I love writing great software, but producing software is only one part of a successful software company. Lots of developers ship software—some of it is pretty good too. When you have a prospect looking at your product and comparing it to half a dozen others, you need to stand out somehow. Features in a product may make headlines, but customers won't hang around if they don't get quality service and support.
I can't blame them. One of my pet peeves is poor service. I knew that I couldn't create perfect software—no one can unless it does little or nothing—so the next best things would be to fix problems quickly and respond to requests promptly. So don't spread it around to the competition, but our secret weapon is over-the-top customer service.
What does it mean to be "over the top" with service? It means that email requests are handled within minutes, when possible, and within a couple of hours during crunch times and off hours. It means that we offer a 60-day money back guarantee without requiring any proof of problems—we do need your feedback though, so please tell us why our products didn't work for you. It means that we won't create ridiculous copy-protection schemes that make you jump through hoops to run our software on your computers. It means that we actually care about our customers and their well-being.
Now this doesn't seem so tricky, but the fact is that many, many companies blow it when it comes to customer service. They don't answer emails, don't give refunds, are suspicious about customers stealing licenses, and frankly, some even see dealing with customers as a burden!
The choice to offer great service or not is pretty simple. As a microISV, we can't afford bad press. Our marketing budget is tiny; therefore, we rely on word of mouth and comments posted on the web and in print. If the comments are negative, then we just bought some lousy advertising with our actions or lack thereof.
When I started developing MoneyWell, the personal finance software market on the Mac was pretty crowded but not so much that I was concerned about MoneyWell standing out. It has a pretty unique design and the envelope budgeting methodology was not widely implemented. By the time MoneyWell shipped, it felt like the competition had doubled and, in the nine months since, it's grown even more packed. To stand out, we needed more than just a great feature set, we needed a great company. Apple gets a ton of free advertising because it has a zealous fan base so why not try to duplicate that marketing method.
In order to balance my time for design and coding with handling support emails, I had to make sure I was very disciplined. First, I made sure my inbox was kept as close to zero emails as possible. I couldn't afford to feel overwhelmed by the sight of hundreds of emails. I became very good at email triage: deleting or filing emails that just didn't need to hang around and answering the short tech support questions quickly.
Next I watched for patterns of tech support questions and looked for solutions that didn't require me to repeat the same answer over and over again. Sometimes this meant changing the software and putting out a quick patch. Other times this meant posting an FAQ or tutorial on the website. I started trying to write detailed step-by-step instructions and then I found that these took up a lot of my time and confused some customers. The solution was to do video tutorials or screencasts.
People love our video tutorials and I love being able to redirect them to these before having to write lengthy email responses. Video tutorials are relatively quick to do. I write a script, record the voiceover and then record the software in action. It helps that my wife, Judy, is a trained voiceover artist, but the bottom line is that customers can watch a tutorial over and over until it sinks in. We produce it once and it get used thousands of times.
As an added bonus, these videos are also used for marketing MoneyWell.
This really is the key to excellent customer service: What can I do to empower my customers instead of making them always reliant on me?
The best service is when we don't have to do anything at all. Just by going to our website, an answer is found. Just by opening our software, the customer is notified of an update. Just by posting a question to our user forum, other customers jump in to offer help.
Service is also about honesty. If I make a mistake, I need to fall on the sword. Most people are going to rush to my defense when I don't try to make excuses and shield myself from criticism. I can't tell you how many times I've immediately apologized for a bug or a missed response only to have a customer write, "Hey that's fine. You're doing a great job. Thanks!" At times, the hardest thing for me to do is swallow my pride and take the blame but I know it's the right thing to do. All I have to think is, "Would I rather be right or have lots of happy customers?" Uh, let's see... yeah, gimme the happy customers.
When I hear other companies complain about their customers, I cringe. Even if those comments don't get back to your customer base, your bad attitude will seep through during your conversations with them. If you don't deal with people well, then you'd better hire someone who does. You can't afford to play the part of the "Soup Nazi" unless you have a product that has no competition.
I have built companies with 40 or more employees and it is difficult to keep the quality of service high as the layers between me and the customers increase, but I'm very determined this time to keep any loss of service to a minimum. Judy starting full time with No Thirst Software on July 1 will help immensely and we won't hire our first tech support person unless he or she is passionate about our products.
