Home featured Nick Ellsmore, co-founder of cybersecurity startup Security Colony Featured Startup Featured The Necessary Agony of product Development: Startup Stories from san Francisco, Part Six Nick Ellsmore April 5, 2018 Security Colony was one of six cybersecurity companies selected by Austrade & AustCyber to take part in the Federal Government’s Landing Pad program in San Francisco. In this exclusive series for Dynamic Business, Nick Ellsmore, co-founder of Security Colony shares his journey as he builds his second business (the first sold to BAE Systems) and introduces an Australian-built cybersecurity solution into the global market against the backdrop of the Californian startup and investment scene. Diary Entry Six I hate Security Colony. I love Security Colony. Call it doublethink, but both those statements, at various times, are true. Such is the despair of product development. The product never feels quite right. You know what you want it to be, but there’s always something that needs ‘fixing’, and every new set of eyes sees something “obvious”. Obvious, that is, except to me – the person who looks at the product with your own eyes day in and day out… it is so easy to be blinded by familiarity. I regularly comment on the fact that the path of least resistance in sales, is to sell something that’s already a line item in an organisation’s budget. You’re going to spend $50K on stationery next year? Great. I’m sure I have some stationery to sell you. Despite knowing this, we’ve built a product