Respectfully, I am not as fully convinced as you are.Charlie Stone is Stuart's business partner, not just a web developer. In order to write and debug the web code, I'm sure Charlie's gone through everything by now. Only the future can tell us whether he can keep it going at the level of technical excellence that Stuart established.
Because Pralana is ahead of the competition including Boldin and Projectionlab in painting a more reliable financial picture and would prefer it to remain that way. If Stuart steps back and no viable succession plan is in place, the whole product will probably collapse.
The web developer he brought in is just that, a web developer. You really don't want one person doing everything. Beyond the web developer you need someone, if not a team, who focuses on tax law and retirement planning to be the brains of the spreadsheet/calculator. Most importantly, you need someone with business and marketing savvy to grow the client base. One person cannot be an expert in all these domains required to grow the product and business. Divide and conquer.
While the underlying product is superb and trounces the competition, that's not what a new or prospective customer gets to see and realize first. Initial impression is critical and where a new customer decides to stay or move on.
Their web page has the feel of a web page from 20 years ago. The newly implemented online Pralana interface, while a good start, is nowhere as polished, sleek and intuitive as their competitors. This has already been pointed out by others on previous posts here. I founded it somewhat disappointing and went back to the spreadsheet. The user manual uses a dense and convoluted language. Finally, they have no business person with marketing savvy to grow the business.
No margin, no mission especially when the passionate initial founder steps away from his pet project.
Statistics: Posted by lostvagabondmd — Thu Nov 14, 2024 2:27 am