By focusing on our customers' happiness and well-being, everything we do is affected. We can't control our incoming cash flow directly because we can't force people to buy our software and affect sales directly. What we can do is take excellent care of our existing customers and optimize how we spend our time. I believe creating great software and supporting it with over-the-top customer service is the best way to grow this company.
Let me know if you see us dropping the ball on this and we'll get to test out how well I fall on the sword.
Peace.
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Was It Worth the Money?
I'm a little late with my wrap-up, but better late than never, right? And before my wife says it, I'll say it—this blog entry may be considered at geek level orange. So if you don't like the typed content, there are links to pictures throughout.
Going to Apple's World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC) is by no means cheap. It's close to two grand before you add in airfare and a hotel room for six nights. So now that I've attended my first one, the most common question I get is, "Was it worth the money?"
Absolutely! Without a doubt. No question in my mind.
Your mileage may vary, but I got so much out of this trip that I will do it again in a heartbeat. Let me break it down a bit to examine the benefits for me.
Keynote Address: Out of everything at WWDC, this was only marginally better than watching a text feed from my computer at home. Yes, Jobs RDF (reality distortion field) was present, but not very powerful. Maybe because everything announced was already rumored. Maybe because the iPhone product demos went on and on and on and on. They counteracted any excitement that Steve built up.
Sessions: I was pretty lucky and picked many great sessions. Sure I can watch them later on ADC iTunes but the Q & A after each session is missing from those recordings and many of those were golden. Developers—smarter than me—were asking questions that I wish I had the wherewithal to ask at the time. I only felt the need to walk out of one session—and did. Thanks to the MacDevNet podcast that recommended it was okay to do that.
Labs: These were great. Having the ability to monopolize a Core Data engineer and bombard him with questions was invaluable. I only wish that I had been more prepared with questions and could have taken advantage of more labs. Of course, I have plenty of questions now that I didn't ask. Next year I'm taking a few days before WWDC to prep with code samples and questions for these labs.
CocoaHeads: Several top notch Mac developers put on presentations at the SF Apple store. Unfortunately, I arrived way too late to see anything but the top of the screen and the back of the SRO crowd. Another mistake I will not make next time around.
Parties: The parties were good, but not great for networking. Too loud and too crowded to really talk and get to know someone but lots of fun and helped me meet a few people that I only knew via Twitter or email. Apple's Bash was easier because it was outdoors. Still the best conversations happened at the more personal outings at local bars like the Chieftain.
Networking: Outside of the parties is where the majority of the networking happened. It started early on Sunday during registration. I saw a tweet that Fraser Speirs was sitting in the registration hall. Trying to be social, I approached someone that I thought looked like Fraser (I only know him from a tiny Twitter picture) and talked to the wrong person. Of course as I walked away and checked Twitter on my iPhone, Fraser tweets, "Some guy just asked someone two people down from me if he was Fraser Speirs." Nice. I'm outed on Twitter, so I owned up to it publicly and then went back to give Fraser a hard time for letting me walk right by him.
I knew at this point that it was going to be fun coordinating meetings over Twitter. Many of us posted information about what session we were in and where in the room we sat, along with the "shirt of the day" tweets. It's a good thing that Twitter reinforced their servers for the conference (Twitter tends to go down more than Yahoo's stock price) or we would have been lost.
It took every single day that I stayed in San Francisco to meet everyone on my list and I still missed a few. We talked between sessions, ate lunch together, shared code, and opened the door to several opportunities to connect our products. If the only benefit I got out of WWDC was the networking, I would say the trip was worth it.
MacDevNet Roundtable: Scotty held the first Developers Roundtable around an actual table (oval, not round, but that would be picking nits) and I was invited to sit at it. Doing a group podcast with the actual people present is so much nicer than negotiating for your chance to speak on Skype. Have a listen if you haven't already heard it. Besides me, Scotty hosts Dan Wood, John Fox, Daniel Jalkut, and Craig Syverson. Somehow, I even got labeled as the "fanboy" in it.
I did take some pictures with my handy-but-not-good-in-low-light iPhone. Next year I'm taking a real camera and getting better photos. I guess I have a lot of "next year" vows. I hope I remember to read this and do them.
Peace.
Going to Apple's World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC) is by no means cheap. It's close to two grand before you add in airfare and a hotel room for six nights. So now that I've attended my first one, the most common question I get is, "Was it worth the money?"
