History of Fog Creek Software - My Thoughts
I read a really interesting interview. It was an interview with Joel Spolsky, who is co-owner of Fog Creek Software. I've been a long time reader of his work. He's an excellent writer (unlike myself), and he's been very successful. If there is anyone that I'm trying to emulate in the software world, it would be him. His most successful products have been FogBugz and Copilot.com, of which I have purchased both.
I love reading stories about how successful companies started. I'd like to think that I'll be able to duplicate their success one day.
Here are some things I found interesting about the interview:
"I think we started making $5,000 to $10,000 a month selling that". He goes on to say that they doubled their profits every year since they started. That means they're making somewhere between $80,000 and $160,000 per month after 5 years! That's some nice geometric growth, and the appeal of writing software that you can sell unlimited times.
"The biggest mistake that we consistently made is that we kept getting all kinds of interesting marketing ideas". He tried numerous marketing strategies that people will say are REQUIRED. I know that a lot of people say that you're product will go nowhere if you don't market it correctly. That's probably true in some cases, but it might not be as many as you think. It might not be as powerful as you think. Sure, Pepsi needs to spend a small fortune keeping their beverage fresh in your mind. Good software can often sell itself. That's awesome. He goes on an explains further. "Every minute, every developer hour we spent on any one of these crazy things—although they had some marginal return on the work that we put into them—was nothing compared to just making a better version of the product and releasing it." Excellent point. Not only would I rather spend time making my product better, that will probably be the best marketing strategy! I really hope he's right on this one, and I think he is.
"Things that to us are basic: Aeron chairs; private offices with doors that close for every programmer; letting programmers report to other programmers, so that your boss will understand you. We had 4 weeks of vacation and another week of holidays, which you can move I think. For the consulting business, we had a rule that you fly first class and that you never be away from home on a weekend." I've seen companies that just have a sea of cubes, and say that it helps communication. There are also businesses like Microsoft that insist on an office for every developer. I agree with Joel on this one again. Sure, the communication is easy, but it's TOO easy. I can easily interrupt the people working around me, even when I shouldn't. It should take some effort, which would make me more inclined to just figure it out and not bother anyone. As a developer it's optimal to stay "in the zone".
"My goal is to build a company where I can take much more significant ideas—where I can say, "Golly, backup software is really, really terrible. It's awful for all kinds of reasons. Let's make good backup software." That's a big project. I want to have the organization that I don't have yet where, when we get those ideas, we can produce the products." I've thought the same thing. Right now I don't have the resources to act on my good ideas, but I hope that some day I will. There are an endless supply of bad pieces of software out there. There is an endless supply of people banging their heads, not understanding why the software isn't designed right. These are all opportunities.
"Don't start a company unless you can convince one other person to go along with you. If you don't have two people (or I would even say three) that you've convinced to devote their lives to doing this, it's just going to be a different thing." This is new to me. It makes perfect sense.
And now for the sad one. "But because they never really take the leap and quit their job, they can give up their dream at any time. And 99.9 percent of them will actually give up their dream." This one is sad, and it's sort of driving me to not be in the majority. There has got to be a way to make this a reality.