I almost didn't click on it because there are so many useless blog posts with this kind of title. But this is a great story! A fast-food restaurant owner ends up creating a valuable software company. And the programmer gets rich. Most people here would enjoy it.
"We didn't have money. No venture capital. No outside investors. Just two guys with an idea. Without money there was a great discipline about how we spent money." right, except the 40k to dev it and 10 franchise outlets to keep it running =)
Actually, it says he spent $600K to develop the software.
Gala put more than $600,000 into the project, money earned at the restaurants, before the official launch of the company, Altametrics in Los Alamitos, or the inventory control product, eRestaurant, at a Long Beach trade show in October, 2000.
When I was at the "trade show" part, I simply can't help thinking if things could have been easier for them had they read Steve Blank's (recent) Going to Trade Shows Like it Matters (http://steveblank.com/2009/05/21/trade-shows/).
Of course, I have to agree with rrival on the capital part.
I was impressed by the part where the programmer called the potential customer's bluff and told him to bugger off, especially since they didn't have any other customers.