Absolutely! Without a doubt. No question in my mind.
Your mileage may vary, but I got so much out of this trip that I will do it again in a heartbeat. Let me break it down a bit to examine the benefits for me.
Keynote Address: Out of everything at WWDC, this was only marginally better than watching a text feed from my computer at home. Yes, Jobs RDF (reality distortion field) was present, but not very powerful. Maybe because everything announced was already rumored. Maybe because the iPhone product demos went on and on and on and on. They counteracted any excitement that Steve built up.
Sessions: I was pretty lucky and picked many great sessions. Sure I can watch them later on ADC iTunes but the Q & A after each session is missing from those recordings and many of those were golden. Developers—smarter than me—were asking questions that I wish I had the wherewithal to ask at the time. I only felt the need to walk out of one session—and did. Thanks to the MacDevNet podcast that recommended it was okay to do that.
Labs: These were great. Having the ability to monopolize a Core Data engineer and bombard him with questions was invaluable. I only wish that I had been more prepared with questions and could have taken advantage of more labs. Of course, I have plenty of questions now that I didn't ask. Next year I'm taking a few days before WWDC to prep with code samples and questions for these labs.
CocoaHeads: Several top notch Mac developers put on presentations at the SF Apple store. Unfortunately, I arrived way too late to see anything but the top of the screen and the back of the SRO crowd. Another mistake I will not make next time around.
Parties: The parties were good, but not great for networking. Too loud and too crowded to really talk and get to know someone but lots of fun and helped me meet a few people that I only knew via Twitter or email. Apple's Bash was easier because it was outdoors. Still the best conversations happened at the more personal outings at local bars like the Chieftain.
Networking: Outside of the parties is where the majority of the networking happened. It started early on Sunday during registration. I saw a tweet that Fraser Speirs was sitting in the registration hall. Trying to be social, I approached someone that I thought looked like Fraser (I only know him from a tiny Twitter picture) and talked to the wrong person. Of course as I walked away and checked Twitter on my iPhone, Fraser tweets, "Some guy just asked someone two people down from me if he was Fraser Speirs." Nice. I'm outed on Twitter, so I owned up to it publicly and then went back to give Fraser a hard time for letting me walk right by him.
I knew at this point that it was going to be fun coordinating meetings over Twitter. Many of us posted information about what session we were in and where in the room we sat, along with the "shirt of the day" tweets. It's a good thing that Twitter reinforced their servers for the conference (Twitter tends to go down more than Yahoo's stock price) or we would have been lost.
It took every single day that I stayed in San Francisco to meet everyone on my list and I still missed a few. We talked between sessions, ate lunch together, shared code, and opened the door to several opportunities to connect our products. If the only benefit I got out of WWDC was the networking, I would say the trip was worth it.
MacDevNet Roundtable: Scotty held the first Developers Roundtable around an actual table (oval, not round, but that would be picking nits) and I was invited to sit at it. Doing a group podcast with the actual people present is so much nicer than negotiating for your chance to speak on Skype. Have a listen if you haven't already heard it. Besides me, Scotty hosts Dan Wood, John Fox, Daniel Jalkut, and Craig Syverson. Somehow, I even got labeled as the "fanboy" in it.
I did take some pictures with my handy-but-not-good-in-low-light iPhone. Next year I'm taking a real camera and getting better photos. I guess I have a lot of "next year" vows. I hope I remember to read this and do them.
Peace.
Thursday, June 05, 2008
What's a WWDC?
If you're a Mac software developer or a die-hard fan, you probably know that WWDC is Apple's World Wide Developer Conference. For developers, this is the place to go to suck in as much knowledge as we can in a five-day period. Apple hosts sessions to teach about development tools and related topics and they also give us labs to sit and talk to the people that designed the Apple's systems. It's geek nirvana!
It's also a chance for developers, who are spread around the world, glued to their computers, and typically carry on conversations limited to 140 characters at a time, to actually sit face to face and have a real conversation. This is my first time to go, so I don't know which I'm looking forward to more—the schooling or the socializing.
The Mac developer community is so giving and open and has helped me tremendously with my development of both Debt Quencher and MoneyWell. I'm not sure I've sold enough copies of both to pay for all the drinks I owe these guys, but I'll do my best to pass around my gratitude. I'm more excited than my daughter if she were told that everything is now available in pink... and free. Just yesterday she asked if we could get a ping pong table... in pink... with pink paddles... and zebra striped balls. The girl scares me sometimes.
