Sav Tripodi

From Germany to America, from Perth to Melbourne, people keep asking me how we land software contracts with companies all around the world. My answer: Because we are that F****** good. Let me explain. A long time ago I read a fantastic book called “So Good They Can’t Ignore You” by Cal Newport. As obvious within the title of the book, it discusses the premise that when one focuses on skills and ability then other people, whether businesses or clients, will find it hard to ignore them.

No one likes a Flaker. You know the type, a person that commits to something 100% and then cancels a touch before the commitment. Or worse, they fail to show up at all and let nobody know. Yes yes yes, we all know the type. Let me dig in here. When we built Sanico Software we started with a few inner core principles. Principles we never stated out aloud but instead knew subconsciously. One major one, NEVER EVER FLAKE ON CLIENTS.

A friend of mine recently contracted for a company that asked them to sign a non-compete agreement a few days after they concluded their employment. What on Earth? For any business owners, lawyers, or anyone with street smarts, I am sure you would react straight away and say: “Don’t sign that”. The company of my friend failed to sign a proper sub-contractor agreement at the commencement of their employment and wanted to sign agreements after the fact. I call this amateur and unprepared.

When a new employee starts I ask them to upload a portrait shot of their faces for every account they use internally at my company. Not a picture of their dog, not a picture of the beach, and not a picture of their favourite anime character. A picture of them. I request them to add a portrait shot of their face because of the wise words that my professor in America said to me long ago:

From their first day my two Software Engineering interns contributed code to our software project with a complete programming environment setup through the use of one command, all thanks to my current favourite piece of software, Devbox. Every so often a software application amazes me, Devbox 100% hit the sweet spot. For any software devs out there we all know the pain to setup up a development environment and onboard new employees. Simple in theory, a mess in practice.

All over LinkedIn and the general internet I see posts about how companies receive millions in funding. New companies with no product, no clients, and no business experience. Instead they possess a handful of hope and a bank full of millions of dollars to burn through. These hopeful business owners, in particular in the software industry, aspire to create a unicorn software businesses. They dream to create a piece of software that people use globally. A subscription based SaaS model where customers pay monthly for sub-par services while business owners sit on a beach in Mexico lapping up the sun.

Does anyone else on LinkedIn get their inbox filled with a boat load of spam? I want to know the people that would reply to a message like the one below. Hi Sav, In the tsunami of identical messages bombarding you, here is a flamingo swimming in a yard of pigeons. But seriously… If I could show you a way to help the conversion rates for the team, would you be open to learning more?

No long intro, instead a question. If you look at the server rack below would you say the previous IT contractor took pride in their work? 100% you would say no. If in doubt, I will shortly show a clean version but first I want to show you something else. Can you see it? Yeah, right there at the bottom, the CISCO box. The good old CISCO 870 Series. Let’s get a zoom on that:

Everything you do adds up. That blog post you wrote. That website page you added. That Instagram Reel you made. That YouTube video you published. That client you made happy. It all adds up. In an airport in Rome, Italy I ran into an ex-coworker from IBM that upon discovery I ran my own software business asked immediately: “How did you find your clients?” Well… that was a complex question to answer in a short span of time as we awaited our baggage at the airport.