Today 1 of my 10 friends already have or want to have a start up of their own, be it a Tech or creative/media or even a small restro. They have all the information that they need on their fingertips, god bless internet! All they want to do is implement their ideas and roll out them as soon as possible, capture market and be the boss for rest of their life time.
Be it USA or India, Tech start ups are growing at tremendous speed. This is an era of mobile apps, the world is getting closer and closer, a well connected cyber world. While building the idea of their own, start ups tend to make use of free stuff as much as possible, to keep the expenses low, which I believe is absolutely brilliant idea. They are more focused and concerned about the shaping of idea and making it commercially sell able.
I have seen many of my friends telling others that it's not always about money but all you need is an idea and a computer with internet to kick start a start up, which is absolutely right in my opinion as well. When it comes to software products, start ups tend to make use of beta/evaluation version, if no option of "Open Source" is available. Another cool thing with start ups is they try to keep it "low" when it comes to IT spend, so you can bring in your laptop/tab to the office and work from it. No need to carry the military grade, bulky "corporate" laptops. So all they do is work on their ideas, have amazing people working in some fancy and even garage looking offices, stack up kitchen full of awesome food, sell the product/service and keep on minting money, isn't it fancy? Yes, indeed it is!
But hold on it isn't that simple these days, you can't just have an idea and a laptop to code unless you have a legit software to play with! Just like you [start ups], even software publishers like Microsoft, Adobe, IBM etc. have to run their businesses. There is a very thin line between free stuff and piracy. When you run a start up, you have 1000s of things to manage and hence there is possibility that you don't even care if your new(kick ass) programer has a genuine operating system and the legit software to code. As the years pass, you concentrate on increasing revenues, meeting new investors and hiring new people. And one fine day you get a mail from one of these software publishers, asking you how many licenses of their fancy software product do you own?
"Damnnn, what the heck is it? I don't know, I have 40 people using 40 laptops and 30 tabs, it's BYOD, we don't own any of these, why would I care if they have purchased the software that they use or downloaded from torrent??!!??"
Well here's the thing, "With great power comes great responsibility." Its your start up, your employees, your code that they are running on to those 40 laptops and 30 tabs, it's your responsibility to manage the software licensing compliance! It's not difficult these days for software publishers to find out if you have purchased genuine software or you are minting money by using pirated software. You can be sued and your startup's reputation can go for a toss! After all there ain't no such thing as a free lunch.
So what can you[start up] do?
Rule 1: Play fair, you got to spend some hard cash to procure the software licenses which help you to code and mint the cash.
Rule 2: No exception policy, be it an intern or HR of your start up, a legit operating system with software product should not have any exception policy!
Rule 3: Hygiene checkup, no matter how busy you are in cracking business deals and meeting new highs in revenue, you should ask your IT guy to have surprise checks on the devices that connects to your company's network.
Rule 4: Read licensing agreements, yes those pages filled with jargon are for you to read! You shouldn't "forget" to read the licensing agreements, no matter how heavy they are on your head and eyes, after all you should know what you bought and how it should be used. A sales guy may have exaggerated "few" things that you should know!
Rule 5: Deploy ITAM tools, you can implement solutions like IT asset management tools, which capture every detail about the software deployed on devices connecting to your network.
Rule 6: Independent review, it's always advised to have an independent review of your policies and procedures, licensing posture from independent bodies (http://www.ey.com/IE/en/Services/Advisory/IT/EY-software-licensing-assurance) An independent review may not only tell you about your "over usage" but it can also tell you your "under utilization".
It's difficult
for a start up to gain confidence of it's customers and investors.
Software publishers can sue you for big bucks if you caught up playing
with their software licensing. So you better pay for what you use!