The only difficult part is continuing to run a microISV company while I'm MIA. My wife, Judy, is set to come on board full time to work with me at No Thirst Software, but that doesn't happen until July 1, and I'll be at the conference from June 7 through June 14. This means that my average one-hour response time for support will suffer a bit. It will be worth it, though, because what I learn at the conference should greatly accelerate our two pending MoneyWell projects (2.0 and iPhone versions), which means more software goodness for our customers.
Even if you're not a geek, you should pay attention to Steve Job's Keynote on Monday morning. What he announces may very well make you want to create a new expense bucket in MoneyWell.
Peace.
It's also a chance for developers, who are spread around the world, glued to their computers, and typically carry on conversations limited to 140 characters at a time, to actually sit face to face and have a real conversation. This is my first time to go, so I don't know which I'm looking forward to more—the schooling or the socializing.
The Mac developer community is so giving and open and has helped me tremendously with my development of both Debt Quencher and MoneyWell. I'm not sure I've sold enough copies of both to pay for all the drinks I owe these guys, but I'll do my best to pass around my gratitude. I'm more excited than my daughter if she were told that everything is now available in pink... and free. Just yesterday she asked if we could get a ping pong table... in pink... with pink paddles... and zebra striped balls. The girl scares me sometimes.
The only difficult part is continuing to run a microISV company while I'm MIA. My wife, Judy, is set to come on board full time to work with me at No Thirst Software, but that doesn't happen until July 1, and I'll be at the conference from June 7 through June 14. This means that my average one-hour response time for support will suffer a bit. It will be worth it, though, because what I learn at the conference should greatly accelerate our two pending MoneyWell projects (2.0 and iPhone versions), which means more software goodness for our customers.
Even if you're not a geek, you should pay attention to Steve Job's Keynote on Monday morning. What he announces may very well make you want to create a new expense bucket in MoneyWell.
Peace.
Friday, May 23, 2008
The Lone American
Scotty's latest MacSB Podcast is out and I'm the lone American on it. Sharing the mic space with me are Danny Greg and Fraser Speirs, as well as our host, Steve "Scotty" Scott.
We chat about Licensing and Serials and I learn a few British terms, like "wash up," which I thought was Scotty giving us a TMI moment but really he was just going to clean some dishes. Silly American.
Peace.
We chat about Licensing and Serials and I learn a few British terms, like "wash up," which I thought was Scotty giving us a TMI moment but really he was just going to clean some dishes. Silly American.
Peace.
Thursday, May 08, 2008
Hold on to Sixteen as Long as You Can
Little ditty about Jack and Diane...
A favorite John Mellencamp song popped on the radio as I left for lunch today after shipping a new release of MoneyWell.
Two American kids growin' up in the heartland.
It followed a ZZ Top song and the two songs sent me back to my days in college. Everything was so possible. All the doors were wide open and we could do anything we wanted. We just had to try.
Jackie gonna be a football star...
None of us had any history of business failure or lost career opportunities. One of my best friends in college was a fellow Computer Science major and we constantly competed for top grades and the highest bonus for handing in our projects early. We also had hacked the college's computer system and had the passwords for all the operators and even created our own teacher account so we could have higher access rights. Fred Dartner was one of the nicest math teachers at Erie Community College—he never failed a single student. We were big fish in a very little pond.
Oh yeah, life goes on... Long after the thrill of livin' is gone...
But then the real world hits and the self-assuredness of academia fades as rejections and failures pile up.
Oh yeah, life goes on... Long after the thrill of livin' is gone. They walk on.
Many people forget that there are no limits to what we can do. We are only limited by our imagination, desire, and faith. That by serving the greater good, we too will be taken care of and will survive.
Jackie sits back, collects his thoughts for the moment. Scratches his head and does his best James Dean.
I was thinking back to a year ago, before MoneyWell 1.0 had shipped, and how I felt at the time. This was after many months of design and coding and I wasn't quite sure how it would be accepted by the marketplace. But there was a glimmer of hope that I was on the right track.
Gonna let it rock, let it roll. Let the Bible Belt come and save my soul...
Now with the release of MoneyWell 1.3.3, thousands of customers, and a vivid vision for what is planned in the 2.0 release, I feel rejuvenated. Full of hope. Ready to take on any challenge.
