My latest Business of Software column is now available on the MSDN website.

I've been getting lots of requests for a printer-friendly version of my series on The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing, so I'm making it available as a PDF.

(This entry is part of a series I am writing on The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing.)

The Law of Resources says that "without adequate funding, an idea won't get off the ground".  The gist of the chapter is that marketing is very expensive and you have to be prepared to spend big bucks on advertising if you want to be successful, so you're going to need a lot of funding from your VC.

Preaching these ideas to small ISVs is like showing up at your local Alcoholics Anonymous meeting and telling everyone that a little red wine every day helps the heart.

Like most of my marketing articles, this series has been about taking the best stuff from the world of marketing and applying it in a small ISV.  Some stuff works well in our context, and some stuff does not.  My goal is to help make a clearer distinction between these two categories.  Sometimes I shine a bright light on something which simply isn't going to be a good fit for most small ISVs.

Chapter 22 is one such example.  Strictly speaking, the advice in this chapter is all true.  Marcomm is expensive.  Grabbing mindshare costs a heckuva lot of money.

But that that doesn't mean everybody should go get funding and start running ads.  Magazine ads and venture capitalists are two of the most common ways to kill a small ISV.

#ifdef tangent

I'd like to express my affectionate concern for NewsGator, who announced the closing of a round of VC funding last week.  I met Greg Reinacker a couple of trade shows ago.  He seems like a good guy.  I use his product every day.  I admire what he has accomplished with NewsGator.

On the one hand, I am excited for Greg and the opportunities he can now explore with deeper pockets.  I also see this funding announcement as a very nice sign of momentum for blogging and RSS.

However, I am concerned.  I worry that Greg has taken the first step of converting his excellent small company into a lousy big one.  I'm not saying that VC money is always a bad decision.  But just because a company is a wonderful success at one level does not mean it can be a success at a larger scale.  Once you take the VC money, you can never go back.  Some companies lose their stride as they try to force themselves through the transition from small to big.

If this happens, I'll be okay, since I can easily find another RSS reader.  But Greg will have lost something precious.

#endif

Even in companies with huge resources, chapter 22 is likely to serve as ammunition for the marcomm guy who is always trying to convince you to spend more money.  He will quote chapter 22 as if it were scripture, trying to make you feel guilty for underfunding your marcomm efforts.

But the real problem is in taking chapter 22 out of the context of the rest of the book.  This chapter is the last one in the book, and for a good reason -- it depends on the other 21.  Marketing has two phases, strategy and communications.  No matter how much money you have, don't spend money in the communications phase until your strategy stuff is done and solid.

(This entry is part of a series I am writing on The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing.)

The Law of Acceleration says that "successful programs are not built on fads, they're built on trends".

Drawing their examples from mainstream consumer products, the authors observe the tendency for companies to overestimate short-term fads.  When something new becomes big and hot, companies jump on the bandwagon, spending a lot of money doing so.  They restructure.  They invest in new equipment.  They work hard to make themselves prepared to deliver products for the fad.

And then the fad stops, and the company is left with problems:

• "What am I going to do with all the olive green refrigerators and orange carpeting I bought just before the fashion changed?"
  
  
• "Oh, great -- I can produce fifty gazillion Cabbage Patch dolls per day.  That'll come in handy now that nobody wants them anymore."
  
  
• "Darn it!  I just bought a warehouse of fruit-colored translucent plastic, and now I find that the next iMac looks like a white desk lamp."

Fads accelerate very quickly, but often don't last long.  Trends have a much slower acceleration, but eventually run fast and steady.  Chasing fads is expensive, so it becomes very important to learn how to distinguish them from actual long-term trends. 

This discernment is particularly important for small ISVs.  We are constantly being presented with new technologies, new protocols, new formats, new platforms, new components, and new APIs.  Which ones will be strong in five years?  We want to know if we will eventually regret building our apps on a given piece of technology.

