Engage Your Customers

I think the things that have made me most successful within the technology world are embodied in VanDyke Software's core values. In Built To Last by James C. Collins and Jerry I. Porras, the authors discuss the importance of having core values and sticking to them. VanDyke's core values include learning, being customer-oriented, and building quality software. Since day one these core values have guided my decision-making, and I believe they will continue to serve us well into the future. We still have these values today, and we see them as one of the keys to our success going forward.

My first learning opportunity came when I started the company. I had just left a start-up that had failed to ship a piece of software after two-and-a-half years of effort, and I started VanDyke with the commitment to ship a product quickly and learn from the experience. I didn't necessarily assume that the business would be successful, but I knew I would learn a great deal. Since there was just me, and I had committed to shipping a quality piece of software, I realized it would need to be a small product. To this day, we continue to focus on building small, quality products.

Once I'd shipped the first release of the software, the real learning began because I started receiving customer feedback, and this allowed me to exercise another core value-being customer-oriented and engaging the customer. As an example of our customer-centric model, our employees write individual responses to every piece of e-mail we receive that needs a response - usually the day it is received. We deliver presales support at the same level as after the sale and have liberal upgrade policies.

We have made a point of engaging our customers and have created a feedback loop with them that is an essential part of how we develop and improve our products. In addition, we have consistently embraced open standards, which we believe benefits our customers. Every product we've delivered is based on open standards documented by either Internet RFCs (Request for Comments) or IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) drafts. By adhering to these standards as they are developed and after they are ratified, we can provide our customers with interoperable solutions.

The Internet has played a key role in how VanDyke has executed on these core values. From the day we shipped our first product in 1995, we have had a Web site and used e-mail to communicate with our customers. We've never shipped a boxed product or printed a conventional manual. Instead, our products have always been available for immediate download via the Internet. Today e-mail and the Web continue to be our primary media of communication.

The business model from the outset was to leverage the power of the Internet for delivering our products, supporting our customers, and communicating with them. But, unlike many of the dot-coms that blew up, our products were actual, not virtual, and were more than just a Web site.