BizSpark Startup of the Day - Find it EZ
Body:
The BizSpark startup of the day is Find it EZ (Bits n’ Bytes Software), based in Canada. Below you will find an interview with Ken Gnazdowsky, President and Founder of Bits n’ Bytes Software. All the best to them and congratulations for being the startup of the day!
Website: www.finditez.com
Share this:
Tell us who you are and your role in the company:
I am President and founder of Bits n’ Bytes, primarily responsible for overall product design and features in our new software developer tool called Find it EZ.
What did you do before creating your company?
Bits n Bytes has been in business since shortly after I graduated from Simon Fraser University over 20 years ago now, so I’ve been in the software development field from day one really.
How do you feel being the most promising ‘Startup of the Day’ per Microsoft BizSpark?
Honored and excited to be recognized. We have been a Microsoft ISV partner as a service provider and custom software development shop for some time, but this is our first venture into the product field. It has been a great experience and the recognition as well as support from the BizSpark program has been key to our early success and opportunity.
What is your company’s mission?
To have Find it EZ be part of every enterprise software developer’s “must have” tool belt.
In 140 characters or less, tell us what your company does:
Find it EZ is a time saving source code search engine that scans relational databases, programming language files and Crystal Reports.
How did you get the idea for your company?
While working on a particular enterprise web-based application for a client, we began to experience challenges as part of our source and release change management due to the size of the team with various levels of experience ( from junior to seasoned professionals ). The body of work increased to well over 300 Crystal Reports and millions of lines of .net and SQL Server code. Change impact analysis became both time consuming and error prone. We looked for a tool that could scan our entire software codebase whenever we planned a change to a database table or field for example. There were tools that could do this to some extent independently, but we needed a cross-tool, comprehensive search engine so we created Find it EZ in 2000 for internal use only. It provided immediate benefits through more accurate change lists and estimates, better quality code with fewer missed change requirements and saved hundreds of hours per developer annually on impact analysis time … time better spent on creative activities for increased productivity. We decided to package it for commercial redistribution in mid 2010.
Tell us about your funding history. Are you currently looking for funding? If so, how much?
We are currently privately funded. We may be looking for VC or angel investment in our first round of public funding, but have not set a target amount until we are ready and may need to cross that bridge.
How many employees do you have? How many developers?
3 employees, 2 developers.
Are you hiring?If yes, what are you hiring for and where?
We are looking for both a Marketing and experienced JAVA developer to work at our head office in the beautiful Silicon Vinyard of central BC. Kelowna is home to world class IT operations such as Disney’s Club Penguin and IBM’s Gigacenter RackForce.
Which platform are you building on?Why?
Find it EZ is a Windows client built with C#.net . We chose Windows as the leading software developer platform.
Where do you see opportunities today in the Software/Internet area?
Outsourcing of both hosting and software development. There continues to be increasing pressure to do more with less in these tough economic times world-wide. Economies of scale and lower costs, especially in hosting operations of software within multi-client data centers makes good business sense. Find it EZ is a great new product to support transition to outsourcing as it enables a developer who might be new to or only working on a software project for a short term to quickly become effective and familiar with code inter-relationships, and it works in the cloud supporting both SQL Azure and Amazon RDS databases. Find it EZ makes every day change impact analysis both more accurate and a much less time consuming task.
What do you think about the BizSpark Program?
The BizSpark program has been fantastic and this is another perfect example of that in terms of the much needed exposure or “spark” if you pardon the pun, that any new idea definitely benefits from.
Do you have any advice for young Software entrepreneurs?
Seek expert advice, attend new venture seminars, research, read, plan, prepare then execute. Don’t jump right into execution without going through all the steps necessary for a sound business plan, there are no short cuts.
Who’s your role model?
Depends on the subject. In business and particularly in the software industry, Bill Gates based on his tremendous success and the legacy and riches he has created for both himself and others through Microsoft.
What’s the ONE THING you would like readers to take away from this interview?
The Find it EZ free 30 day trial! We would like to welcome all BizSpark members to take advantage of an exclusive discount for our enterprise source code management tool ... complete impact analysis for your database, programming language and report source code. Simply click on the offers within our BizSpark program listing https://www.microsoft.com/bizspark/ConnectDetail.aspx?startupid=76067.
Check out our profile on
Published: 4/13/2011 9:11 AM
Company: Find it EZ