I'm not sure this issue has ever produced questions more difficult than the ones we are facing today, such as:

• Web applications:  Is this a real long-term trend?  Will it ever be possible to create rich apps with HTML?  Will Microsoft succeed in using its control of the desktop to kill this trend?
  
  
• Web Services:  Is this fad going to become a trend or not?  We loved Web Services because they were simple, but they're getting less simple all the time.
  
  
• Windows Forms:  Microsoft wanted me to get off MFC and onto Windows Forms.  Now they want me to get off Windows Forms and onto Avalon.  Doesn't anybody have an available API which is not planned for deprecation?

These may not seem like marketing decisions, but they are.  Technology choices have big marketing implications.  When you choose a platform, you define the maximum size of your market.

I can't answer the questions above, but I will repeat one thing I've said before:  The technologies from the previous wave still work.  If you want to be an INETA speaker, yes, you need to be current with the very latest stuff.  But if you are building products or solutions to be used today, there isn't any shame in choosing a platform and toolset which has completely proven itself as more than a fad.

(This entry is part of a series I am writing on The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing.)

The Law of Hype talks about the fact that "history is filled with marketing failures that were successful in the press".

This chapter talks primarily about new things which claim to make existing things obsolete.  Such products tend to become darlings in the press, because the notion of breakthru innovation is very attractive to readers.  People love to read stories about things like the personal helicopter, which was supposed to make cars obsolete several decades ago.  So the press jumps on the bandwagon, stories get written, newspapers get sold, and people get excited.  And they still drive their cars to work everyday.

What I love about this chapter is that it was written in the early nineties, before the Web, and it still rings amazingly true.  The Web was supposed to obsolete almost everything.  Today we can see that the Web has changed life in many ways, but most of the previous structures and systems are still with us. 

There are lots of examples in the chapter, all of them prior to 1994.  Polyester did not obsolete wool.  The videophone has now been getting press for 40 years, but most people still use a plain-old audio phone.  Compare those examples to the overhyped things of the last ten years.  Webvan came, and I still shop at a grocery store.  The Segway came, and I still drive my car.  Amazon came, and I still go to the Borders store near my home.  The truth is that fundamental change doesn't occur so easily.  Even when the innovation is quite real, people are not quick to give up existing mainstream products and services.

The chapter doesn't mention this, but I think the venture capital industry deserves as much blame for excess hype as the press.  Perhaps even more than magazine readers, VCs love the idea of a product which obsoletes existing mainstream products.  They need high-risk/high-reward investments.  Convincing a VC that your product will make cars obsolete is a great way to get funded.  If we are upset about the level of hype in our world (and I'm not saying that we are), the press and the VCs are equally guilty.

The vast majority of companies thrive and make a profit in a world which is completely disjoint from the one where the VCs and the press live.  They don't spend their time convincing investors and reporters that their product will change the world.  Instead, they spend their time convincing customers that their product is a good purchase.  It's very difficult to do both -- that's why the companies you see on the front page are often dead within a few years, while the companies making real money are the ones you hardly ever hear about.

It's a choice between fame and fortune.  Rare is the product which achieves both.  So, the important thing here is for entrepreneurs to see both paths clearly and make a conscious choice.  For small ISVs, it is inconceivable to me that the path of hype is the wise choice.  Find something boring and profitable.

(This entry is part of a series I am writing on The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing.)

The Law of Failure says that "failure is to be expected and accepted".

Nothing interesting ever happens unless we take risks.  The authors encourage an atmosphere of risk-taking with a good discussion of why individuals tend to be afraid of taking risks.

The chapter also includes another important point:  When you realize you've made a mistake, cut your losses.

It's just so hard to admit a mistake.  Denial is a wonderful thing.

In his book, Barry Moltz busts the myth that persistence is the most important thing for an entrepreneur.  Moltz claims that winners are people who know when to quit.

I completely agree.  We need to give ourselves the freedom to take risks and try a lot of different things.  But the obvious corollary here is that not all of those risks will work out.  We need to learn to quickly recognize the ones that don't and take the appropriate action.

