Best software startup information - Week 10

1. We're developing an Excel Add-in and we are trying to figure out the size of the market.  I asked the BoS forum about this, and several people pointed out that the Excel user base is not a relevant number.  Adrian said it best,

Selling software is about solving someones problem. What you have to ask is does your target market want to solve that problem within Excel? The total number of Excel users is irrelevant.

1. Google has launched Pay Per Action Ads; these allow advertisers to define the end action they want from visitors (e.g., signing up for a newsletter, or downloading the product) and how much they will pay for that action.  It will interesting to see how well this works.  Many software companies would happily pay $50 for a qualified lead, but that price point makes action fraud very profitable.
2. Quite a few ISVs have switched their email hosting to google apps, which lets you use GMail for your domain.  Lots of people are happy with the switch, others are worried about GMail blocking exes and zips that contain exes.   Everyone agrees that the Spam protection is great.
3. Discussions about revenue are always popular, the hot one this week was revenue per line of code.