I’ve been watching all of the latest business news, including Microsoft, Apple, IBM, YoYo Games, and several more. The key to launching a successful company isn’t by having the ‘killer app’ like some claim they have, nor is it about the size of your company. What does this mean? It means that my friend and I could start a company today, make an amazing application that is better than what Microsoft makes (who, by the way, have over 70 thousand employees), and be rich. Size never matters, and often, at least to me, a few features here and there won’t make me switch to a different product. I have always said this, and this should apply to business as well, your customers need to trust you.

Let’s say you acquire this really cool application that has around fifty thousand loyal users (not the number of downloads, but a solid number of users). At first, nearly ever user of the program says ‘No, you are going to turn this really cool, free (inexpensive, sometimes) product into some corporate business plan.’ But, over the next few weeks, and after posting answers to some common questions, a few of the ‘big time’ users start to say ‘You know what? These guys aren’t that bad.’ Months go by, and the major update the company promised launched, all a bit with a few issues. But all along, through the process, the leaders of the company where giving answers as to why it was taking so long, what is coming, and so on. I would rather hear the CEO say ‘It is coming, we just hit a few snags.’ then have no news whatsoever. Why? Because that keeps the trust at a safe level. Every day something doesn’t go unanswered, no news, no sightings of a big wig, the trust level drops. Just let the users go a month without answers, I dare you, and your trust level will drop so low it won’t even be funny. And it isn’t very easy to get back. Trust me, I know.

So, this post has turned into the story of YoYo Games. Yes, they acquired Game Maker from Mark Overmars. Yea, they posted an F.A.Q on what was going on. But they left us users in the dark for a while, making people feel very cautious about them. (Start of lame humor) But every company ever created makes mistakes. Hell, every single person makes mistakes, and this may sound cliché, but if you didn’t, you would be God. I said foundations, but the only foundation you need to start and keep a company running is trust. That, or a massive trust fund! (End of lame humor).