Last year, I interviewed the team behind Neoscopio, then just a Free/Open Source Software business concept. Now, just a scant 3 months into their official business venture, they are well ahead of where they thought they would be right now. I asked Gustavo Mendez to bring us up to speed on where the fledgling company currently stands...

When I last interviewed the Neoscopio team, your company was just starting out, still looking for investors. Did you get any investors, or have you managed to grow without them?
We did get an investor. InovCapital, a venture capital society held mainly by the Portuguese Department of Economy and Innovation, provided the seed capital we needed to get things going. We are also being funded the portuguese Innovation Agency. It's not a lot of money, but it's enough to enable us to choose our strategy and clients carefully during a first year, in order to prove that our business model works.

Our Business plan is still the same, and we are still looking for venture Capital. Right now we are in a "proof-of-concept" mode, for our first year. We are confident it will make it much easier to find the needed investment now that we are actually in business. The trade-off is that we lose a year on the proof.

Neoscopio started off with 3 services (NeoDevel, NeoSupport & NeoBetter). Which of those services is the most requested? What has been your mainstay?
NeoDevel, surely. Customers have very specific needs, so we choose the best open source software that comes close to the clients needs and then develop the rest on top of it. NeoSupport and NeoBetter (training services) will eventually pick up as the number of installed solutions grows, since they are meant to maintain existing solutions.

Some businesses start off attempting to maintain a libre software business model, but in the end, wind up resorting to non-libre software. Have you managed to maintain your libre software stance?
Yes, certainly. We sell Open Source Solutions including support, warranty and customization, with all the inherent advantages, including the absence of vendor lock-in. Locking our software would destroy part of the value of the solutions. We think our main advantage is in applying our expertise in the OSS, so OSS is our core.

Neoscopio's biggest challenge a year ago was explaining the Free/Open Source Software
concept. Is that still your biggest challenge? Has some new challenge shadowed that one?
It has become easier. In fact, we have had some customers that had already made up their minds about using Open Source software, and were looking for someone that would offer the support and assurances they needed. We hoped for this in the future, and we found it right now, so this is comforting and reassuring we are in the right path. Our current main challenge is to gain market acceptance. Now that the Free/Open Source Software concept is understood by many, it is time to demonstrate product advantages “on the field”.

How has your client base and revenue grown over the past year?
Well, we are officially in business for less than three months. We had already clients and we were doing some business before, but as a secondary occupation, so any percentage figure would be quite high. We are looking at 500%-1000% growth in clients and revenue right now, but we will need a couple more months to have a clear picture. Right now we are way ahead of what we had planned.

I believe Neoscopio has some pretty interesting potential (or maybe actual) clients now. Tell me about these.
Our biggest clients are a Portuguese engineering company, part of an international group, that acquired our services to develop an open source version of a monitorization and quality control software for it's engineering projects, and the University of Porto, that has acquired turn key solutions for high-performance computing.

Is there anything else you want to add?
We are now working on the development of international partnerships. Also, AICEP, Global Portugal – Business Development Agency is helping companies to send workers to other countries in order to enhance their skills and resources. We are applying to these programs in order to send company members abroad to learn and to help OSS development around the world.neoscopio.com