Hold on to sixteen as long as you can... Changes come around real soon make us women and men.
There was no fear when I started my first company in college—I had more guts than brains. There was a ton of fear present when No Thirst Software launched—I had more failures than successes. But now, it's almost two years since I started this blog and caught the bug to go out on my own again and I'm happier than ever.
Little ditty about Jack and Diane...
Because I know that anything is possible.
Two American kids doin' the best that they can.
Peace.
Thursday, April 17, 2008
Still Sitting Comfortably After Shipping MoneyWell 1.3
MoneyWell 1.3 is out the door. Elvis has left the building. The bell has been wrung. The bullet has exited the chamber and there's no stopping it now. That last analogy is rather appropriate for the process of shipping a new software release. I'm never really sure if I'm going to hit a target dead center or shoot myself in the foot.
When I update my website or even this blog, I can fix errors and the impact is minimal. On the other hand, a new application is downloaded by thousands of users, installed on their Macs, and is out of my control. Sure I have Sparkle, the coolest automatic update utility, built into MoneyWell, but that only notifies the user that there is an update and doesn't force an install. If there is errant code in the software, it's in the wild and potentially annoying customers or prospects—or even worse—corrupting data—my worst nightmare.
That's why creating a significant update to MoneyWell is such a gut-wrenching process for me and why I made sure there were plenty of active beta testers using it before it went live. Testing the 1.3 release was especially critical because it uses an update file format and has to convert existing 1.x MoneyWell documents. You really only get one shot at a conversion. If the data gets mangled, then the developer (a.k.a. me) gets his butt (a.k.a. my butt) chewed off in very nasty emails. Not that I care that much about what my posterior looks like, but as a software developer, I'm on it a lot and it helps if it's symmetrical and lacking divots.
This MoneyWell release is cool because it has some of the most requested features by customers, and those same features were ones that I've wanted in there from the start. When your customer base is on the same page as you, it's a beautiful thing. This causes an extreme sense of excitement and purpose during the first few stages of development. Life is good.
Then after working with a new release for a while, I forget how much has changed since the shipping release and I start panicking that I didn't put enough into this new version. I have to go read my feature list to calm down again.
If the development/testing process drags on longer than expected, as it did with 1.3, I start to get anxious and want to get it out the door. Naturally, I'm concerned that there are no significant bugs, which makes me want to hold onto it longer to test it more. These two conflict with each other and get me anxious about the release, which of course sends me back to wondering if this version is worthy enough to ship.
Thankfully, I had some amazing beta testers who reminded me constantly that this was a great release and they couldn't wait until it was done so that they could use it in production. They also caught three nasty bugs in the last 48 hours before I shipped and saved me from having to purchase orthopedic seating. Of course this also made me question what else I may have missed.
No matter how crazy I sound, I am experienced enough to know when I need to ignore myself and ship the software, so yesterday I shipped MoneyWell 1.3. After a mad dash of updating web pages, download sites, and pushing a press release out through prMac, I was able to breathe and check my foot for holes. So far, I am still sitting comfortably and I don't need new shoes.
If you haven't done so already, check out MoneyWell 1.3. It has dozens of new enhancements including scheduled transactions, multiple currencies, exchange rate conversions, new reports, and many more. And if you happen to already know all this, then tell your friends about it—just leave out the parts about how the guy developing it is a bit neurotic. I appreciate your covering for me.
Peace.
When I update my website or even this blog, I can fix errors and the impact is minimal. On the other hand, a new application is downloaded by thousands of users, installed on their Macs, and is out of my control. Sure I have Sparkle, the coolest automatic update utility, built into MoneyWell, but that only notifies the user that there is an update and doesn't force an install. If there is errant code in the software, it's in the wild and potentially annoying customers or prospects—or even worse—corrupting data—my worst nightmare.
That's why creating a significant update to MoneyWell is such a gut-wrenching process for me and why I made sure there were plenty of active beta testers using it before it went live. Testing the 1.3 release was especially critical because it uses an update file format and has to convert existing 1.x MoneyWell documents. You really only get one shot at a conversion. If the data gets mangled, then the developer (a.k.a. me) gets his butt (a.k.a. my butt) chewed off in very nasty emails. Not that I care that much about what my posterior looks like, but as a software developer, I'm on it a lot and it helps if it's symmetrical and lacking divots.
