Startup of the Day - Ninite

The BizSpark startup of the day is Ninite, based in the US. You will find below an interview with Patrick Swieskowski and Sascha Kuzins, Co-Founders of Ninite. All the best to them and congrats for being the startup of the day!

Website: www.ninite.com.

Interview with Patrick Swieskowski and Sascha Kuzins, Co-Founders of Ninite

Tell us who you are and your role in the company:

We’re the co-founders of Ninite, an easy way to install multiple apps at once automatically.

What did you do before creating your company?

Patrick was writing jokes in LA and Sascha was in graduate school at Oxford.

How do you feel being the most promising ‘Startup of the Day’ per Microsoft BizSpark?

It’s an honor and a great opportunity to reach out to the Microsoft community.

What is your company’s mission?

We make software installation easy.

How did you get the idea for your company?

After setting up many PCs as a test platform for our old product we realized that software installation was extremely tedious. Ninite is our attempt to fix that.

Tell us about your funding history. Are you currently looking for funding? If so, how much?

We did Y Combinator in 2008 and highly recommend it to anyone interested in starting a company. Afterwards we raised a small angel round. We’re not currently looking for funding.

How many employees do you have? How many developers?

Ninite is just the two of us and we both write code for it.

Are you hiring? If yes, what are you hiring and where?

We are not hiring, but we’re based in San Franscisco.

Which platform are you building on? Why?

We built the Ninite client in C++ using the win32 APIs for maximum compatibility. This is particularly important since we aim to be the first thing users run after installing a bare OS.

Where do you see opportunities today in the Software/internet area?

Everything is too complicated. Making computers work well for normal people is a gigantic opportunity.

What do you think about the BizSpark Program?

It’s a fantastic way for small startups to interface with Microsoft. We’re just two programmers trying to fix a problem and BizSpark lets us easily leverage Microsoft’s support.

Do you have any advice for young Software entrepreneurs?

Ship a solution to a small problem first; your solution can always get more complicated or comprehensive later. If you can make a small thing that people use you can let their feedback guide further development.

Who’s your role model?

Paul Graham, co-founder of Y Combinator and Viaweb.

What’s the ONE THING you would like readers to take away from this interview?

Ninite is the best way to set up PCs.