Comments on: Interview with Craig Peterson of Beyond Compare

By: Chuck Brooks

Chuck Brooks — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 22:20:58 +0000

Good review, and a number of valuable lessons that any ISV can apply. Also good to see another successful software product based on Delphi.

By: Vasudev Ram

Vasudev Ram — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 21:02:19 +0000

Interesting interview, Andy and Craig.

Nice to see a product written in Delphi become a success – a case of one good software product being used to create another :-)

Cheers,
Vasudev

By: Simon Shutter

Simon Shutter — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 16:15:23 +0000

Andy and Craig,

Great interview. Took me back a decade to when I first bought Beyond Compare and instantly told others about it.

I find the trial offer almost too generous. It actually made me think there was a logic error in the code and whether that was symptomatic of the product itself. I’m surprised the same offer is still available today. I would think most users would like the product much more on first use than other shareware so that delaying conversion is counter-intuitive.

I’m also curious as to whether bigger companies like Microsoft have approached Scooter Software to incorporate all or part of the code base (like WinZip ?).

Lastly, I’m curious why the company has not changed its name to the more recognizable product name?

By: Mitchell Vincent

Mitchell Vincent — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 21:19:49 +0000

I hadn’t heard of Beyond Compare before but I’ll likely be buying a license in a few minutes.

One think that really turned me off and, if it hadn’t already had endorsements by fellow ASP members like Nick and Andy, might have made me go away, is the price being hidden. I had to add the pro and standard version to my “cart” before I saw a price – that 6 clicks total. At $30/$50 for the standard/pro I’d put that price on every page!

A $30 buy is a no-brainer for me. I’d have made the decision to purchase when I came to the first page if I had seen the price there. However, 6 clicks later, I’ll still buy it ;-)

By: Andy Brice

Andy Brice — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 12:58:12 +0000

>Scooter Software itself is around 40 years old now

There can’t be many small, 40 year old software companies around!

By: Nick Hebb

Nick Hebb — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 10:44:14 +0000

Good interview. I’m trying out BC now, and so far I like the usability.

The Scooter Software website is nicely designed. Was it inspired by Fallout 3? Or is Mark Stahler’s Pip Boy avatar along with the fact that I’m a semi-recovering Fallout 3 addict tainting my world view?

By: Craig Peterson

Craig Peterson — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 14:45:23 +0000

I was the first full-time employee hired to work on Beyond Compare. Prior to that it was the CEO’s off-hours pet project. Scooter Software itself is around 40 years old now; originally it did payroll and accounting and at one point had 30 employees. When I started there was just the CEO and one other person, both working on payroll software for one last client. A bit after v2 was released the other employee was a hired by that client, and the CEO freed himself up to work on BC full-time, so all our income since then has been due to BC.

By: Mark Stahler

Mark Stahler — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 05:11:52 +0000

I enjoyed the interview. I agree with Sohail, it would have been interesting to see how large Scooter was when Craig started. Nice to see the small team making money off a desktop application.

By: Sohail

Sohail — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 00:06:14 +0000

Yay, my favourite software.

Wish you had gone into the details of how it was founded though.