plugin.
Integrated Management Systems
In the meanwhile I learned a lot about Integrated Management Systems (IMS) and got certified as internal auditor for management systems. The demand trough the Upwork platform (my main source for gigs) was not what I expected. Also, I have not seen the IMS boom I expected because of the new 2015 versions (Note: 3 year tansition period) of quality and environmental management systems in combination with a new standard for Health and Safety using the same High Level Structure (almost forget about that one).
Dissecting other Businesses
The moment I pressed the delete domain button I felt this is a good descision. I learned an awfull lot about business in general, about SaaS business specifically, about Management Systems and most important; I realised what type of lifestyle businesses I am after. In some time I will probably be an Angel Investor. In the meanwhile I enjoy dissecting other businesses without being too much involved myself. One way or the other that is what I like most. Understanding how and why businesses and organisations work or fail. I started doing that since my first job ever, and later on observing silently as student worker in many types of organisations. It explains why I wanted to become auditor for Integrated Management Systems, and why I find so much satisfaction in advertising now.
