29/04/2023

Individual startup venture report

ENTREPRENEURSHIP
TRUNG BUI DUY - 20930149

CAMPUS: HANU
TUTOR’S NAME: MR PHAN HOANG QUAN
1. Startup introduction

Business enterprises can manage releases, automate deployment, and handle operational
runbooks thanks to the configuration management and DevOps tool Octopus Deploy. It supports
a range of deployment patterns, such as rolling, canary, blue-green, and multi-tenancy, and has
built-in step templates to help create deployment procedures (Octopus deploy, 2023).

Team members can apply the same deployment process across numerous environments, distinct
targets, or tenants in multi-tenant applications because of Octopus Deploy's variables
functionality. All operational runbooks can be managed, controlled, scheduled, audited,
executed, and tracked by employees (Octopus Deploy, 2023). Employees can also keep
passwords and other private information on the platform, guaranteeing a secure user interface.

The platform's application programming interface (API) enables businesses to integrate Octopus
Deploy with a wide range of third-party solutions (Octopus Deploy, 2023). In addition, it offers
an iOS app that lets customers check the status of assignments and releases from a distance.
Email, phone, FAQs, and other web tools are available for support (Octopus Deploy, 2023). A
monthly and annual subscription are both available.

They serve a wide variety of customers, including banks, hedge funds, accounting and finance
companies, producers, merchants and consumer-focused organizations, software companies, and
governmental entities (Shu, 2021). From starting a single project for a small team to working
with companies like Accenture, NASA, ASOS, and the Commonwealth Bank of Australia that
have made Octopus their standard across the board, they use Octopus for projects of all sizes
(Stovell, 2020). While 50% of their customers are from the US or Canada, 40% are from the UK
and Europe.

2. The process of new venture creation

Opportunity

An opportunity is a circumstance when a novel product, service, or method can be made

available and sold for a profit greater than the cost of production. In this circumstance, new
means, ends, or means-ends interactions may be created in order to introduce new goods,
services, and procedures (Schaper et al., 2014).

Utilizing recently developed capabilities or technology as well as underutilized or

underemployed resources may present opportunities to increase value for customers. In this case,
underutilization of resources is first noticed by business owners before they look for a more
efficient way to employ them individually or collectively in a particular market. According to
Schaper et al. (2014), this kind of opportunity is known as a "market-pushed opportunity." When
Paul provided consulting services to large and medium-sized businesses, he observed the
challenges in project delivery and software deployment. Deployment was often done after a
CI/build process. He has spent the last 8 years creating and establishing the benchmark in this
industry since he believes that deployments are significantly more difficult than the majority of
CI solutions acknowledgement (Stovell, 2021).

Environment
Entrepreneurs react to their environment rather than working in isolation. During the opportunity
recognition stage, the entrepreneur observes market demands and/or underutilized resources and
determines a "fit" between particular market needs and predetermined resources (Schaper et al.,
2014).

The environment has a big impact on entrepreneurship. The environment in which entrepreneurs
operate may or may not be rich in opportunities, and a variety of factors may or may not
influence how aggressively they pursue those chances (Schaper et al., 2014). Opportunities may
appear because of changes in politics, regulations, society, or demographics, for instance, or as a
result of market inefficiencies brought on by knowledge asymmetry over time and space. Paul
Stovell developed WPF apps for a London investment firm before founding Octopus Deploy.
Additionally, he is one of Readify's 18 team members, in an Australian.NET consulting business
(Stovell, 2021). His client engagements were frequently brief, so he had to start adding value
straight away. His focus on DevOps and automation resulted from that. He routinely gave
speeches at user groups and contributed to a number of open-source projects. From 2006 to 2013
he served as a Microsoft MVP for WPF (Stovell, 2021). The environment of the area, as a result,
had an effect on Paul Stovell's business model. Business owners value both the number of
businesses in a neighborhood (sometimes referred to as population density) and the quality of the
connections that bind them. Entrepreneurs in densely populated areas will face intense
competition, but they will also have greater opportunities to learn useful information and build
significant social networks (Schaper et al., 2014).

