The date of the article is sep 1, 2009. That's 6 days from now.
I swear I've read that article before, so it's recycled anyway.
Spolsky: Setting the Right Priorities
31–37 of 37 posts
Re: Spolsky: Setting the Right Priorities
#32Re: Spolsky: Setting the Right Priorities
#33I think it's a shame that this article shortsells the importance of promotion and sales. I wonder if it was perhaps a backlash from Joel to the sales driven culture of Microsoft.
Promoting and selling your product is a discipline that forces you to answer some critical questions about what it actually is:
1. Who is going to buy your product - is it SMEs or individuals. If it's SMEs which ones in particular, how do you phrase things like your website copy to be meaningful for them
2. What do they want the product to do (e.g. Wufoo was online forms which was totally disruptive to administrative areas but actually ended up doing a lot of tailoring to online surveys which (I'm guessing) is where the market actually spends money)
3. How are you going to get customers - not everything is word of mouth. Some things are simply about distribution and good sales (what makes you buy the tin foil you choose - word of mouth?!)
Developers always seem to hate the idea of actually promoting anything. There is a feeling that if you build it they will come. In general though they seldom do.
Try to sell it and you'll find out what people actually do want.
I wonder if developers hate promotion because it's hard. Whilst writing code is fun and engaging, cold calling to do some market research or to sell your product makes you feel uncomfortable and risks personal rejection.
Sales is super-important and every company you admire does it Apple markets the life out of all of its products, Google has massive Adwords sales teams and Virgin America might be the best domestic airline but you can be sure their growth would not been have as great without the massive marketing campaign that went with it.
I wish the many awesome software teams out there would stop spending so much time on product they think people want and start spending more time on selling it to people and discovering what they do want. The process isn't always fun but it is very, very informative.
Re: Spolsky: Setting the Right Priorities
#34Three years. YEARS. It took them three years to figure out how to grow Fog Creek. Jesus, what a relief. This article has made my week. Thanks, Joel Spolsky.
Agreed, probably the most powerful line in the entire article:
The first three years of Fog Creek were like this. We tried in vain to find the magical sales and marketing formula that would make our software successful.
Re: Spolsky: Setting the Right Priorities
#35The date of the article is sep 1, 2009. That's 6 days from now.
I'd say that's the publish date for the print article. Don't you just love old media ;-)
I read this article last Tuesday at the auto mechanic, after I finished the book I brought. So it's probably the September issue, which comes out before September.
Re: Spolsky: Setting the Right Priorities
#36Is it really prudent for Joel (CityDesk) to compete with big companies ( http://www.microsoft.com/frontpage/ ) and FOSS ( http://net2.com/nvu/ ) products?
CityDesk has been abandonned for a long time now. That said having an established competition is not necessarily a good reason to avoid a product space altogether. After all, FogBugz, which seems immensely successful and has been Fog Creek's cash cow for a while, has plenty of very established competitors - foss and non-foss.
Re: Spolsky: Setting the Right Priorities
#37When I read Joel's articles I know I enjoy them, I know they're interesting and I learn from them but also that I'm reading marketing for his products and brand - its win-win and I subscribe to his marketing output along with everything else he publishes willingly. I'd like to read about the impact "Joel on Software" and his celebrity has had on his success/sales though. Its almost like you read the article and he di…
I'd like to read about the impact "Joel on Software" and his celebrity has had on his success/sales though. within epsilon of 100%. I love Joel, his articles, and the Stack Overflow podcast, but nobody would have heard of him (or FogBugz) if he weren't such a brilliant marketer. He established FogBugz and Joel Spolsky as pretty big brands in the programming community, and made a previously unknown software company in…
I remember reading Joel's articles a couple years ago when I was studying for job interviews, and thinking, "Wow Joel sure is smart - Fog Creek must a really badass company." I had no idea what products they made. Now I'm working on my own company, and one of the first things I did was sign up for the 45-day free trial of FogBugz.