What I find most inspirational about FogCreek is that they have managed to survive and thrive in even in the face of powerful "incumbents" i.e. free solutions that have a longer history.By that I mean that when the sales person for Fogcreek for Version control s/w makes a sales call, he could be faced with groups who are using either PVCS or CVS or SVN -- and yet he or she manages to close that sale. I would love to know how you get past that barrier to entry ? In more general terms, when if you are making a sales call to a prospect who already has a solution which may be inferior but nevertheless in production, how do you get them to switch ? When do you know to move on to next prospect and when to further pursue the lead ?
This is kind of off-topic, but I've always wondered, the pictures in Joel's articles (and this one, even though not by Joel) always seem to be completely random. Am I missing some relationship to the content? If not, what is the reasoning for having random pictures?