Hi, I'm Michael Herrmann. I run online businesses.
Originally from Vienna, Austria, I moved to the UK to study and obtained my MSc from the University of Oxford. Back in Vienna, I now run Omaha Consulting, an agency that helps IT companies implement automatic update systems. Our latest offering in the space is private repository hosting for winget, Windows' new package manager.
I've been self-employed since 2012. Here is a backwards list of my other projects:
Helium: An open source library for automating web browsers. It grew out of a failed startup (BugFree Software, below) and has been starred by thousands of developers on GitHub.
PyQt5 Book: A book about the technologies behind fman (below). The creator of PyQt read it and says it's "very good". A lead engineer at CERN found the book and invited me to teach a course about its contents on their premises. I got to visit CERN, taught a few dozen of its engineers, and got an amazing behind-the-scenes tour behind this fantastic institution.
fman build system (since 2017): A technology that saves programmers months when creating desktop apps. My most popular open source project so far, with thousands of stars on GitHub.
fman (since 2016): A file manager for Windows, Mac and Linux. When it launched it March 2017, it made the top 10 on Product Hunt. The first 100 licenses were sold out within 48 hours.
Trinamics (2015-2019): There's a new social trading platform in Austria called wikifolio. Together with two friends, we use it to trade stocks. The platform mirrors our trading strategies through exchange-traded certificates. Anybody can buy these certificates via their broker and thus partake in our performance. One of our wikifolio is TR Hummingbird, which achieved a performance of 28% in the time it ran.
Terminerinnerung (since 2014): A service which sends SMS reminders to the clients of professional service businesses (mostly doctors). The businesses pay a flat monthly fee for up to X reminders each month. Once the system is set up for a business, it requires hardly any work on my part. This is ideal for passive income. I was interviewed on IndieHackers about this business.
LiVisitor (2014): A Chrome extension which automatically visits other people's LinkedIn profiles. This makes you show up in their "who's viewed your profile" list and entices them to visit you back. It was mainly used by online marketers before I shut it down, due to concerns that I was in violation of LinkedIn's Terms of Service.
BugFree Software (2012-2019): A Polish IT company developing GUI test- and automation tools - Automa (for Windows) and Helium (for web sites). We received a grant from the EU to start this business in 2012, but eventually shut it down because it didn't grow as large as we had hoped.
LogFileViewer (2012): An Android app for viewing .log files. These files are produced by almost any running app or program and allow the developers to analyse crashes and failures. The app is free with in-app purchases, which used to earn me a little over 10€ each month. Paid for my Spotify account but was otherwise more valuable as an educational project.
Previously to becoming self-employed, I worked at willhaben.at, Austria's largest portal for classified ads. I had a great time working there and can recommend applying to them.
If you're interested in a more formal overview, here is my CV that also describes my academic background.
Thank you!
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