Individual

You have to decide if you want to establish a business if you want to keep trying or give up, or
both (Schaper et al., 2014). Whether or not it is decisive, the verdict may be based on a specific
episode or simply on the whole of the evidence. Paul's initial impulse to "jump in" is later
strengthened by enthusiasm.

3. Value proposition

Building a business that will always exist, having fun while doing it, and producing work they
are proud of are the objectives of Octopus Deploy (Wong, 2022). The cornerstones of their entire
company strategy are understanding its target market, creating high-quality software, offering
exceptional customer service to support it, and making it exceedingly simple to locate,
understand, and use (Wong, 2022).

The 5 Big Benefits

- Deployments become much more consistent and dependable.

Manual deployments are frequently prone to error. Because it involves people acting, Murphy's
Law, which states that if something can go wrong, it will, applies, this is the case. There is a
chance that important release procedures won't be performed correctly, faults won't be
discovered during releases, incorrect software versions will be distributed, and faulty software
will be made available to the general public (Smith, 2020). Automated deployments are not
affected by variables. When a process is developed, it is fixed and followed consistently each
time a release is launched. If your software successfully deploys the first time into a certain
environment, subsequent deployments will be one hundred times more successful (Smith, 2020).

- The team can always roll out new software.

With an automated deployment method, the knowledge of how to distribute your application is
preserved in the system rather than in a person's memory. Deployments that are manual or only
partially automated inside an organization are frequently managed by a small team of workers. In
fact, only one person is often assigned to this task on each project team (Smith, 2020). Now
anyone with access to the "Deploy" button can initiate a release.

- Engineers spend their time creating software.

Execution and certification of manual deployment processes can occasionally be thankless job.
Instead of working on the great improvements and changes to the program that will soon be
delivered, developers and testers on a development team may choose to complete this duty
(Smith, 2020). The starting time of a fully automated deployment is measured in seconds. Those
deployments are monitored in the background; team members may only be asked to commit
more time if something goes wrong. The team can now concentrate on creating the superior
software for which it was originally formed because they have more time.

- It's easy to relocate to a new place.

Repetition and adaptability are additional benefits of automated deployments. Although the
fundamental release process is permanent, the target environments and machines can be easily
changed (Smith, 2020). This suggests that, regardless of whether software needs to be produced
for a new client installation or a new test environment, the overhead of distributing to that
additional target is negligible (Smith, 2020). You only need to make a few changes to your
present configuration; the rest will be handled by your tried-and-true release automation.

- More releases are possible.

An automated deployment technique has a relatively minimal overhead for a single deployment.
An occasional little overhead release approach can be used. Numerous factors make frequent
releases crucial, but their main advantage is that it makes fully agile software development
possible (Smith, 2020). Software release teams have the ability to give users useful features more
regularly and in a more concentrated way. The feedback they receive from these consumers on
the product they are producing allows them to adjust their strategy. This factor could make a
difference in whether a product succeeds or fails miserably in reaching its target market.

- Which one of the customer problems are we helping to solve?

Some new Octopus Deploy users complained that it can be challenging to find specific items and
that it can be challenging to understand some concepts (Ross, 2022). To learn more about these
issues, research is being done this year. In order to help both new and seasoned customers locate
what they're seeking for more quickly and comprehend how Octopus works for them, the
company will be experimenting with progressive adjustments (Ross, 2022).

- What bundles of products and services are we offering to each customer segment?

Over 25,000 companies use Octopus Deploy and many of them use the free Server or Cloud
editions of Octopus. 10,000 of them actually make money as customers. Over 1% of our sales
are not attributed to any one client (Stovell, 2020). However, it could be the engineering team
that the "pain" that Octopus relieves is typically more noticeable when there is at least a modesty
(Stovell, 2020). This is true even though Octopus is used by many smaller businesses and one-
person operations. Octopus charges its software so that businesses can use it without paying until
they really have to in order to get them ready for the tipping moment when they start paying.
Additionally, Octopus is employed by thousands of companies.

4. Entrepreneurial marketing and finance
At Octopus, about 90% of the staff is employed in research and development (R&D) or has a
position requiring advanced technical skills. For instance, both members of our customer success
team and service team have experience in development, sysadmin, or operations. The majority of
their marketing team is technical (Stovell, 2020).

