Name: Mark Talluto
Previous Occupation: Primary teacher
Current Occupation: Software Company CEO
Company: Canela Software
LiveCode Products: 20/20 Vision
Developers: 8
A Teacher with a Passion for Code
Mark is the CEO of Canela Software, making vision testing software, educational apps and a cloud based database for LiveCode developers. Mark loved coding from an early age, but went into teaching initially as a career. He returned to coding while still teaching, making educational software to begin with.
Find a Problem to Solve
How do you get ideas for software? My ideas always come from conversations with people. My vision software came from a conversation with a doctor, telling me the advantages of computerising the traditional ways of testing vision. I go to great lengths to talk to customers, I'll fly out and stay with them, follow them around their job and really try to understand how they do things, what they need. Find the right people who will show you their process, then create the software to solve that problem. Your customers will be excited when they see the result.
It's About Relationships
What about Social Media, vs face to face with your customers? When you're selling a $50,000 piece of software, you are to some extent selling yourself and your company, not just the software. The customer is asking themselves - will they be there for me if this goes wrong? Will they solve my problems or just give up? It's about you, and the relationship you build with the customer, not just about great software. You have to build that relationship and that trust. Ignoring the value of face to face may make growth difficult for you.
2 Weeks to Train a Developer
What's it like for your new developers to get into LiveCode for the first time? We have 6 other developers on our team now, and it takes about 2 weeks for them to get up to speed in LiveCode. They come in with a Computer Science background, and I spend 2 days teaching them the basics. After that they start on a portion of a project. They transition really well. I manage the coding teamwork using script only stacks now with everything stored on github.
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