Maria Lourdes C. Capiitan

SysAnal(O0A)

July 22, 2008

Case Study

Joel Spolsky

Cofounder, Fog Creek Software

            Joel Spolsky and Michael Pryor founded Fog Creek Software in 2000. Joel have different  software like FogBugz, Fog Creek Copilot, Fog Creek Software that doubled the sales every year. Their company never took any of outside investment. I learned that in making a good hacker is their observation that you can do with out something that everybody thing you need. Also, brilliant hacker is someone who comes up with a brilliant hack.

            They started having no ideas at all.  As they knew about the Ars Digita they begun to have the idea that was consulting would grow linearly with the number of people as they hired more good people that you could rent out as consultants, and the software business would grow likely the hockey curve because at some point it when took off.

            The founders were Michael Pryor and Joel Spolsky they are friends from Juno Online Services. It was started all by himself. They have three consulting clients when they started in September 2000. Joel started creating software in the beginning of summer. In November 2000 their market loss. They decided to sell the Fog Bugz a bug tracking application. Their other products are city Desk which is a market failure. The last one is Tintin. Their purpose is that the Fog Bugz would provide workflow, Tintin will take care of content management server and the City Desk was to content management client.

            The company’s turning point is when they need to raise the price a couple of times due to demand and also increase the number of units that they sold. Their major turning point is when they released their product. Their company has unique culture.

            The company’s biggest mistake is when they kept on getting all kinds of interesting ideas. They didn’t understand about the sales and marketing. They have competitors but they didn’t worry about them. They don’t even talk to people who evaluated their software.

            The surprising things about their company are when they released the new version of the software. Joel Spolsky added that to be able to win about evaluation is that they made a better product when they have a better product.

            He first learn things from the Israeli Army, he learns Kibbutz Army Program. He also learn job in Microsoft, it is when he learned software industry.

            The advice he gives is that they don’t start a company unless you convince another person to go along with you. In every start up they either have to succeed or get a job. He also says that they need to create a weblog and have millions of readers. If someone don’t like the language you have to make on your own.