I could write lots of stuff about the topic of risk-taking, but I already have. 

(This entry is part of a series I am writing on The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing.)

The Law of Success says that "success often leads to arrogance, and arrogance to failure".

The basic point of this chapter is a warning to not let yourself get too far from your customers.  Truly small ISVs may not need to worry too much about this, but the admonition is valuable nonetheless.

As companies grow, the CEO tends to get busy with other stuff.  She doesn't spend much time "in the trenches" anymore.  He goes to a lot of meetings and spends a lot of time working on the big picture.  In the process, she loses touch with the customer.

Despite what the chapter says, I think this effect may or may not be rooted in arrogance.  The root problem might be simpler and more innocent.  Maybe the CEO simply let himself get too busy.  It seems quite possible to become detached from the basic activities of the company without growing a big ego.

But either way, forgetting the customer is a fatal disease.  Fortunately, this disease is also preventable and treatable.  Don't let it happen to you.  Even as your company grows, stay involved in the basic stuff, at least a little bit:

• When you go to a trade show, spend some time in the booth talking to prospective customers.
• Answer a tech support call.
• Write some code.
• Help with the testing before the next release.

Don't get out of touch.  When you do, you'll start to make bad marketing decisions.

(This entry is part of a series I am writing on The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing.)

The Law of Unpredictability says, "Unless you write your competitors' plans, you can't predict the future."

But that doesn't seem to be the main point of this chapter.  What the authors are really saying is that long-range planning doesn't work.  We can try to observe and follow trends.  We can make big-picture predictions.  But if we try to make detailed plans over the long term, our competitors will surprise us and those plans will end up getting scrapped.

I suspect this chapter is a lot more necessary for people like Pepsi and Burger King.  Those guys probably do get tempted to make long-term plans.  But in software, things move so fast that most of us wouldn't even think of trying to make any sort of detailed plan for a five year horizon.  There are exceptions, but in general, the mere notion is absurd.

Nonetheless, although we intuitively know that long-term planning won't work for us, we don't always invest in the alternative.  As Ries and Trout say, "One way to cope with an unpredictable world is to build an enormous amount of flexibility into your organization."

Flexibility is so critical in our industry, especially for a small ISV.  Structure, planning and process have their place, but at the end of the day, your small ISV will probably survive largely on the basis of how well you can adapt to change. 

Take the energy you would have used on long-range planning and use it to make sure your company is flexible.

(This entry is part of a series I am writing on The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing.)

The Law of Singularity says that "in each situation only one move will produce substantial results".

We literalists will once again have to endure the authors' word choice.  The above statement is almost certainly not true. 

And yet, Ries and Trout make two important points in this chapter, which I will paraphrase as follows:

• One bold stroke is much better than a bunch of small marketing efforts.
• Marketing is too important to be left to the marketing people.

One Bold Stroke

The pattern is fairly common.  I call it "The Infinite Loop of Marketing Despair":

1. The product is languishing.
2. People start asking what to do about it.
3. Somebody says, "We just need to do more marketing."
4. The marketing team gets in a conference room and brainstorms.
5. They come up with ten new ideas and begin executing them all.
6. Go back to step 1

Part of the problem here is the assumptions we make about the total result we will get from a list of marketing ideas.  We make our list in Excel and for each item we calculate the results that item will generate for us.  And then, at the bottom, we enter SUM(B2:B11).  This is our mistake.  The proper estimate for the total result is closer to MAX(B2:B11). 

The problem is that awareness-building efforts tend to overlap by reaching the same people.  We run banner ads.  We run magazine ads.  The same person sees both ads.  Is that guy going to buy our product twice just because he saw both ads?

The success of our marketing campaigns is defined by the best idea on our list, not the length of that list.  Nonetheless, we continue to make our lists because "Somebody" said we need to do more marketing, and we definitely have to make that Somebody feel better.

The way out of this loop is to find something completely different.  Stop looking for a bunch of ways to increase awareness.  Markets are won with strategy, not tactics.  There is no way you are going to win this war by simply doing more of what you are doing now.