This MoneyWell release is cool because it has some of the most requested features by customers, and those same features were ones that I've wanted in there from the start. When your customer base is on the same page as you, it's a beautiful thing. This causes an extreme sense of excitement and purpose during the first few stages of development. Life is good.
Then after working with a new release for a while, I forget how much has changed since the shipping release and I start panicking that I didn't put enough into this new version. I have to go read my feature list to calm down again.
If the development/testing process drags on longer than expected, as it did with 1.3, I start to get anxious and want to get it out the door. Naturally, I'm concerned that there are no significant bugs, which makes me want to hold onto it longer to test it more. These two conflict with each other and get me anxious about the release, which of course sends me back to wondering if this version is worthy enough to ship.
Thankfully, I had some amazing beta testers who reminded me constantly that this was a great release and they couldn't wait until it was done so that they could use it in production. They also caught three nasty bugs in the last 48 hours before I shipped and saved me from having to purchase orthopedic seating. Of course this also made me question what else I may have missed.
No matter how crazy I sound, I am experienced enough to know when I need to ignore myself and ship the software, so yesterday I shipped MoneyWell 1.3. After a mad dash of updating web pages, download sites, and pushing a press release out through prMac, I was able to breathe and check my foot for holes. So far, I am still sitting comfortably and I don't need new shoes.
If you haven't done so already, check out MoneyWell 1.3. It has dozens of new enhancements including scheduled transactions, multiple currencies, exchange rate conversions, new reports, and many more. And if you happen to already know all this, then tell your friends about it—just leave out the parts about how the guy developing it is a bit neurotic. I appreciate your covering for me.
Peace.
Tuesday, April 08, 2008
Mac Software Business: Year One Podcast
Keith Alperin has just published his debut podcast and graciously invited me to be in on it. Gus Meuller of Flying Meat and Steve "Scotty" Scott of mamooba and the Mac Developer Network are fellow panel members.
The four of us take turns talking about the process of starting a Mac ISV along with our motivations and experiences. You'd never know that this was Keith's first time in this role, he did an excellent job. I on the other hand had a bad case of the "ums." Let's just blame it on the fact that all four of my brain cells were quite busy trying to finish MoneyWell 1.3.
Speaking of which, the beta for 1.3 is nearing an end. I'm working tirelessly to publish a release candidate this week. There's so many tasty new features in this release that I can't wait to experience the public response. I know it all can't be positive so I'll take gobs of new sales to balance out the potential critics. It's only fair, right?
Peace.
The four of us take turns talking about the process of starting a Mac ISV along with our motivations and experiences. You'd never know that this was Keith's first time in this role, he did an excellent job. I on the other hand had a bad case of the "ums." Let's just blame it on the fact that all four of my brain cells were quite busy trying to finish MoneyWell 1.3.
Speaking of which, the beta for 1.3 is nearing an end. I'm working tirelessly to publish a release candidate this week. There's so many tasty new features in this release that I can't wait to experience the public response. I know it all can't be positive so I'll take gobs of new sales to balance out the potential critics. It's only fair, right?
Peace.
Sunday, March 23, 2008
There's Something Different This Time
This blog has been fairly quiet because I've been face down in development of MoneyWell 1.3, which is currently in beta test. Here's a peek at some of the changes:
It's shaping up to be a pretty nice release, but what has really impressed me is my beta test team. Posting a product for beta testing is a very iffy deal. When I post a beta, I hope that some testers will catch bugs I've missed and provide feedback on new features, but I keep my expectations low because people are busy and don't usually end up participating much in the testing. Once in a while, I'll get one or maybe two active testers.
This time it's very different. Not only do I have almost 50 beta testers, 20% of them are actively testing and giving me feedback. There are still a couple of stars that do the majority of the heavy lifting, but this time they are not alone. I'm thrilled and blessed to have such an enthusiastic group to make my job easier.
Not only am I getting excellent bug reporting and feedback, but I'm getting emails that are filled with words of encouragement and pats on the back. I couldn't ask for a better group. In previous companies, I've had employees that didn't give me this much time and effort. This is a public thank you to all those who are contributing to making MoneyWell a better product!
I'm pretty sure I know why this is happening: People respond to passion. They see that I'm not just building a product to earn money. They respond to craftsmanship and hard work. There are always going to be people looking for the lowest price or a "good deal," but that's not the customer base I want. I know that I'll lose them to the next lowest bidder and quality just isn't very important to that crowd.
