Jamie Lewis touches on a huge point with his editorial concerning David Coursey’s remembrance of WordPerfect (they had majority market share of the word processing not too long ago – the lawyers in the crowd will probably remember what I’m talking about).

What He Said:

I couldn’t agree more with David Coursey’s conclusion that WordPerfect sowed the seeds of its own destruction. WordPerfect actually thought it could prevent Windows from being successful by not supporting it. It was a huge miscalculation and opened the door for Microsoft. Once again, a vendor doing what’s best for the vendor, and not what’s best for the customer.

[Via Jamie Lewis - CEO and Research Chair]

 The problem is, the second a startup becomes a vendor, they can no longer be trusted to do anything that isn’t in their own best interests. Sometime, for a while, these actions continue to be aligned with the interests of their customers. But before too long, the company realizes who their real customers are - the shareholders – and that’s when the people who pay the bills, you and I, start to get the shaft.

Usually anyways.