Too Important

Marketing is too important to be left to the marketing people. 

The true cause of "The Infinite Loop of Marketing Despair" is Mr. Somebody, the guy in step 3 who apparently believes that throwing more money at the marketing team will actually solve problems.

In the chapter, Ries and Trout are basically saying that Mr. Somebody is "management".  They argue that "management can't afford to delegate important marketing decisions".

For my purposes, I write for the technical geek.  Maybe you're the founder of your small ISV.  Maybe you're a lead developer who cares about the success of your product.  Whoever you are, I would encourage you to step up and be Mr. Somebody.  But don't just push for "more marketing".  Help your organization find the one bold stroke that will make a real difference.

On 24 May, I said a few things about this topic. In a nutshell, I claimed that SourceGear will be affected, but that we will be okay.  I still believe that.

But as I expected, not everybody believes me. On Joel Spolsky's discussion board, somebody named "JT" recently wrote:

"I've got a great deal of respect for Eric Sink and my heart sank a little when I heard the news that MS was going to enter the source control market because I knew this would be bad for Eric. (Regardless of what Eric says, I think it will be far worse for him than what he is saying.)"

Nonetheless, I think I make myself less credible by not showing both sides of my feelings about this whole situation. If the only thing that you hear from me is a positive spin, you are not sure whether to believe me or not. One of the reasons that I write here in my weblog is that I want to be real, so I'd like to take a moment and provide some balance.

It is my understanding that the TFS team started serious development somewhere around the fall of 2002.  Throughout the first half of 2003, we heard rumors about it. 

In early September 2003, we got confirmation from Microsoft.  Believe me, I was angry.  I ranted and I vented.  I used a few words my mother taught me not to use.

The scene of this announcement was weird.  It was an NDA'd meeting of the VSIP program.  All of the attendees were vendors of components or developers tools which integrate with Visual Studio.  Standing in front of dozens of their so-called "partners", Microsoft staff put smiles on their faces and announced that they will be competing with almost all of us.

There was a lot of emotion in that room.  Every VSIP vendor had worked very hard to be a part of Microsoft's "ecosystem" for Visual Studio, only to end up feeling very betrayed.  If this is how Microsoft treats its partners, how do they treat their enemies?

Incidentally, I thought the most interesting aspect of this meeting was watching the individuals who were part of Microsoft's VSIP team.  As a system, Microsoft does not truly care about its ISVs, but many individual Microsoft employees really do.  In fact, those people are exactly the sort of people who end up working in partner programs like VSIP.  I felt some sympathy for these folks, as they were the ones who had to facilitate the delivery of the bad news.

Just a few days before this announcement, Chris Sells had asked me to write a monthly column for MSDN.  When we heard that news from Microsoft, I nearly called Chris and told him where to stick his Longhorn Developer Center. 

Instead, I calmed down and made a choice:  I was angry, but I decided that I would not spend my life whining.  My deadline was approaching, so I sat down and wrote my first MSDN column, Whining by a Barrel of Rocks.

My beliefs about SourceGear's future have not changed since I wrote that article.  I said it then, and I will say it again now:  Markets are not as "black-and-white" as we think.

Without competition from Microsoft, SourceGear was drooling at the possibility of annual revenue in the 8-figure range.  (I consider that to be a heckuva a lot of money for a small ISV with no venture capital backing.)  This outcome is no longer likely, but with some clever changes to strategy, SourceGear can still be very successful.  Even with Microsoft in this market, we are going to continue having annual revenues of several million per year.

As the release of Visual Studio 2005 gets closer, more and more information will become available, and the world will begin to understand that TFS is not for everyone.  Even now, details are starting to appear.  I predict that TFS will be an outstanding product and a big success, but there will continue to be a lot of developers who want other choices, for one reason or another.

SourceGear will be here for those developers.  Ever since September, we have been adapting our strategy.  We have done and are continuing to do the things necessary to allow SourceGear to thrive.  Our sales have continued to be extremely strong.  Our customers continue to tell us how much they love our products.

