After he retired from NFL, Staubach started working in the Texas commercial real estate business. He saw how frustrated commercial tenants were when they dealt with landlords. As you know, buying/leasing office or retail space is not a simple process (http://www.zananetwork.com/business-learning/wiki/real-estate/faq/index.aspx)

The traditional real estate brokers were, in general, driven by the commission fee that they could collect from both the buyer and the seller. In the process, a few rules were bent and I guess many a heart burnt. Enter Staubach. He asked: Why don’t we build a company that focuses on being the advocate of the users of office and industrial space?

Staubach Co. was founded in 1977 with this simple yet powerful premise. At that time, it was indeed a pioneering effort in the brokerage business to build a company around tenants (as against owners or developers). What he recognized was that taking care of end-users/customers can actually help his business grow. To reinforce his approach, he offered the revolutionary “unconditional guarantee of value” – giving refunds to clients who thought they didn’t get the expected services/benefits. Though the refunds were not frequent, they did happen and it hurt. But for Staubach, there was no other way to prove the integrity and value.

Do you now see a connect with the license-fee-mongering-product companies to SaaS and the service culture? Are they any such stories in other industries that can be considered fore-runners for the current SaaS trend in the software industry?

Note: In July, 2008, The Staubach Company was sold to Jones Lang LeSalle for $613 million.