We said, “Make hyperlinks to Fog Creek properties (or whatever) and if
people follow the hyperlinks and buy our software, we’ll give you a percentage—
15 to 25 percent.” It was an affiliate program, just like Amazon affiliates. That
actually did get us some sales, but we put a lot of work into developing that, and
the amount of sales it got us was negligible. The administration and development
overhead were just not worth doing, and we eventually shut it down
because I was sick of writing $19 checks every month. It was a...

your potential customers and see what it is that caused them not to buy your
product or would cause them to buy more copies of it. And do that, and then
ship it. That was something we really, really should have focused on, but, you
know, we didn’t know any better.
Livingston: Do you consciously not take any investments?
Spolsky: Yeah, absolutely. We took no investments because there were so many
horror stories about what VCs would do to you. ArsDigita was the most public
one, obviously, of kicking out the founders and...

but to say yes. And you’d keep getting distracted to do their pet projects that
they dreamed up in the shower one night and they think might be a good idea,
and you just don’t think it’s a good idea.” You don’t really have the ability to say
no when you take those outside investments. It’s hard to tell your investors,
“Let me just go in my own direction.”
There are things that we do, boy, that I’m so thankful that I don’t have to
answer to anybody. I don’t think it’s possible to...

Joel Spolsky 355
companies buy more, and people leave those companies and go to other companies
and buy it. They’ve never heard of Joel on Software, but they’re still buying
our stuff. We’ve actually seen that in the curve. Whereas, in the early days,
we would ask people on our website, “How’d you hear about Fog Creek?” when
they purchased things, and 100 percent of the people that filled out that field
would write, “Joel on Software.”
Now it’s down to about 30 percent. It’s dramatically reduced, but it’s still
there, so...

The interesting thing is what they copied. They didn’t really copy the code;
they copied the implementation of how FogBugz works. But they missed what
made us successful. They didn’t really copy Joel on Software. And I think what’s
happening to those seven people right now is they are getting an object lesson
that merely copying the product that another company makes does not make
you successful. We’re not afraid of those people by any stretch of the imagination.
Sometimes they can be aggravating, but we don’t really care.
More than that though,...