Believe me. Don't believe me. Your choice. But I'm not going anywhere.

(This entry is part of a series I am writing on The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing.)

The Law of Candor says that "when you admit a negative, the prospect will give you a positive".  As usual, the examples from the book are mainstream consumer products:

• Listerine did it when they acknowledged that their mouthwash tastes terrible.
• Avis did it when they acknowledged that they are #2.
• Volkswagen did it when they acknowledged that the "bug" is ugly.

Each of these companies gained a lot when they applied the Law of Candor.  People respect the courage and honesty it takes to admit that not everything is perfect.

Being Genuine

The Law of Candor is another one which is simply not intuitive.  Most marcomm people are terrified of it.  Conventional wisdom says that absolutely everything in your marketing message must be positive.  In fact, a primary function of the marcomm team is to sanitize all public statements, ensuring that the company never says anything it does not want to say.

The rules of "marketing speak" are fairly well understood around the world.  All marcomm teams speak this dialect as their first language, which means that all marketing teams sound basically the same.  Almost every press release starts out with a bunch of mumbo jumbo that nobody ever reads:  "Fiddlesticks Corporation, the leading provider of useless crapola, announced today that it is incorporating XML Web Services technology into its line of coffee mugs." 

In 2004, it takes a very "special" kind of marketing person to actually believe that customers cannot see through this kind of spin.  People today are being bombarded with so much advertising that traditional marketing is less effective than ever before.  Sanitized press releases are out.  Transparency is in.  Drowning in a sea of marketing mumbo jumbo, people admire companies that choose to be genuine.

An example from here at SourceGear:  Most of our sales are "direct", but we do sell through a number of resellers as well.  I don't usually think of our resellers as terribly strategic, since they account for a very small percentage of our sales.  However, lately I find myself wondering why SourceGear doesn't sell through Xtras.net.  Why am I wondering this?  Because their CEO has a blog, and a darn good one.  I can't say that I agree with everything he says, but the fact remains:  His choice to be genuine makes me want to do business with his company.

Credibility

Ignoring the Law of Candor can kill your credibility.  Whatever your negative issue is, everybody already knows about it anyway.  If you don't talk about it, then it will become "the elephant in the room".  When you issue yet another sanitized press release, your customers eagerly read it, hoping to see some evidence that you have any self-awareness at all.  They ask themselves, "Don't these people realize how awful their mouthwash tastes?"

As Ries and Trout say in the chapter, "Every negative statement you make about yourself is instantly accepted as truth.  Positive statements, on the other hand, are looked at as dubious at best."

These dynamics are going on right now for me with respect to SourceGear Vault, our source control product.  A few weeks ago, Microsoft announced Team Foundation Server, a really cool source control system which will be shipping sometime next year.  It's not too hard to figure out that this announcement was not good news for SourceGear.

On the day of the Microsoft announcement, I posted some remarks about Team Foundation Server here on my weblog.  While nothing on my blog is truly written in "marketing speak", this post was very positive, almost to the point of being sanitized.  And not surprisingly, a lot of people didn't believe me when I said that SourceGear is going to be okay.

Well, it would be silly for me to write about the Law of Candor today without saying more on this topic.  So, I've decided to "practice what I preach" by making some more remarks about The Future of SourceGear Vault.

The dictionary says that a dragnet is "a system of coordinated procedures for apprehending criminal suspects or other wanted persons."  Here at SourceGear, Dragnet is "a system of coordinated procedures for apprehending bugs."  

