It All Starts With a Small Idea

He wanted to be a pilot but could not qualify as it required perfect eye sight. Therefore, he decided to study architecture instead. But building design and layout was still not his passion, having owned computers from his early childhood days (his first computer was an Apple II), and playing around with them. That's why the first opportunity he got, James joined a company that designed websites, so that he could pursue his passion.

Later, with a continued interest in coding, James moved to Sun Microsystems, and one fine day, on a flight from London to San Francisco, he wrote Tomcat, the pure Java based web server environment that allows Java code to run. Later, he went on to develop Ant, the popular tool for automating software build processes.

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Duncan decided to put it out in the public by making it open source. From there, Tomcat became an instant hit, because everybody had felt the need for something like this during that time. People started adding their own bits and pieces to the code, enhancing its features, and making it more powerful. Its popularity was so much that even James was not allowed to make any further changes to it later when he felt the need to do so.

According to Duncan, it was something that got developed at the right time and place. 'Software doesn't always come from a mad genius', he says. Though developers do need the time and want to be left alone in a closed room for days with a burgers and Coke, but that's not something that makes a software as successful as Tomcat and Ant. What makes things successful are small ideas that come up from people, which cater to a very specific need. 'If they strike the fancy of the public, they'll become a hit!,' says Duncan.

Take the example of Twitter. The success of Twitter is well known to everyone today. A small piece of code that lets you briefly mention what you're currently doing has become so popular that it requires an entire IT department to manage the millions of users tweeting away to glory! The same goes with Facebook, or Angry Birds.

Building next-gen apps therefore requires a vision, wherein you can identify an inherent need that people have. Today, you also need a bit of marketing to promote what you're doing, because there's lots of competition out there. Everyone else has access to the same level of resources as you do. So you can't be seen doing what everyone else is doing. If you think of building a social networking app today for instance, the chances of its success would be slim because it's a need that has already been fulfilled.