They say that the personality of a company is a direct reflection of its leaders, so let me give you an idea of what our philosophy is and where it comes from.
As SPYERA’s Chief Architect, it is not immodest to acknowledge that I must contribute somewhat to the companies ‘personality’.
My core approach to software product development was forged over a decade in working for what used to be the world’s biggest computer company, and is still the biggest software developer.
In the early mists of the late 80s, in that company, products were designed for exquisite quality – all the way down to details such the manuals, fan noise, environmental disposability, compatibility and labels to name a few completely unrelated items. If something could conceivably cause a customer problem, QA had the absolute veto to ‘STOP SHIP’. That’s how seriously they took things, and also why many times products were delayed for less than solid reasons.
As it turned out, this idealistic approach (and the three year development and extra cost this philosophy entailed) did not produce results that were valued by the marketplace –and the company paid a massive price, losing wholesale market share to those more nimble companies that offered products that were ‘good enough’. This caused much soul-searching about what quality actually means to a customer and many companies became resigned to designing a product to be simply ‘just good enough and no more’.
In 2010, our belief is that the pendulum has swung way too much in favour of ‘good enough’ – because ‘good enough’ is a subjective term. This philosophy has spawned products that are destroying the customer’s belief in the software industry. There is a middle ground, but it is closer to the idealistic days of yesteryear, than today’s practice of releasing alpha versions and hiding behind an email address.
We believe that it is in our best financial, intellectual and moral interests to create products that meet the true needs of our customers –especially in this industry, where reliability and privacy is everythingHowever, meeting customer needs only makes sense to us if we have fun doing it, because in the final analysis we love doing things simply for the kudos and challenge.
The best example of this is our PC SPY product – it was not done for any ROI – we did it just because it was fun and we could, and that is perhaps the best description of our DNA.
PS: At the time of this writing, there is still no one who has achieved a remotely installed and undetectable keylogger for the PC. Will it sell enough to cover its costs – unlikely; was it fun to do – for sure!
