We have been taking the time to build Fody Soft. We wanted a company structure to experiment what it means owning a company, using it for personal growth. We wanted a company operating inside Mauritius, with local talents to show that a company, with cool vibes and based works can happen.
The Registrar of Companies did not accept the name Moris Soft. Hence the switch to Fody Soft, after a mauritian endemic bird.
How the team creates mindset
Dominique is an aircraft engineer and i like to build systems. I guess this makes a strong case for wanting to build great systems. Aircraft engineering involves knowing many systems in and out. For many planes.
My maternal uncle is also an aircraft engineer. Visiting him always meant passing near bookshelves with big, fat books sitting on them. Fat files for each type of Airbus plane. My life has always been getting updates on plane systems. I do like planes and i have an admiration for building complex systems. A plane is not necessarily rocket science but it has many components that work together.
Building software is a lot easier. Building software allows you to glue together components in a beautiful way that serves it's purpose, while being good at what it does. And finding uncommon solutions that are intuitive, masking the complexity beneath.
How a company is different from a one-man shop
We have been doing business, building since a long time: handling finance, contracts, milestones, invoices and delivering. A company is essentially doing the same thing but presents more challenges. And it is personally to solve these challenges that we are out on this journey.
For starters, a company entails more than one person in the business. Decisions need to have joint approvals. And it's a great opportunity to switch from services to products. If you have been selling services, thinking about products raises a lot of questions about the what and pricing.
You also have to develop a certain level of strategic thinking. How to postion your company in the market, who will buy the product and how to make them buy.
Finding a direction
When you have been shipping for sometimes, you have a lot of ideas of what works. But, this provides cases for several compelling products. You hesitate to launch in one direction. Founders do pivot and the important thing is to build.
We are still defining our winning proposals and we are fine with that.
Mauritius can do better
Mauritius does not have great builders and shippers. I mean not in the numbers it can produce. We hope to augment the pool of companies shipping great things from our shores. We are not just a destination for cheap, valuable outsource labour. But, we can create value from and for our economy.
We hope to contribute to a better company culture. One centered around research, attention to details and based softwares. Mauritius has great people but few incentives to produce great works under the Mauritian label. We hope to show that it can be done.
Why the Mauritian software culture sucks?
I have seen how people learn and teach computing at HSC / A-level. It is uninspiring. I have seen university students, CS or Software Engineering. They lack the passion. I have numerous times received testimonials that most of the classes are in for the money. I have seen the industry. People work from 09 00 to 17 00 18 00 and they return home dead tired. They do they work and they are done. It's like working in factories. Or like masons executing the work defined by offshore architects, with no creativity involved.
When we look at Open Source contributions or products, it is a desolate landscape. The mauritian mind tags such works as being useless. Or worse, being in competition with what software companies are doing and are classified under competitive coding ouside of work. The passion for building and crafting is very low.
Do we have Mauritian companies building and shipping great stuffs? Companies who are at the the frontier of tech?
We hope to have a postive influence on the tech industry.
Building a company in the age of Software Is Dead
Let's keep this one for another post.
And so, we hope to begin a great, new adventure.
-- Abdur-Rahmaan Janhangeer