INC.: Did any of this affect your decision to start Software Garden?
BRICKLIN: It had a big effect. See, I had also been looking at some smaller software companies -- Peter Norton Computing, Funk Software, and others. Paul Funk is in Cambridge. I visited his place, and I was amazed. He had about six people at the time, and his company was doing a few million dollars in sales. I think he was at more than $300,000 per employee, and Norton was even higher.
INC.: Compared with what?
BRICKLIN: In our industry, if you get up above $200,000 per employee, you're probably minting money. Now it depends a bit on how you count employees. But no matter how you counted, Funk and Norton were doing great, and they made a big impression on me. I saw they had companies that were just big enough for their products, while other companies were trying to grow past their products, anticipating what their earnings might be. But until you know how successful your product is or what it requires, you don't really know what size company you should have. Because in software everything revolves around the product -- the type of sales force you need, the marketing, the technical support, the documentation.
INC.: Can you give us an example?
BRICKLIN: Say you're selling a word-processing program to new users. You're probably going to need a lot of technical support because you're going to get a lot of calls. If you're selling to programmers, you don't, and it would be a waste to have such a big tech-support staff. Are you going to sell 100,000 units a year or 1,000 units? You can be profitable either way, but you need to structure your company differently.
INC.: So how did this affect your thinking about Software Garden?
BRICKLIN: I saw these little guys, who were growing but keeping lean and mean -- they didn't put any extra stuff in. I saw other companies doing the same dollar volume, but they had all this extra overhead. They were throwing money on the floor. So I began wondering how much overhead you could get rid of and still be successful. Could you get it down to a one- or two-person company? I wanted to see how little I could get away with. I also wanted to learn about the industry, because I had lost track of what was really going on down in the trenches.
INC.: Did you think about possibly staying at Lotus?
BRICKLIN: Yes, and Lotus wanted the product, but I figured I could do better by myself, if I followed the Norton-Funk model and if Demo was reasonably successful. Plus, it's a lot more fun to be on your own.
INC.: More fun?
BRICKLIN: It's more fun for me. I'm an M.B.A. -- a generalist. Everything about business is interesting to me. My father is a printer, so the graphic and production side is interesting, too. I'm a programmer. I have a bachelor's in computer science from MIT. I have fun doing everything. I like to learn about everything. The smaller you are, the more you can learn about firsthand.
INC.: So you're talking about the joy of learning.
BRICKLIN: Well, I also like being president. I mean, the president of a small company can hobnob with the president of a big company. But the assistant vice-president of a big company doesn't hobnob that much with the presidents of big companies or little companies. So that was a factor. And there were also personal lifestyle issues. I want to be able to choose where I work, how far I commute, all that stuff.
INC.: Wait a minute. You're saying you started Software Garden with the goals of making money, learning about the industry, and having fun. Couldn't you have done all that by starting a company you intended to grow like mad? Why did you have to limit growth?
BRICKLIN: Well, for one thing, growing like mad takes up an awful lot of your time, which can get in the way of all three goals. And there's a tendency to solve problems with money and people if you can afford to. You hire people to do things you haven't learned to do well yourself. You can't help making some mistakes -- everybody does. Then those people hire other people and compound your mistakes. That leads to waste and turnover and bad morale.
INC.: Isn't the solution just to pay attention, spot the mistakes, and fix them?
BRICKLIN: That's not always easy. Growth throws up all kinds of distractions. My partner, Bob Frankston, and I spent a lot of time working on things at Software Arts that, in retrospect, weren't very important to the success of the business, while the important stuff was being done by other people. Those people made the manufacturing decisions, the marketing decisions, the technical decisions.
INC.: What were you doing?
BRICKLIN: We were focusing on other things. For example, we decided to buy a building, which made sense because we were growing and we needed the space. Besides, it was a good investment. But a lot of top-management time went into negotiating the financing and then designing the environment. That was a waste. We should have been watching the company. This is a fast-paced industry, and you've got to stick to the knitting, and we didn't stick to it closely enough.
