tap tap tap, makers of several iPhone/iNewton apps, posted their sales figures for a week.
It’s nice to see others being as open as Tom and I try to be.
Tom and I try to be as open as we can, we’ve called on some of our competitors, to no avail, to be as open. We feel that a company should have nothing to hide or be ashamed of, if you’re embarrassed by your profit margins, and don’t feel comfortable telling your customers, well that says it all. Tom and I aren’t.
It’s cool to see how the iPhone application market really works. We’ve all read about it, etc, but Tap, tap tap SHOWS us, which is the most powerful way to communicate!
As businessmen, Tom and I give our Kudo’s to tap tap tap for their openness.
I'm curious how far you and Tom would/will/do carry that "openness and transparency" mindset. E.g. would you announce business opportunities you were pursuing before a contract had been signed with the potential customer? Would you post your business budget (e.g. how much you paid yourself and any staff, how much went to R&D, investment amounts and types)?
I consider myself and advocate of what I call the open-source mindset, but I'm thinking you make me look like Mr. Proprietary. So I'm trying to get an understanding of how deep the water you stand in is before I step further away from the shore of seemingly solid secrecy.
@Deron,
We’ve actually had that conversation. We’ll probably at some point, tone down some of the openness, if it starts having the counter effect we want. When people start challenging what we pay ourselves, and such, we’ll probly clam up a bit, not sure.
We do currently tell everyone what we pay ourselves (Up until now, it’s been nothing, LOL) in our Wednesday keynote.
Business agreements, we actually do tend to keep a bit closer to the vest, mainly to keep from jynxing the deal or spoiling the announcement. Not always, but most of the time, in that particular area.
@Deron
Yeah, it’s a tough line. Money has a strange effect on people. I’m fortunate enough to have been on both sides of the spectrum. I had little to no money (growing up and when just starting on my own) and too much money (who didn’t have too much during the dot-com bubble). Therefore, money doesn’t really “do it” for me.
However, like John and a good mentor of ours said, some people will plain just get jealous of success. Whether hard earned or not, some people don’t like to see other people succeed. I’d hate to have a vocal minority ruin it for the masses of our customers. We’ll see. Hopefully, we won’t have to cross that bridge anytime soon.