Dragnet is a web-based bug-tracking tool which will be available from SourceGear in approximately the September timeframe.  It is built on ASP.NET and SQL Server and offers lots of cool features, including:

• Integration with Vault and SourceOffSite.  Dragnet offers full, rich integration with both of SourceGear's version control products.
• Item types.  Dragnet can track other kinds of items besides bugs, allowing it to be used as more general project management tool.
• Audit trails.  Dragnet remembers every change which has ever been made to an item, allowing you to see the full history of the issue.
• Customizable fields.  Store the information you want to store for your particular situation.
• Keyword search.  Easily retrieve all items which match one or more search terms.
• Email notifications.  Configure Dragnet to let you know when things happen.
• Web Services API.  Access the contents of your Dragnet database through XML Web Services.
• Milestones.  Divide your items into milestones you define, helping your team to focus on immediate goals.
• Seamless transition from Collab.  Users of SourceOffSite Collab will be able to import all their data into Dragnet.

Those first and last bullets are the mission statement for this product.  The primary purpose of Dragnet is to provide a bug-tracking system which is fully integrated with Vault and SourceOffSite, and which offers a totally seamless transition from Collab.

As promised, it is now time to announce the results of the Dragnet HTML Design Contest.

There were 13 people or organizations who submitted at least one complete entry.  Some folks submitted multiple entries.  In alphabetical order, those 13 participants are listed below.  Where possible, I have included company affiliations and hyperlinks to homepages.  Participants should email me if you want your listing changed to correct mistakes or provide missing information.

• Evgeni Dinev
• Robbin van Eijsden
• Hernan Fernandez
• Pamela Fernandez
• Goblinfactory
• Thomas Johansen, Aylar Solutions
• Jan Korbel, HotPotato
• Jay Lauffer
• Rami Madi, Creative Design Solutions
• Jade Ohlhauser
• Iain Porter
• Joe Ridino, Ridino Web Design
• Unisoft Plus

(To those of you who submitted an incomplete entry, we are sorry, but for reasons of fairness to the other participants, we were not able to include your work in our contest.)

I gathered all of the entries together and gave them to a panel of other SourceGear employees for judging.  There were several really excellent entries, so the panel had a lot of trouble choosing between them.  However, in the end, the winner of the contest is...

Evgeni Dinev

Congratulations! 

Our own internal Dragnet server has already been updated with Evgeni's work, and it is looking very nice indeed.  The winning entry will be unveiled to the world when Dragnet becomes available for public beta testing.

To everyone who participated, thank you so much.  It is unfortunate that we could select only one winner, as it is obvious that everyone worked very hard on their entry. 

To anyone who is looking for a web designer, please consider the services of the people and organizations listed and linked above.

As promised, the winner will be receiving a check for $5,000 USD.  Furthermore, as a small token of our appreciation, we will be sending an Amazon.com gift certificate in the amount of $50 USD to all of the other participants listed above.

(This entry is part of a series I am writing on The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing.)

The Law of Attributes says that "for every attribute, there is an opposite, effective attribute."

Fussy

There was quite an uproar from fans after the recent season finale for Star Trek Enterprise.  You see, the episode contained a serious error.  One of the characters states that the year is 2152 when in fact, as every Trek fan knows, the current episodes take place in the year 2154.

I've heard several people say that this mistake ruined the whole episode.

I concede the mistake is silly, but come'on -- the whole episode?  Perhaps we need a bit of perspective.  That date wasn't a central point of the show.  It's a detail, and aside from the fact that it was incorrect, it doesn't matter.

Incidentally, guys, this is the reason why your girlfriend or wife doesn't like going to see movies with you.  Nobody wants to watch a film with some anal-retentive dork who is ready and waiting to discard the entire film because the producers made a minor mistake in science or technology.  Try to just enjoy the movie, or at the very least, shut your pie hole so that she can.  (This tidbit of relationship advice is provided at no extra charge. )

Marketing Books

Geeks like us are lousy at marketing for the same reason that nobody wants to see movies with us.  Marketing books are written for big-picture thinkers.  They contain broad sweeping generalizations which are only true most of the time.  Guys like Ries and Trout don't feel the need for a lot of precision.

So a geek sits down to read this book.  Somehow he manages to cope with the word "immutable" in the title, which is obviously a gross exaggeration.  Somehow he manages to smile at the examples, which are now ten years out of date, especially the one about Lotus Notes.  Somehow he manages to overlook most of the little imprecisions in the first 13 chapters.

