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.

Oh, and by the way: My company, Fog Creek Software, has paid internships in software development for qualified college students. They're in New York City. Free housing, lunch, and more. And you get to work on real, shipping software with the smartest developers in the business.

About the Author: I’m your host, Joel Spolsky, a software developer in New York City. Since 2000, I've been writing about software development, management, business, and the Internet on this site. For my day job, I run Fog Creek Software, makers of FogBugz—the smart bug tracking software with the stupid name, and Fog Creek Copilot—the easiest way to provide remote tech support over the Internet, with nothing to install or configure.

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