ScreamingToaster

This post is dedicated to our awesome customers.

Prelude

Yesterday was a pretty exciting day. DulyNoted Pro just got approved for sale in the App World and lots of downloads were coming in from there. And we were just about to get Push API access from RIM (I can’t say enough nice things about the great people at RIM who are instrumental in our success). The Push API would enable us to create apps that would behave similar to how push email works now if you have BES and Exchange. You can just imagine the possibilities! But I digress.

So the day was very exciting. Lots of downloads were happening from the App World, and all was going great. A friend notified me that CrackBerry had just done a review on our app (DulyNoted Pro). I was hesitant. Tech blogs and forums have covered our stuff in the past (CrackBerry, BGR, and whole host of others), and despite OK (very shallow, not even close to in-depth) reviews by the reviewers, the majority of the the forum/blog comments were awful/negative/over the top. So we stay away from tech blogs and forums for sales/marketing or any purposes for that matter.

On a side note - we are going to launch a new site inside of developerlife.com, called Izzy’s Tech Talk, which will fill the gap that exists today because of the kinds of information you simply can’t get in tech Blogs and forums. It’s not going to be that technical/developer oriented, rather it will aimed at our customers, enthusiasts who love Web+Mobile+Desktop computing, and see gaps in their digital lifestyle that they look at us to fill. Here’s a taste of what’s coming. We get asked these questions all the time, when we talk to our customers and other BB enthusiasts who are not our customers. Everyone has the same questions. But no good answers are out there, from any kind of credible source. That’s why we are very motivated to create Izzy’s Tech Talk.

The bad & the ugly

Ok, so coming back to the tech blogs/forums. The CrackBerry review of DulyNoted Pro, while not factually even close to complete, was really nice! I was really surprised to see such a great review of our apps (considering the source of the review). Our apps are gorgeous and feature rich, and most reviewers don’t do it any justice, since they don’t spend much time with the apps before they write a review and barely scratch the surface of what capabilities lie underneath the beautiful skin of our apps. However, there was good reason for my skepticism with what happens on forums and tech blogs. Even though the reviewer was enamored with the app, ONLY negative comments started pouring in. Nasty, angry, vitriolic, personal attacks on the very values that we stand for as a company and as people. There is no excuse or place for such comments on a credible website (which brings into question the credibility of the site of course). If it was my site, I would have deleted these comments immediately (as I do and will continue to do on developerlife.com – my site, my rules). There was no dialog or conversation. The comments degraded into personal insults about how we can’t operate a business, how we mistreat our customers, and how we should not exist and be able to earn a living. Enough was enough. Izabel and called bullshit bullshit, only to see the mob degrade to a much lower level, and it just turned to more crap. There were total know-nothing idiots mouthing off, just shouting and babbling. I’m sorry, we don’t listen to haters (nor have we, nor will we ever), and people who feel compelled to shout their ignorance at the top of their lungs, and just bring down the level of discourse to a shouting match. Much like what I’ve seen on TV, around the healthcare debate in recent days… where people just get angry and shout. No content. All volume.

So at this point, Izzy and I were pretty pissed. Who are they to spew their hatred and bullshit at us! We’ve spent 3 painful years getting this company off the ground. 3 of our apps might have appeared in the last 3 months, but they’ve been 3 years in the making, and over 5 years just in planning alone, and over 12 years just doing R&D to get to the point where the ONE Platform is even a reality! When know-nothings, who are not our customers, and have no desire to ever be our customers, or ever pay for software, spew vitriol at the top of their lungs, it’s not easy to bear. Given how passionate we are about what we do and how hard we constantly work just to be here, this was too much. So we spoke out again, and the mob divulged some more into more vitriol and bullshit. Then we just stopped talking and walked away from this forum in frustration & regret.

The good

Then something incredible happened, which totally blew our collective minds.

