In his latest column, Joel Spolsky pens a interesting portrait of how he thinks his company isn't growing fast enough - and what he is going to do to fix that:
I had to wonder. We do have a large competitor in our market that appears to be growing a lot faster than we are. The company is closing big deals with big, enterprise customers. And the wheels are falling off the donkey cart over there as the company stretches to fulfill its obligations. Meanwhile, our product is miles better, and we're a well-run company, but it doesn't seem to matter. Why?
In his article, Joel talks about the great Oracle vs Ingres battle that took place in the 80s' and worries his company is going to follow the same path Ingres did.
Thanks to Twitter, here's Atlassian's CEO reaction:
Absolutely fascinated by @spolsky's latest article. Not quite sure how to feel. Flattered? Amused? Upset? Fired up? Ponder.
I'm eager to see whether this is going to trigger a Twitter conversation between the 2 of them... Could be interesting.
Since writing that, I understand we've made offers to 3 new salespeople
SECOND UPDATE: David from 37Signals is weighing in as well:
I don’t think Spolsky notices a difference. In Does Slow Growth Equal Slow Death, he’s freaking out that a competitor (Atlassian, it seems) is growing faster than Fog Bugz and decides he has to get into market-share mode or face extinction. That unless he puts the turbo on growth, he’s going to be WordPerfect.