I remember the first few days of what became Appistry very well. Not simply well as in “cool we’re starting something that’ll change the world” well, but really, really well as in “day 2 of our awesome new venture was ... 9/11”.

Not just some 9/11, the 9/11.

So as our team watched that morning in the same horror and disbelief that is etched so indelibly in our collective cortex, we were faced with a very practical question – what do we do now?

Sure we had a pretty strong hunch that we could actually make the world of commodity infrastructure safe, easy, and cheap for enterprise software. Probably even creating the most reliable computing infrastructure in the planet, and sure we had been able to raise seed funds fairly easily, but that was yesterday, even early this morning ... what about today?

What about today, in a world where the markets weren’t just jittery, they were closed. Banks weren’t being sold, they were closed. Air travel wasn’t expensive and late, it was closed.

I even had a check for more than $200,000 in my pocket from an eager investor, except there was only one problem – the entire US financial system was on indefinite holiday.

Would we ever be able to raise another nickel? Would anyone ever care about what we were about to build?

A Few Initial Steps
As we slowly awoke to that new reality, with so many unanswerable questions, we took care of a few first things first. A few of us drove my brother down to Marine Corp 4th Division HQ in New Orleans, where he reported for the first of three post-9/11 tours – all combat, from mine clearing in Afghanistan to quelling instability in Fallujah – with a wife and seven kids at home (a cool story, but really best saved for another day).

We finished building our commodity development systems (hey, we’re seriously hardcore about making sure that we can use the simplest, least expensive computers for anything) and screwing together our desks, and went about all of the other time honored rituals of the New Venture that are so comforting, at least to the entpreneureus serialius.

A little slower than usual at first, sure ... but we gradually picked up steam. Before we knew it we had answered that initial question about what to do next – we built our new technology, built our new company, made the vision real. - in short, we kept that original goal, the same audacious vision.

Sure we did some things differently than we’d planned – we had a little longer to incubate the fundamental technologies, we made even better use of funds that we’d ever thought possible – but the bottom line is that we still moved forward, still strove relentlessly to make that vision real.

And it worked well. Really, really well.

Meltdown 2008
Which brings us to the interesting times in which we find ourselves now – financial commotions in every corner, gloom and doom on the street corner for free.

Should we grab everything we hold dear and run for the hills? Just give up and go back to school, waiting for some sort of “better times”?

Well that’s certainly one course, but I think there is a better way – a far better way. Let’s start by thinking about how the average enterprise (other than say, the unhappy folks at Uber-Leveraged-Bad-Debt LLC) is likely to respond to this disappointing news chaos.

The Big Picture
There are two macro-level trends at this time. First, there will be a natural tendency to become more operationally focused, to think less about some entirely new capability and more about doing what you do today better. Historically this is at a maximum level in the earliest portions of a downturn, when organizations are still coming to grips with the life in which they are now immersed.

Like a boxer who’s just taken an unexpected gut shot, most organizations will step back, shake their heads and begin to think about how best to (tentatively) take the next few steps.

Once they wake up from the shock, the fog clears and they realize – “Oh right … I’m still here and there’s lot’s to do” – the second macro trend starts to become apparent. In particular, each organization will begin to think clearly about the choices before them and how best to move confidently forward.

It is within this trend that companies will begin to move beyond coping with the problem and start to think very hard about how to drive cost out of their business while increasing core capabilities. And they’ll be looking to do this at as close to rock bottom prices as possible.

These kinds of economic stress can actually become a great equalizer, at least in the sense that the rules are changing for everybody and so much is up for grabs. Imagine officials stopping a World Cup match or a baseball playoff game and ordering every player to wear 75 kg backpacks for the remainder. On top of that they decide that remaining games will be played in formal attire and kick out a few of the remaining teams for good measure.

The result would be chaotic, to say the least.

While all analogies have their limitations (and this might have more than most!), you get the idea – those who can adapt to the new rules fastest and first are going to win. Even more to the point, in the real life uncertainty in which we all find ourselves, some of the newer technologies are crucial to the quest.

In a few days I'll post Meltdown Part 2, which is focused on what an enterprise can do with technology to thrive in these times.