We started hearing from our customers, who are typically very quiet. They don’t ask for support first, they try to figure everything out themselves. They are astute readers of our documentation . They know what features they like in our app, and they are very adept at using the apps their way, so we don’t really hear much from them. Most support issues we get are simple things like “why is my IT policy not allowing me to download 3rd party apps”, or there are some instances where customers may have failed hardware or OS’es that need wiping, and sometimes problems with misconfigured self hosted blogs. We try to be as pre-emptive as we can about providing support, and we monitor things and trap problematic situations when early symptoms appear and try to nip things in the bud. So, what I’m saying is that we didn’t hear much from our customers, I mean we knew they are there using the software and services, but what happened yesterday was absolutely astounding! Our customers reached out to us privately, and then spoke up on our behalf publicly. And Izzy and I were teary eyed at so many instances of this awesome heartfelt outpouring of support! Izzy & I LOVE OUR CUSTOMERS!

1. We had customers provide us encouragement, they didn’t want us to feel downtrodden, and to keep going.
2. There were customers who told us how they use our software and what it means to them, and how they are excited to see where we go next, because we share the same gaps in our digital lifestyles!
3. There were customers who were excited about what we are currently doing and were even more excited about what’s coming in the near future.
4. There were customers who wanted to be able to pay in advance, for all our apps, without a trial, and there were customers who wanted to use all the stuff we make today and sign up for more stuff we will make in the future.
5. We had customers go out on these forums and try and educate people on the benefits of cloud computing, the value proposition of our apps, and just evangelize our platform and products!
6. They sent us PIN messages to check up on us to sure we were ok.

Wow!

To be quite honest, when we set off on our ScreamingToaster journey over 3 years ago (took the leap, quit day jobs, and dipped into savings to make this happen, we are self-funded), we had no idea how things would turn out. There were challenges with the technology, but that’s really the least of our challenges as we’d always had a SOLID handle on it. Then there were challenges with sales/marketing… how do we get the word out? How do let our future customers know that we even exist? We have a solid handle on that now. And finally, there was the biggest challenge – even if a prospect knows about us and has seen our product, will they buy? And will they buy more than 1 of our products? And will they “get it”? The last 3 questions were the ones we had no clue about, since it was totally out of our hands. And boy did we get those questions answered yesterday! I say again – We LOVE our CUSOTMERS! You guys ROCK!!!

The single most important thing we decided when we set of on our ScreamingToaster journey was to decide who our customer should be. The answer was simple – people like us . We build software that we use on a daily basis. We build software that we see a need for. Eg: I use MyListy to keep track of all enhancements and bugs I have to fix in the platform itself . I use DulyNoted to write down any marketing/sales, or new product ideas that I have . I use Wicked to manage my blogs (devlife, DLG, etc) . I use Who’s near me, to see where Izzy is . When the web app comes out, I will use it every day as well. We have internal CRM & Monitoring tools, that you’ve probably never seen (since they are apps/services we built for ourselves and use on our intranet), that practically runs the ScreamingToaster business with minimum human interaction. And on and on. We have desktop apps that have already been built, but we haven’t released yet, that we found out ALL our customers want!!! That is so cool! And a relief to know that we have an audience for our stuff!

Another thing we decided was NOT to ever compromise on the quality and integrity of what we set out to do. I don’t want to contribute to all the crap that’s already out there. I want to light up the darkness. Make things better. Not worse.

Thank you

Having said all this, I’m so glad we didn’t listen to all the people who “advised” us that we should go more “mass market”. And totally water-down the integrity of what we want to do, instead of blazing our own trail. And today, I’m really really really happy that we stuck with our decision. Because you are out there and feel the same pain we do and want things to get better. It’s awesome to know you’re out there. And it’s awesome to know your support. And it’s our privilege & honor & pleasure to be able to engineer a little bit of happiness into your lives. As you have already done in ours!

Thank you. From the heart. From us to you.

Naz & Izzy.