Interview with Pierre Bernard, Founder of Houdah Software
Today I am lucky to have the opportunity to interview Pierre Bernard, founder of Houdah Software, publisher of HoudahGeo and HoudahSpot. Pierre is just recently back from exhibiting at Macworld.
Pierre, how did Houdah Software get started?
Houdah Software had a pretty slow start. At one point - while I still had my day job at the Central Bank in Luxembourg - I had this idea for a revolutionary web browser. I started working on it with the idea of submitting it to the Apple Developer Awards competition. That was before the release of Mac OS X Tiger. The competition allowed for pre-release products to be submitted, provided they made intensive use of Tiger-only technologies. My web browser never made it past the alpha version that I submitted to the jury.
So I was looking for a good name for a web browser. I wanted the name to say: better than Safari. I figured that a ride on the back of an elephant must be better than a plain safari. Hence houdah: a canopied seat placed on the back of an elephant. I liked the name so much that I named the browser HoudahWeb and kept the Houdah name for future use as a company name.
I had always assumed that to geo-code my photos I needed a GPS enabled camera. But HoudahGeo enables users to carry a separate GPS unit while they take pictures and it will synchronice the picture time stamps with the GPS log. How did you come up with the idea for HoudahGeo?
The basic idea behind HoudahGeo is pretty old. I was not even the first one to have it. When I got the idea it seemed so obvious that I figured such a geocoding application must already exist. Searching for it, I only found Windows-based solutions. Thus for some time I used those. Then Mac solutions started showing up. Yet none actually took care of the whole process: you had to run a series of programs to first connect to your GPS device, then figure out where the pictures where taken and then yet another program to export to Google Earth.
That’s where I saw the opportunity to come up with an easy-to use one-stop solution. I took great care to wrap a series of complex operations into a very Mac-like 3-step process. Actually the HoudahGeo interface combines the advantages of a flexible document-based application with the ease of an assistant.
The community of Mac developers is a great environment to work in. People are very open an like to help each other. There are mailing lists and web sites where one can get help with code issues. Many developers like to share small bits of useful code. If you look at the credits for HoudahGeo, you will find many such bits have made their way into my code. I still consider myself to be somewhat of a beginner. So far there rarely was any bit of Cocoa code of mine which I deemed worthy of sharing. As a WebObjects developer I have open-source quite some code. I actually started a major open source project: Houdah WebObjects Frameworks. Recently I have published my first bit of Cocoa code to my web site (http://www.bernard-web.com/pierre) and I have more marked for future publication.
The MacSB mailing list is a great element of this community. Here small business owners get together to discuss the non-technical aspects of publishing Mac software. This group has helped me a lot and I try to give back as much as I can.
Exchanging licenses is actually a very natural and easy thing to do. There is no inherit cost involved in creating a license code. Thus you are giving away something that doesn’t cost you anything. In return you get software you may find valuable. But that is far from being the only benefit you get. For example, you may discover synergies between your products and somebody else’s. You can then work together on having both products interact. For products that can interact, you may consider a joint marketing effort. Last but not least, each member of the community has his audience. If somebody likes your product, she/he may opt to let this audience know about your product.
HoudahSpot seemed like a very obvious idea. I got it at WWDC, the second when Apple presented Spotlight. This technology really has potential. Yet the default user interface not only is very lacking, it fails to expose the power that lies beneath.
HoudahSpot also appeared to be a very good idea to start a company from. With hard drives getting larger and larger, I can imagine no one who is still able to manage the masses of file using traditional folder hierarchies. You inevitably end up with folders holding way too many files. Dark corners where you don’t even dare to go to do some housekeeping.
So I figured, each and every Mac user is in need for a powerful file search tool. I was looking at a very large market.
Yet sales on HoudahSpot 1 were pretty slow. I would attribute this to low mindshare: people fail to realize that there might be a solution to managing the file mess. Thus they don’t go looking for a product like HoudahSpot.
It thus turned out that my target audience was not who I thought. I tried making a program targeted at the average user. Yet only advanced user came to realize the need for the product.
With HoudahSpot 2, I addressed these issues by both making HoudahSpot easier to use and yet adding power-user features. E.g. HoudahSpot 2 shows the query criteria next to the results. Indeed many users failed to understand that in HoudahSpot 1 the criteria were hidden while the query was running. This change also opened the door for power-user features. You may now update a query while it is live. You may also drag files from the current results to the criteria pane in order to narrow down a running query.
HoudahSpot 2 has recently been reviewed by Macworld. I expect this to drive many a casual user to HoudahSpot. A recent mention on Mac OS X Hints is more likely to spark interest in power-users.
HoudahGeo is a very different product. I wrote it initially to cover my own needs. I did not want to have to drop back to Windows to geocode my photos. I expected the potential audience for the product to be much smaller. Yet HoudahGeo sells much better than HoudahSpot. I guess it is ability to work without a GPS device which brings lots of users onboard.
I had actually toyed with the idea last year. Then I decided to get a booth only once I have at least 2 products to sell. By that standard the time was ripe this year.
Actually this may not have been my best idea. Many people were confused by the fact that I had 2 so very different products to show.
My advice: less flyers, more business cards. I handed out only 1000 of my 4000 flyers. But I ran out of business cards. I think I will try selling on the show floor next year. This year I had a 20% coupon code on my flyers. Yet I can trace only very little sales back to that coupon code.
I must admit to having no idea on how to price my products right. I have members of the community advising me to lower my price while other encourage me to up it.
So far, on the rare occasions where I got user feedback on pricing, they wanted it to be cheaper or even free. Then on the Macworld show floor the situation was all different. I had countless people remark that my pricing was low or even too low. I guess the cheapskates are faster to fire off email.
If only I knew 
Actually I don’t think there is one single factor. There is the product, there is quality, … and luck.
I believe that courteous customer support is a big factor in this equation. I get most emails answered within minutes. 24 hours at the very latest.
Thank you for having me.
From the start I was very open about sharing my experiences both on MacSB and on my blog. I think that having this background information out there can help newcomers get started.
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