Here's how to build a fantastic customer base:
What has also helped in my case is this blog. People know more about my life, my history, and my ambitions for the future of No Thirst Software. They know that I'm in this for the long haul and that this isn't just a college sideline project to make a few extra bucks. There are six people in my family that depend on this company growing and thriving (and hopefully a few thousand customers care too).
If you want to have a great company, with great customers, you've got to go "all in."
Peace.
- Added scheduled transactions with user-defined repeat periods
- Added ability to set a different currency for each account
- Added currency exchange rate table and conversion
- Added ability to hide buckets and accounts
- Added ability to reconcile out of range transactions without affecting date
- Added context menus throughout main window
- Added ability to set bucket as optional on a transaction
- Added ability to set date range for reporting
- Added Transaction Report with subtotals
- Added Bucket Summary Report
- Added Tax Detail Report
- Added Tax Summary Report
- Added Combined Income Buckets option to Allocate Income
- and many more...
It's shaping up to be a pretty nice release, but what has really impressed me is my beta test team. Posting a product for beta testing is a very iffy deal. When I post a beta, I hope that some testers will catch bugs I've missed and provide feedback on new features, but I keep my expectations low because people are busy and don't usually end up participating much in the testing. Once in a while, I'll get one or maybe two active testers.
This time it's very different. Not only do I have almost 50 beta testers, 20% of them are actively testing and giving me feedback. There are still a couple of stars that do the majority of the heavy lifting, but this time they are not alone. I'm thrilled and blessed to have such an enthusiastic group to make my job easier.
Not only am I getting excellent bug reporting and feedback, but I'm getting emails that are filled with words of encouragement and pats on the back. I couldn't ask for a better group. In previous companies, I've had employees that didn't give me this much time and effort. This is a public thank you to all those who are contributing to making MoneyWell a better product!
I'm pretty sure I know why this is happening: People respond to passion. They see that I'm not just building a product to earn money. They respond to craftsmanship and hard work. There are always going to be people looking for the lowest price or a "good deal," but that's not the customer base I want. I know that I'll lose them to the next lowest bidder and quality just isn't very important to that crowd.
Here's how to build a fantastic customer base:
- Create excellent products that solve real problems
- Care about the fit and finish and not just the features
- Eat your own dog food—you should be using what you create so you feel your customers' pain when there are problems
- Answer emails quickly and genuinely—don't send automated responses
- Listen to your customers: You don't have to add every feature requested, but you should respond to why you won't add something (people will understand when you do something for the greater good of the customer base)
- Be honest and don't be afraid to fall on the sword, "I screwed up and broke this release. It's being fixed in the next patch. Sorry for any trouble this has caused you."
- You have to honestly care about your customers—the passion has to be real or you'll come off as a con artist
What has also helped in my case is this blog. People know more about my life, my history, and my ambitions for the future of No Thirst Software. They know that I'm in this for the long haul and that this isn't just a college sideline project to make a few extra bucks. There are six people in my family that depend on this company growing and thriving (and hopefully a few thousand customers care too).
If you want to have a great company, with great customers, you've got to go "all in."
Peace.
Sunday, March 09, 2008
Christmas in March
This past week, Apple announced iPhone 2.0, the iPhone SDK for developers, and a little thing called App Store. I believe that most, if not all, Apple developers were tuned into the live blogs posting details of the event as it happened. I know we crashed Twitter chatting about it during the show.
What is all this and what does it mean? You can read about the enterprise extensions for the iPhone coming in June (or watch the presentation—it's gorgeous in HD), but for me and many other developers, the big news was the SDK—our ticket to writing software for the iPhone. The App Store is how Apple will distribute our applications and it's pretty sweet too. There's been some quibbling about the 30 percent that Apple will take for handling the process of selling our products through App Store, but I'm fine with it because I happen to love the way Apple Downloads works now with the publicity it gives our software and that's only one tiny piece of what App Store does.
