I just got a customer who needed a particular feature which Bingo Card Creator doesn’t support (she wanted to be able to write something other than BINGO on top of the cards — note that I’m not even finished with code to write BINGO, although that is scheduled for the next version). Unfortunately, she needed it by (literally) tomorrow, so I wasn’t able to help her.
I ended up pointing her to one of my competitor’s products which appears to have the feature she needs (I even installed their trial to make sure, and it appears it will work for her). This makes me happy-sad: happy I was able to give her at least an option, very sad it wasn’t me.
Well, that was a mistake. Now when that customer needs to make BINGO cards next month she’ll go straight to your competitor instead of using your product which will have hopefully implemented her feature request by then. Are you trying to be a successful ISV or just make some new friends here?
Sorry, your post ended up caught in the spam filter and I just rescued it. The lady had a pressing (one-time) need, and I helped her fill it — this time it just didn’t happen to be me.
it sounds like Patrick, given an either/or choice, would rather be a successful human than a successful ISV. it’s probably not a binary choice, but either way, i’m with him. nice of him to help the woman out.
I saw the HN interview with Patrick about this project, and I’m literally reading all these posts in chrono order, so I’m a bit late to the game on commenting here.
Anyway, for Patrick to point the lady to his competitor was what we call “good business”. The point of this stuff, in my mind, is to give value to customers and prospects alike.
Patrick knew he wouldn’t be able to satisfy her request in the timeframe he needed, so he referred her to someone who could do just that.
To NOT have sent her to them would be robbing her of the value she needed.
Excellent, Patrick! Integrity these days is like common sense…not so common.