A magic goal for software businesses
Joel Spolsky wrote the foreword to Eric Sink's book "The Business Of Software" In that foreword, Joel talks about growing a software business from humble beginnings, much as occurs in a MicroISV. Near the end, he says the following -- and he says it in a paragraph all of its own, because it is a magical paragraph: "One day, you'll turn off the feature that emails you every time someone buys your software. That's a huge milestone."
Wow. Can you imagine that? It totally blows my tiny little mind away. That's like having so much money that you light your cigars with 100 bills -- and then you don't even finish the cigar. TimeSnapper has been selling like hotcakes lately, while it's still on special at $19.95, but even so I wouldn't say my inbox is actually close to collapsing from the added burden. I've been putting some thought into what can take us to that magic next level -- and one particular thing keeps occuring to me -- just keep doing what we're doing. We seem to be growing steadily, and the software keeps improving. We keep listening to people and we keep ruthlessly removing bugs. It's working. We're learning to do more marketing, we're talking to people all the time; we're headed in the right direction. It's a blast -- a lot of fun, running a software company. Very stimulating on the brain. If I haven't encouraged you lately, let me encourage you now. It's worth doing. Go for it.
'KC' on Sat, 02 Aug 2008 11:51:14 GMT, sez: TimeSnapper is a great product. A version for Macs would be great. How's that coming?
'lb' on Sat, 02 Aug 2008 12:17:37 GMT, sez: Hi KC.
We're very keen to offer a mac version, but we just don't have the technical chops to achieve it.
We've successfully ported most of the free version over to linux, with a goal of porting to mac later -- but realistically there are too many barriers for it to be successful.
I think you ought to write to us and tell us about your amazing mac-abilities, so we can work together on the mac edition.
what do you say?
lb
'Monkeyget' on Sat, 02 Aug 2008 16:08:07 GMT, sez: This guy agrees:
http://www.followsteph.com/2008/06/26/the-secret-to-success-can-be-summed-up-in-one-word-perseverance/
'John Walker' on Sun, 03 Aug 2008 02:48:53 GMT, sez: Exactly. Just keep doing what you're doing. It's amazing how many ISV's don't do that. Focus is the thing. Excellent post and thanks for the heads-up to Joel's forward.
'Paul Kohler' on Mon, 04 Aug 2008 22:29:10 GMT, sez: LOL! I can really identify with the whole "email feature" thing… Thanks for the encouragement again – PK :-)
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