(This is a snapshot of my old weblog. New posts and selected republished essays can be found at raganwald.com.)
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
The world of selling products for developers who choose their own tools
Eric Sink on Borland spinning their development tools off into a separate company:
It’s tough to sell products to developers. You get squeezed from both ends: lots of developers are cheapskates. Some are so religiously opposed to paying for tools that they stay up nights making free copies of commercial tools instead of inventing new ways to help developers.
And from the other end, companies that can fly upper management to Atlantic City have huge marketing budgets and work very hard convincing companies that they should dictate every last detail of the development process from the top down.
So building a business on the basis of developers (and development teams) who simultaneously have the freedom to choose their own tools and also are open to the idea of paying for high-quality tools that make their working lives better requires a huge amount of patience and passion.
I recall using TurboPascal many years ago to write a multi-user business application many, many years ago. I wish the descendants of that development team every success. And, if I ever find myself building a team within the MSFT ecosystem, I would certainly give SourceGear or TeamPrise a call.
If you’re going to commit to a career in harmony with your values, it’s nice to do business with people who have made the same commitment.
Eric Sink on Borland spinning their development tools off into a separate company:
Welcome [back] to the world of selling products for developers who choose their own tools. This is SourceGear’s path as well. Lots of companies prefer to sell products for developers whose tools are chosen for them. Your parent company is one example. That strategy can be quite lucrative, but it’s not very satisfying.
It’s tough to sell products to developers. You get squeezed from both ends: lots of developers are cheapskates. Some are so religiously opposed to paying for tools that they stay up nights making free copies of commercial tools instead of inventing new ways to help developers.
And from the other end, companies that can fly upper management to Atlantic City have huge marketing budgets and work very hard convincing companies that they should dictate every last detail of the development process from the top down.
So building a business on the basis of developers (and development teams) who simultaneously have the freedom to choose their own tools and also are open to the idea of paying for high-quality tools that make their working lives better requires a huge amount of patience and passion.
I recall using TurboPascal many years ago to write a multi-user business application many, many years ago. I wish the descendants of that development team every success. And, if I ever find myself building a team within the MSFT ecosystem, I would certainly give SourceGear or TeamPrise a call.
If you’re going to commit to a career in harmony with your values, it’s nice to do business with people who have made the same commitment.
