Michael Trafton

3,061 reputation

517

bio	website	bluefishgroup.com
	location	Austin, TX
	age	42
visits	member for	3 years, 7 months
	seen	Dec 22 '12 at 5:37
stats	profile views	494

I'm Founder and CEO of Blue Fish Development Group, a software development and consulting firm I founded 12 years ago. We provide enterprise content management solutions to Fortune 500 companies. Blue Fish was the 10th fastest growing company in Austin, TX in 2008 and was selected as one of the best places to work in 2007.

Recently, I've been mentoring startups as part of the Capital Factory program, a super-early-stage investment group patterned in part after Y Combinator.

	3,061 reputation	bio	website	bluefishgroup.com	visits	member for	3 years, 7 months
517 badges		location	Austin, TX		seen	Dec 22 '12 at 5:37

summary answers questions tags badges favorites bounties reputation activity

102 Actions

suggestions reviews revisions comments badges posts accepts all

Jan 20	comment	CRM Packages - Market Research Unless I'm mistaken, everyone is on the same version of Salesforce since it's a SaaS. The current version when I log in appears to be version 10.
Jan 18	answered	Anyone started a company while on H1B visa?
Jan 18	answered	CRM Packages - Market Research
Jan 12	answered	Why are big software companies going freemium?
Jan 12	comment	Tax Accountant or Monthly Bookkeeping? I have to disagree here. I haven't managed the day-to-day books for several years, and I wouldn't say that I've lost control of my business. I have a part time bookkeeper who processes payments and sends invoices, a part time controller who closes the books each month, and a tax accountant who does my taxes each year. My finance team generates reports that I use to monitor the health of the finances, and this works fine for me.
Jan 11	revised	Mechanics of Getting a Customer Reference during enterprise sales corrected a typo
Jan 11	answered	If you were to choose an Enterprenur as a partner what qualities do you prefer to see in them?
Jan 11	answered	Mechanics of Getting a Customer Reference during enterprise sales
Jan 7	answered	Java and .net software market, what are the differences?
Jan 5	answered	Is Houston, TX a good place for startup
Jan 4	comment	Business Bank Account Suggestions +1 When I started my business 10 years ago, I did the same thing. My local bank was much more responsive than the larger banks. About 2 years ago, my business outgrew that small bank (they couldn't extend me a large enough line of credit), so I had to switch to a bigger bank. But for the first 8 years, the local bank worked great.
Jan 4	answered	Selling my website - valuations, multiples, Current market metrics
Dec 29	comment	Best mobile phone/service for startups +1 for a detailed response that comes from your personal experience
Dec 25	answered	Should we hire a sales or invest more time in our online presence?
Dec 25	comment	How much does nice office space cost in Austin? In some ways, Houston is better than Austin. Houston is the 4th largest city in the US, so its a good market for a consumer business. And only New York City has more Fortune 500 company headquarters, so it's good for B2B companies as well. And Houston is a major travel hub, so it's easy to fly to visit customers all over the US. Austin doesn't have any of that. Also, over the past 5 years, the Houston startup scene has developed a lot. But the ratio of great developers to mediocre developers is better in Austin, so it's easier to find a great developer than it is in Houston.
Dec 23	answered	What have you used to build a business intelligence dashboard?
Dec 22	comment	Should we offer a money back guarantee? If so, how? Dennis: I don't think we mention it on our site. We do all of our sales in person, and we usually talk about the guarantee in our sales presentations.
Dec 22	revised	What tips do you have for a new co-working space? added 5 characters in body
Dec 21	answered	What tips do you have for a new co-working space?
Dec 20	comment	Qualities/skills of a CEO +1 This is an incredible description of what it takes to be a CEO in a growing and maturing company. This may be the best answer I've seen to any question on this site. Outstanding.