Fifteen Years of PerfectIt
Daniel Heuman, CEO, PerfectIt
Ken Olsen, the founder of Digital Equipment Corporation, famously said in 1977, "There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home." And Daryl Zanuck, a movie mogul from the 1940s, believed television was just a fad, saying, "People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night." In 1966, Time magazine predicted that “remote shopping,” while entirely feasible, will flop because women like to get out of the house.
Perhaps I should have kept some of these examples in mind when I was in the early days of building PerfectIt, eagerly reaching out for advice and feedback. I remember showing an early version to one of my best friends, who thought he was being helpful when he said, “You could put it online for $5 and hopefully it’ll get you some beer money.” It’s hard to describe the loneliness of that moment. I was sure I was building something wonderful. Not one person, not even my closest friends, shared my conviction.
It’s easy to describe the moment we’re in now though. I’m lucky enough to be surrounded by an amazing team, and thousands of language professionals support what we do.
We’re now a team of 25, with specialisms ranging from marketing to support to product engineering. Last month, we all gathered in Nottingham and the team surprised me with a fifteenth birthday celebration for PerfectIt, a cake, and a commemorative mug.
Meanwhile, our users span continents and industries, from independent consultants to Fortune 500 companies. When new drugs come out, we have the satisfaction of knowing that our product played a little part in bringing that to market. When authors produce great novels, we feel the exact same way.
What a journey! When we launched, I had an (almost) full-time job outside of software. Now we’re a business with a department dedicated to the success of customers, and a completely different department for answering support questions. We have engineers focused on PerfectIt. We have engineers focused on our second product, Draftsmith. We even have team members focused on the well-being of other team members. We’ve had successes and we’ve had failures. Mac users, one day we will turn things around for you! It may not seem like it, but we are getting closer.
The biggest factor behind the company’s success to date is obvious. It’s our community of users. The early adoption and unwavering support of independent editors laid the foundation for our growth. Their feedback and enthusiasm were instrumental in making others start to pay attention. From there, proposal writers and medical writers have helped us reach some of our proudest moments, including the knowledge that PerfectIt was used on some of the most important life-saving submission documents of the last fifteen years.
Equally vital to our achievements is our dedicated team. There are not a lot of companies with a Chief Engineer who loves attending editing conferences. There are not a lot of companies that have Customer Success teams with qualifications in linguistics. There probably aren’t a lot of interview questions that ask for opinions on the Oxford comma. Somehow, we’ve created a team with all of those things!
Reflecting on the journey, the decision to persevere despite early doubts stands out as a pivotal moment. Ignoring the naysayers and trusting in the potential of PerfectIt was, without a doubt, one of the best choices I’ve ever made.
Here's to continuing the journey, pushing boundaries, and embracing the future with the same enthusiasm and commitment that have brought us this far. Bring on the next fifteen years!