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Making a nice place to work was our primary objective. Maybe I'm a little old fashioned, but I still have a tough time understanding any goal != "maximizing ou
by edw519 17y ago
Making a nice place to work was our primary objective.
Maybe I'm a little old fashioned, but I still have a tough time understanding any goal != "maximizing our customers' success".
I once went to a sales seminar for technical people and we had to introduce ourselves and describe what our companies did. The first 15 people described their products. Then on my turn, I said something like, "We provide our customers tools to help them succeed." The instructor remarked that I was the only one who mentioned "customers" in his introduction. I didn't even think about it at the time; that's just the way I was trained.
It took almost ten years, but I think we finally got the mission for the next ten nailed.
Good for you, Joel. In your business, I imagine it's a fine line between an employee and a customer because they're both programmers. I would expect that sooner or later, focus must revert to the customer.
- warwick 17y ago"We provide our customers tools to help them succeed." That seems like an overly general phrase. Using the generic 'customer' seems like a cop-out, since it feels like you haven't really asked yourself which market you're making your product for. "Help them succeed" implies to me that you haven't really figured out the tangible benefit to the customer, which in turn means that you're in a really weak sales position. Let's say you worked for a company making pie chart software. That phrase could apply, or something more specific like "We provide middle-managers with pie chart software to help them impress their bosses". A good sales pitch follows directly from an understanding of who you're selling to, what they want, and how your product gives it to them.
- alexgartrell 17y agoYou can have great vision to make great products to help great customers be great at buying your great software. If you don't attract top talent, you're not going to have great anything.
- jlees 17y agoMaking a nice place to work can be a great motivation to start a company if you've just finished working somewhere shitty. The new goal, helping customers be awesome, is directly related to maximising customer success - no?