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In the height of the enterprise transformation, I asked Del Yokam, one of many interim CEOs after Kahn, "Are you saying you want to trade a million loyal $100 customers for a hundred $1 million customers?" Yokam replied without hesitation "Absolutely."

They stopped selling $49.95 compilers with IDEs and tried to be an enterprise company. People still buy IDEs and compilers. If they had kept doing what they were doing and improving their products, they would have been fine. Instead, they wanted the big money and it didn't happen.




They also sold $299 and $499 compilers

It's weird thinking we used to pay for compilers


> It's weird thinking we used to pay for compilers

People still do. For example, Intel sells several compilers: https://software.intel.com/en-us/intel-compilers


We still pay for text editors and IDEs. Heck, people still sell compilers. I am saying those $299 and $399 price points were mistakes.




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