According to Paul (2020), they are especially pleased with the fact that Octopus did all of this
without having a traditional enterprise sales team, which distinguishes them from every other
business in the software industry. Ironically, they are the biggest supplier of business deployment
software even though they lack an Enterprise sales team. Instead of being sold to the CTO or
DevOps Manager by a commission-based salesperson, Octopus is adopted by individual
engineering teams from the ground up and then standardized on mutual consensus (Stovell,
2020). Paul (2020) stated that "we need an enterprise sales staff, but we haven't yet put one in
place, despite constant reminders from everyone". While it's true that some of their clients have
left as a result of rivals entering the market and going after their boss from the top down, these
clients still favor their technical teams because they handle actual problems rather than the
distorted ones that their rivals were forced to present (Stovell, 2020).
 - Seed

Seed capital is needed to create a product, put together a management group, or complete a
company plan. At this time, it is crucial to have both a strategic overview and an action plan for
research and development with significant milestones. This finance is the most difficult and
expensive to get since it must be raised before management can show that the product will sell or
that it can be produced and provided at a competitive price (Schaper et al., 2014). Personal
savings and equity from friends, family, and relatives are the main sources of initial financing for
business owners.

According to research on Paul, he produced lucrative WPF apps for a London investment bank in
2011 and persuaded Stephen Krauklis to offer him a job at a Sydney software company paying
$25,000 per year in 2005 (Stovell, 2021). It might be considered that Paul and Sonia Stovell used
their own money to purchase the seed state of Octopus Deploy as a result. When using one's own
money, it is not necessary to pay interest or loan fees to third parties. It is feasible to use money
in the most flexible way and to invest for the long term (Schaper et al., 2014). From what has
been researching on Paul, he worked for an investment bank in London building WPF
applications which paid well in 2011, and back in 2005 he was doing several open-source
projects that impressed Stephen Krauklis to get him a job at a software company in Sydney
which paid $25,000 a year (Stovell, 2021). Thus, it can be stated that Octopus Deploy in a seed
state run by Paul Stovell and his wife Sonia Stovell with their own capital. Using personal
money means that there are no lending or interest costs payable to an outside party. Funds can be
used with maximum flexibility and invested for the long term (Schaper et al., 2014).

Moreover, bootstrapping can be beneficial compared to using venture capital because the
entrepreneur can maintain control over all decisions. On the downside, this form of financing
may place unnecessary financial risk on the entrepreneur. Bootstrapping may not provide enough
investment for the company to become successful at a reasonable rate. However, Paul Stovell
(2020) has stated that every dollar they have used to build the company came from their
customers, not investors. Octopus Deploy grew very quickly, but they always managed the
company conservatively and were highly profitable along the way (30%+) (Zaczek, 2021). One
way to use your customers to obtain financing is by having them write you a letter of credit.
Furthermore, because the entrepreneur retains complete control over all decisions, bootstrapping
may be preferable to using venture capital. The disadvantage of this type of investment is that it
places the entrepreneur at unnecessary financial risk. Bootstrapping may prevent the company
from growing in a fair and profitable manner. Paul Stovell (2020) contends that customers, not
investors, provided every dollar required to fund the company's growth. Although Octopus
Deploy expanded quickly, it always operated ethically and made a 30%+ profit (Zaczek, 2021).
Asking your clients to write you a letter of credit is one approach to using them as a source of
financing.

- Start-up financing.

This represents both the money generated by a company's early, unsuccessful trading as well as
the money required to establish its facilities, connections, and organizational structure. The
company is now prepared to launch the product or service on the market after finishing its
testing. The entrepreneur is more likely to employ equity sources even though there may be
considerable debt at this period (Schaper et al., 2014).

First-stage financing.

Businesses will require more funding to start full-scale manufacturing and marketing after using
up their first investment, which was used to demonstrate the sustainability of the business (for
instance, by investing in more inventory and equipment) (Vaznyte & Andries, 2019). Octopus
Deploy announced its first outside investment after ten years of self-funding to serve 25,000
organizations: Insight Partners acquired a minority stake in Octopus Deploy for $172.5 million
and will support the automated enterprise software deployment business as it enters its next
chapter of growth (Shu, 2021). Business angel shares are the additional funding provided by
Insight Partners.

