No, Thank YOU

I often remark about how most of our great software design ideas come from our partners. Much of it starts with “You know what would be cool?” and it goes from there. Sometimes I even get marketing advice so I am going to introduce you to two bits of praise I got from my partners this week and elaborate tomorrow (obviously paraphrased):

“We are moving everything to you because you seem to be the only company that is actually innovating out there. Every time I talk to you there is something new. <Your competitors> are just announcing distribution and partnership agreements, and even though they have good support, there is nothing new in terms of value with their products and when they add something they are just reselling someone elses poorly integrated stuff.”

“We decided to build our cloud business lines on you because of all the Exchange providers out there you were the only one that seemed to value a partnership and didn’t treat us like people that lay down the bricks. Every time I call to ask for something it turns out it already exists and within minutes I get my sales collateral and customized marketing and one of your support guys even got on the phone with me with my clients IT guy to discuss a migration plan.”

Conversation with a competitor, while laughing at another “competitor”:

Well, they will be our competition soon. Did you hear that they are rolling out Exchange soon?

Vlad: You know what, I don’t consider that competition. Anyone can install Exchange. I’ll call them a competitor after they take a few years to design Exchange that fits the business model our partners happen to use.

I’ll go ahead and gloat about this tomorrow.. but in the meantime, I’ll just sit here and grin from ear to ear at the fact that I’m the luckiest mofo on the planet to be able to do what I do, at the level of success I’ve been able to attain thanks to so many people worldwide. I have way way way too many things to say about how lucky we are now (and how sweet it is after what it took to get us here).

And folks.. no thanks needed, it’s a privilege to take your money and help you build a more successful business. It’s also hard to take the credit for any of it considering how much bigger ExchangeDefender is than Vlad and how many people lost their health/hair/mind to make it what it is today.