Basically, App Store will give our customers a simple way to find software we have published for the iPhone, purchase, install, and license it. Then, when new releases are posted, App Store will make sure our customers get the latest versions of our iPhone applications. It's a very clean concept and, since iPhone software is not going to be our main business, one less thing I have to worry about. I can focus on creating a very cool version of MoneyWell Mobile and hand off the rest to Apple. There are still plenty of questions about beta testing, trials, returns, and other phases of the development and sales process, but that hasn't dampened my excitement one bit! Just knowing that nearly 100 percent of all iPhone users will go to this one place to find iPhone software simplifies my life. Who needs to pay for Google Ad Words, which can easily add up to more than 30%, when they are already in the store?
I also think that iPhone 2.0 will storm the enterprise and replace a healthy percentage of RIM phones. There are analysts that claim the iPhone is too expense or still has security holes compared to the RIM Crackberry, but they are way off. They are underestimating the power of great software—and there will be thousands of great software products available when this new iPhone software is released in June. Even if the corporations don't buy phones for their employees, the iPhone will be pulled into the enterprise by employees that want to be more productive. This can easily happen without direct intervention of the IT staff because Apple is tying the iPhone directly to corporate Exchange mail servers and IT doesn't need to do any heavy lifting.
I can't wait to see what happens. It's a very exciting time to be a Mac developer! I feel like a kid at Christmas after finding out my parents just won the lottery!
I've got way too much work to finish on MoneyWell 1.3 to start playing with the SDK now (okay, I did make one sample application just for kicks), but all the latest tools are installed on my iMac and available when I'm ready to code and that's even more incentive to finish and deliver this release of MoneyWell.
What's in store for MoneyWell Mobile? It's too early give details but expect the iPhone version to make it easy to view and update your spending buckets while on the road.
Peace.
What is all this and what does it mean? You can read about the enterprise extensions for the iPhone coming in June (or watch the presentation—it's gorgeous in HD), but for me and many other developers, the big news was the SDK—our ticket to writing software for the iPhone. The App Store is how Apple will distribute our applications and it's pretty sweet too. There's been some quibbling about the 30 percent that Apple will take for handling the process of selling our products through App Store, but I'm fine with it because I happen to love the way Apple Downloads works now with the publicity it gives our software and that's only one tiny piece of what App Store does.
Basically, App Store will give our customers a simple way to find software we have published for the iPhone, purchase, install, and license it. Then, when new releases are posted, App Store will make sure our customers get the latest versions of our iPhone applications. It's a very clean concept and, since iPhone software is not going to be our main business, one less thing I have to worry about. I can focus on creating a very cool version of MoneyWell Mobile and hand off the rest to Apple. There are still plenty of questions about beta testing, trials, returns, and other phases of the development and sales process, but that hasn't dampened my excitement one bit! Just knowing that nearly 100 percent of all iPhone users will go to this one place to find iPhone software simplifies my life. Who needs to pay for Google Ad Words, which can easily add up to more than 30%, when they are already in the store?
I also think that iPhone 2.0 will storm the enterprise and replace a healthy percentage of RIM phones. There are analysts that claim the iPhone is too expense or still has security holes compared to the RIM Crackberry, but they are way off. They are underestimating the power of great software—and there will be thousands of great software products available when this new iPhone software is released in June. Even if the corporations don't buy phones for their employees, the iPhone will be pulled into the enterprise by employees that want to be more productive. This can easily happen without direct intervention of the IT staff because Apple is tying the iPhone directly to corporate Exchange mail servers and IT doesn't need to do any heavy lifting.
I can't wait to see what happens. It's a very exciting time to be a Mac developer! I feel like a kid at Christmas after finding out my parents just won the lottery!
I've got way too much work to finish on MoneyWell 1.3 to start playing with the SDK now (okay, I did make one sample application just for kicks), but all the latest tools are installed on my iMac and available when I'm ready to code and that's even more incentive to finish and deliver this release of MoneyWell.
What's in store for MoneyWell Mobile? It's too early give details but expect the iPhone version to make it easy to view and update your spending buckets while on the road.
Peace.
Tuesday, March 04, 2008
Chatting with Aaron, Marcus, and Scotty
I had the privilege of being part of a Developers Roundtable hosted by Scotty. This roundtable podcast includes veteran Cocoa developer, Marcus Zarra and the man that taught many of us to write Cocoa applications, Aaron Hillegass. We were able to toss around our opinions about coding data storage on the Mac and Aaron does a fine job of depressing us by dangling something in front of us that we could have had instead of Core Data but don't.
Listen to it now at The Mac Developer Network.
Peace.
Listen to it now at The Mac Developer Network.
Peace.
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