

Spolsky: Setting the Right Priorities - wyday
http://www.inc.com/magazine/20090901/joel-spolsky-setting-the-right-priorities.html

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patio11
A _lot_ of software developers have critical priority inversion, focusing on
initiatives which will almost never add value. Without specific reference to
where Fogbugz was back in the day, I think a lot of software developers often
prioritize improving the product when that should not be #1 on their list with
where their business is right now.

In particular, if you have a working product which is salable, and you have a
website which is getting 5 visitors a day, put down the IDE and start
marketing. Better mousetraps do not automatically collect more mice -- you
need to locate the mice, preferably a bunch of ones which enjoy eating
whatever your bait is, and then put the mousetrap by them.

(There are circumstances in which development supports marketing -- working on
your viral loop for certain species of web apps, or adding something which
greatly improves your perceived value in your target market. Don't spend three
months to add another bullet point to a web page nobody reads, though.)

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bad_user
Of course, you have to do some marketing. But I think that if you're investing
time in marketing to be able to survive, then you're doing something wrong ...
you either chose the wrong market, or your product is not good enough.

From my experience, improving your product (which is not equal to adding more
features) is the best way to get new customers. That's because marketing
that's not properly targeted is as good as no marketing, and let's face it ...
technically inclined people suck at it. Even Spolsky, which is what I call a
marketing drone, in his interview on "Founders at Work" confessed that they
got more customers from incremental improvements than through marketing plots.

On the contrary, I think the main problem of software developers is that we
rarely finish what we start.

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patio11
Marketing is an engineering process. Technically inclined people _do not have
to suck at it_. To the extent that many do, it is largely because they've been
taught to undervalue its importance, treat it as an afterthought, and dismiss
properly conducted marketing as something which is for weak and stupid people.

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bad_user
> _dismiss properly conducted marketing as something which is for weak and
> stupid people._

I didn't say that. I think it's dismissed more because the majority of
marketing campaigns send out a dishonest message, and because of that
customers are getting more and more insensitive to such campaigns.

And I also don't think it is an engineering process in the traditional way
(although it's fashionable for everything that has a feedback loop to be
called engineering these days). Marketing is more about social interactions,
being more inline with humanities / social sciences ... and it takes a certain
kind of skill-set to be good at it, and I've seen too few technical people
being good at it.

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tom_rath
You're thinking of advertising rather than marketing as a whole.

Think of marketing as the social component of design. You wouldn't start
coding an application before you had at least a rough design of what its
functionality would be, right? So why would you start designing a product
before you identified who is going to use it and what they will be using it
for? Marketing answers those questions.

In rough, marketing identifies your market: Who will be using your product and
why. Your application / business is then built using that knowledge.

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tptacek
Three 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.

~~~
aditya
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._

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doug_m
When 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 discusses "this made my company
successful", "this was a mistake of mine" but talking about his blog and
celebrity is seemingly off limits, to a layman like me its a huge factor in
the appeal of his products but it goes unsaid in his articles - as though it
had no impact.

I wonder if there's a worry openly discussing the marketing benefit to Joel of
us reading his articles would be almost breaking down a wall and change our
perception of them.

Or am I wrong, has Joel (and/or Jeff Atwood) discussed openly the difference
their blog-marketing has made to their business success?

~~~
discojesus
_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 into what is now seen as one of the elite places to work in the
industry.

He's got the technical chops to back it up, but that doesn't matter - he is
_amazingly_ good at marketing, and he really gets the power of brands.

~~~
csallen
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.

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mixmax
The date of the article is sep 1, 2009.

That's 6 days from now.

~~~
csjohnst
I'd say that's the publish date for the print article. Don't you just love old
media ;-)

~~~
zck
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.

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petenixey
I 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.

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uuilly
In my first year in the valley I wasted a lot of time in vague meetings with
"strategic partners" and "investors." We called it "who's pitching who?" I'd
say these types of meetings account for 70% of valley lunches.

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jerryji
Interesting article! In hindsight everything is distorted and seems so
natural, however, it doesn't teach you much about the _current_ reality -- how
can you tell if your company is suffering from a product or marketing problem
_right now_?

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michael_dorfman
It's a good article, and the main point is an important one.

That being said: am I the only one who finds it quizzical that Joel ever
became such a notable pundit in the first place, in light of all of the
articles outlining his (past) clueless behavior?

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JunkDNA
I actually think his "clueless behavior" is one of the reasons his stuff
resonates with people. Everyone makes mistakes, some of us make them a _lot_.
Lots of people in Joel's position are tempted to leave out the mistakes they
made when telling their story. By detailing all these blunders, Joel connects
with the average "Joe Programmer". Instead of making himself out to be a
super-human, he comes off as a an informed peer. It makes his stories much
more interesting.

~~~
mechanical_fish
From a very good screenwriting website comes this essay, "Impressive Failure":

[http://www.wordplayer.com/columns/wp08.Impressive.Failure.ht...](http://www.wordplayer.com/columns/wp08.Impressive.Failure.html)

"In plotting an action-adventure type film, how your hero fails is at least as
important as how he succeeds. If the plot requires the hero to fail, try to
figure out a way for him to fail as impressively as possible.

"Consider RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK. Indiana Jones is perhaps the greatest
action hero in the history of the movies. And in his debut film, he flat-out
fails from beginning to end.

"He loses the golden idol. Marian is kidnapped and he's unable to rescue her.
He finds the Ark, but it is immediately taken away. His bluff to destroy the
Ark is called, and he gets recaptured. He can't even look upon the Ark when it
is opened. And the government ends up with his long sought-after and much
suffered-for prize. This guy's an action hero?

"Yup. Because he fails so damn impressively, from start to finish. Indy fails
so well, in fact, the audience is impressed as hell, and hardly aware of the
fact that he's failing. The defeats are just setbacks that create more
opportunities for heroism. As an added benefit, Indy wins the audience's
sympathy -- the poor guy's trying so hard, you can't help but root for him."

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uggedal
Readable version: [http://www.inc.com/magazine/20090901/joel-spolsky-setting-
th...](http://www.inc.com/magazine/20090901/joel-spolsky-setting-the-right-
priorities_Printer_Friendly.html)

~~~
JBiserkov
Printer-friendly is more human-friendly than the original...

It ain't funny

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known
Is it really prudent for Joel (CityDesk) to compete with big companies
(<http://www.microsoft.com/frontpage/>) and FOSS (<http://net2.com/nvu/>)
products?

~~~
BerislavLopac
CityDesk has been practically abandoned for a long time now. Fog Creek now
focuses exclusively on FogBugz and Copilot.