Business angels may offer start-up and early-stage financing as their most evident service, but
they can also act as mentors by imparting their specialized knowledge and offering business and
professional advice (Schaper et al., 2014). Angel investors can assist in operating the company
because they typically have prior business or financial experience. They have the option to
choose silence. In this situation, Insight Partners is a valuable business perspective that
conducted in-depth market research and presented a strong argument for how they could support
the expansion of Octopus Deploy. Paul (2021) asserts that after meditating on and delving more
into the Insight pitch, he found that he was both learning and enjoying it, and that with them,
their long-term goal would be more attainable than it would be without them.

5. Recommendations

After successfully completing the first phase, Octopus Deploy has built a good reputation for
itself in the software industry. In its recommendations, the corporation can place a high emphasis
on growth and development. As a result, the cash provided frequently meets the financial
demands of operating firms that are growing and want more finance to enhance their working
capital.

Octopus Deploy also needs to create its marketing strategies. Octopus made a strategic and
deliberate choice to prioritize R&D, but in all honesty, this decision more accurately reflects his
strengths and weaknesses as a CEO. According to Stovell (2020), this is true. His comprehension
of marketing and sales objectives is constantly evolving. In order to expand a business, a "market
development strategy" focuses on bringing existing items to new markets. Market development
strategies are frequently used by businesses to find and create new prospects for the sale of their
products in untapped areas (Tagg et al., 2013). Businesses can establish a new product line to sell
to potential customers or upsell to current customers using a market development strategy. Since
it can aid in growing both your clientele and your business, a market expansion strategy is
crucial (Tagg et al., 2013).

6. References

Zaczek , Z. (2021) Brisbane couple to become the 'next Atlassian' with Tech company octopus
deploy getting $221million, Daily Mail Online. Associated Newspapers. Available at:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9493399/Brisbane-couple-Atlassian-tech-
company-Octopus-Deploy-getting-221million.html (Accessed: April 27, 2023).

Schaper, M. et al. (2014) Entrepreneurship and Small Business. 4th edn.

Octopus deploy (2023) Octopus Deploy Software Reviews, Demo & Pricing - 2023. Available at:
https://www.softwareadvice.com/app-development/octopus-deploy-profile/ (Accessed:
April 29, 2023).

Shu, C. (2021) After a decade of bootstrapping, octopus deploy raises $172.5m from Insight
Partners, TechCrunch. Available at: https://techcrunch.com/2021/04/20/after-a-decade-of-
bootstrapping-octopus-deploy-raises-172-5m-from-insight-partners/ (Accessed: April 29,
2023).

Stovell, P. (2020) Octopus deploy in 2020, Paul Stovell's Blog. Paul Stovell's Blog. Available at:
https://paulstovell.com/octopus-2020-update/ (Accessed: April 29, 2023).
Stovell, P. (2021) About Paul Stovell, Paul Stovell's Blog. Paul Stovell's Blog. Available at:
https://paulstovell.com/about/ (Accessed: April 29, 2023).

Wong, T. (2022) Our approach to config-as-code at Octopus deploy, The New Stack. Available
at: https://thenewstack.io/our-approach-to-config-as-code-at-octopus-deploy/ (Accessed:
April 29, 2023).

Smith, C. (2020) The 5 big benefits of automated deployment, Redgate. Available at:
https://www.red-gate.com/blog/software-development/5-big-benefits-automated-
deployment (Accessed: April 29, 2023).

Ross, J. (2022) At the helm with Jessica Ross, Octopus Deploy. Available at:
https://octopus.com/blog/at-the-helm-jessica-ross (Accessed: April 29, 2023).

Rutherford, Matthew W., Rutherford, Matthew W and EBSCOhost (2015) Strategic

bootstrapping. First. (Babson College entrepreneurship research conference collection).

Tagg, S. et al. (2013) New Developments Online Marketing. Hoboken: Taylor and Francis (Key
Issues in Marketing Management).

Vaznyte, E. and Andries, P. (2019) “Entrepreneurial orientation and start-ups' external

financing,” Journal of business venturing, 34(3), pp. 439–458.