my blog. for you.

Let’s talk digital.

I’m an independent IT consultant and entrepreneur in the Internet and software business. I’m interested in design, enterprise applications, web apps and SaaS products. I design and develop business solutions and applications. I help companies in terms of software quality and knowledge transfer, e.g. with Angular and Spring Boot.

Help Me Help You Dinner

Some time ago I read about an interesting concept called The Help Me Help You Dinner by Rand Fishkin. He describes this idea in a lot more detail but in a nutshell it is this: Find roughly 10 people in your geographic region who are first or second degree connections on your personal network. Choose people that you think both you can help with something and that might be able to help you in return today or in the future. Find a restaurant ...

ZenQuery: From Idea To Product In 2 Weeks

Earlier this week I've launched a new product called ZenQuery. In a nutshell, ZenQuery is an application that creates an instant REST API (with JSON, XML and CSV formats) for SQL queries. This allows you to easily access any kind of data from your database without having to deal with technical details such as database drivers, connections, ORM or caching. A typical use case is an enterprise company which for example wants to create a new mobile application. The data needed for such ...

Sunday April 27th, 2014 by Bjoern in Design, Enterprise Software, Entrepreneurship, Web Applications

Resources For SaaS Businesses And Enterprise App Developers

SaaS Club is a new website that keeps track of relevant resources for SaaS businesses and developers. These resources are organized both in categories such as 'product', 'metrics' and 'sales' and according to their target audience, e.g. 'developers & designers' or 'managers & product people'. Enterprise App Developer Atlas is an 'interactive map of the developer journey', i.e. it's a catalogue of tools for enterprise web app development. Tools are organized according to product phases and aspects such as API, testing, deployment ...

Sunday March 9th, 2014 by Bjoern in Enterprise Software, Entrepreneurship, Mobile Applications, Web Applications

Screw paper!

As a sort of follow-up to my post on bizarre, backward paper-based processes I recently doubled down on removing my remaining dependencies on paper and paper-based processes. With an reinvigorated passion for achieving "The Paperless Office ™" I did the following: scan all documents and invoices with PDFScanner (for macOS) store all scanned documents in Evernote sign documents with DocuSign have Zapier automatically store all invoices that arrived digitally via eMail in Evernote as well rigorously throw away everything that doesn't need to be stored for ...

Sunday March 2nd, 2014 by Bjoern in Entrepreneurship, Software, Web, Web Applications

Paper

Recently, I registered for Flinkster - a car sharing service operated by Deutsche Bahn. At first, I was pleasantly surprised at their rather straightforward online registration process. Little did I know then that their registration process also involved handing in a printed and signed document for confirmation of identity. Turns out I was in for a Kafkaesque farce of a process. Not only was I required to also hand in my passport and driving licence for identity verification, which could easily have ...

Sunday February 16th, 2014 by Bjoern in Design, Entrepreneurship

Leaving your comfort zone

Leave your comfort zone is an oft-heard piece of advice on how to grow personally and generally get better at doing whatever is relevant to you. If you only ever stick to things you already know you deny yourself the opportunity to learn and experience something new. Why is leaving your comfort zone so hard then? Well, it should be. Doing something you're uncomfortable with initially means that the likely outcome is failure and failure is embarrassing. Sure, failure is an opportunity ...

Sunday February 9th, 2014 by Bjoern in Entrepreneurship

Unicorns And Revolutions

History is filled with two types of people: the ones that want to maintain a comfortable status quo and the ones that want to move humanity forward. In a recent article Jan Lehnardt calls for rethinking and in fact revolutionizing business culture. He makes a few good points. You really should read the whole article. However, in a nutshell its message is this: Throughout history there are those who try to maintain the current status quo for their own good. On the other hand, ...

Sunday December 29th, 2013 by Bjoern in Entrepreneurship, Software

Designing For User Delight

Adam Berrey wrote a nice article about why a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) often falls short of meeting users' needs. He argues that by focussing on a product's gestalt (its core features and experience, i.e. its essential characteristics, such as Google's search bar or Facebook's friends feed), design and quality truly successful product designs delight the user to a degree he or she falls in love with the product.

Sunday October 6th, 2013 by Bjoern in Design, Entrepreneurship

MemoEasy – Termine online buchen

Sorry, this entry is only available in Deutsch.Terminausfälle sind für viele Unternehmen ein erhebliches Problem. Ärzte, Friseure, Versicherungsmakler - für diese Dienstleister und in vielen weiteren Branchen läuft ein Großteil des Geschäftes über vorab vereinbarte Termine ab. Nicht wahr genommene Termine sind daher nicht nur ärgerlich, sondern führen auch zu teils erheblichen Umsatzeinbußen. Solche Umsatzausfälle müssen dann erst einmal wieder aufgefangen werden. Ausgefallene Termine können kurzfristig nicht wieder neu vergeben werden. Oft werden Termine einfach deswegen nicht wahr genommen, weil Kunden ...

Tuesday September 3rd, 2013 by Bjoern in Business, Entrepreneurship, Web Applications

Philipp Rösler, Silicon Valley und der Dude

Sorry, this entry is only available in Deutsch.Philipp Rösler war kürzlich im Silicon Valley. Mit dabei waren etliche deutsche IT Startup Gründer. Ihr Ziel war es, die deutsche IT Branche zu präsentieren und hierzulande dringend nötiges Wagniskapital für Investitionen in IT Gründungen anzuwerben. Was davon dann vom Silicon Valley - durch den deutschen Politboulevardjournalismus vermittelt - daheim im Tal der Ahnungslosen ankam, glich dann aber eher einer Seifenoper. Kaum ein Wort darüber, dass Rösler und die ihn begleitenden Gründer in Kalifornien versuchten, ...

Sunday May 26th, 2013 by Bjoern in Entrepreneurship

Björn Wilmsmann

my blog. for you.

Let’s talk digital.