And then, he reaches chapter 14, the Law of Attributes.  The subtitle of this chapter is "For every attribute, there is an opposite, effective attribute."  In the mind of this geek, a yellow alert goes off when he sees the word "every".  Is this really true?  Is there always an attribute which is both opposite and effective?  Surely not.  Warily, he proceeds.

And then, on the very next page, the authors discuss the market for toothpaste, where Crest owns the attribute called "cavity prevention".  Something in the mind of our geek snaps.  'How can there be an attribute which is the opposite of "cavity prevention" and which is effective?  Ha!  I knew it all along.  This book is a crock!'

The book sails across the room in a high arc as the geek stomps off in disgust, no doubt on his way to sign the online petition to have Enterprise canceled because T'Pol couldn't remember what year it is.

Choices

I can't defend the book.  This stuff bugs me too.  I want marketing to be as logical and precise as programming.  But it's not.

So if this problem really bother you, then you have two choices:

1.  Give up on marketing completely.

2.  Give up on this chapter and hope the next one is better.

I encourage you to choose option #2.  I'm trying to make the world a better place here.  The gap between technology people and marketing people must be bridged.  If you give up on getting clueful about marketing, then you are implicitly saying that you expect marketing people to get clueful about technology.  We both know that's not going to happen, so stay with me.

Oh, and by the way...

Read the chapter.  It's a bit redundant with respect to chapters 9 and 13, but the discussion of Burger King and McDonalds is interesting.

(This entry is part of a series I am writing on The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing.)

The Law of Sacrifice says that "you have to give up something in order to get something".

The cool thing about this law is that it's not automatically attractive.  It makes you think. 

The Law of Focus isn't like that.  When people hear about the Law of Focus, the first reaction is to say, "Yes, yes, focus is good."  People seem to forget that the word "focus" implies a decision about what you are not going to do.  With the word "sacrifice", that particular implication is much clearer.

But in some sense, these two laws are the same idea with different expressions.  There is power in focus, but to get there, we have to make tough decisions about what things we will not do.

Aiming once again at Scotts Valley

I'll give Sun a break today and go back to picking on Borland.  Here is a perfect example of a company that can't focus because they're not willing to sacrifice.  Their product line is all over the map.

The problem with not having a focus is that your customers can only describe you in terms of your past.  Borland's "Excellence Endures" tagline even reinforces this.  It's a fine tagline, but it doesn't say much to me about the future.  It is a celebration of their 20 years of history.

Borland is a fine company with some great products.  But they should be telling us more about their future than their past.  In the next five years, what one thing will Borland do better than anybody else?

(To be fair, however, we should admit that Borland's marketing may not matter much.  Microsoft needs Borland (and Apple, and Sun) to exist in order to give the illusion that their products have competition.  In this case, Excellence will continue to Endure, but Mediocrity would suffice, since Microsoft will always stop a little bit short of killing them off.)

Saying "No"

The Law of Sacrifice is all about saying "no" to opportunities.  This skill is incredibly difficult to learn.  I suspect that the only way to learn to say "no" is to experience the pain of saying "yes" too often.

That's how I learned it.  SourceGear used to be all over the map.  We smiled and described that condition with a positive spin, telling ourselves that we were "opportunistic".  But life inside the company got pretty confusing.  We had several product efforts going on, all unrelated.  We had a consulting division doing engagements which were not related to any of our products.  When someone asked us "What does SourceGear do?" it would take ten minutes to explain.  By the time we were done, the elevator had gone back and forth to the lobby three times.

Our revenue was high, but we had no focus.  We were in a strategy which was positive in the short-term and negative in the long-term.  So we sacrificed.  We started saying "no".

At first, it was really hard.  People called us for a consulting gig and we turned it down.  Even as I write this, it sounds crazy.  I said "no" to money!  What was I thinking?

It took a while, but things got better.  A lot better.  Today, SourceGear is a focused company, but to get to this point, we had to stop saying "yes" to every opportunity we saw.