Joel on Software

2000/11/27

Working without a salesperson

As a tiny company, Fog Creek Software can't afford a sales team, or even a sales person, or in fact, a sales cat. "So how do you plan to sell your consulting services?" you ask.

"Aha!" I say. "I'll promote them on my web site! Surely somebody out there wants to hire smart programmers and architects."

Here's what I was thinking of doing to make it worth your time. If you know someone who can use the services of Fog Creek Software, and they hire us, I'll pay you 5% of the revenue we get from the project, up to a maximum $5000 (U.S.) for each referral.

I'll post more details and the complete terms as soon as I get the OK from my lawyer. ("You can afford a lawyer?" you ask. "No, but we couldn't afford to buy errors and omissions insurance if we didn't have a lawyer, so it's the lesser of two costs," I reply). Meanwhile start thinking of all your friends who are CTOs at wealthy startups and Fortune 500 corporations that need a small but crack team of software wizards.

College students: my company has paid summer internships in New York City, including free housing, free lunch, and the chance to develop software people will really use, with great mentors on interesting projects. Don't miss this chance of a lifetime. We only have a few spaces and they always go fast, so apply today.

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You’re reading Joel on Software, stuffed with years and years of completely raving mad articles about software development, managing software teams, designing user interfaces, running successful software companies, and rubber duckies.

About the author.

I’m Joel Spolsky, founder of Fog Creek Software, a New York company that proves that you can treat programmers well and still be highly profitable. Programmers get private offices, free lunch, and work 40 hours a week. Customers only pay for software if they’re delighted. We make FogBugz, an enlightened project management system designed to help great teams develop brilliant software, and Fog Creek Copilot, which makes remote desktop access easy.