4 ms·

What were the services and new features? And of course, how did you find those first few customers, so you could tell that they really liked the new services a

by bkovitz 18y ago

What were the services and new features? And of course, how did you find those first few customers, so you could tell that they really liked the new services and features well enough to pay for them?

petercooper 18y ago
Good questions. It was an RSS filtering, reformatting and republishing service, so the audience was mostly geeks and what I call "media geeks".. people who run Web sites who wanted to republish blended feeds on their sidebars, stuff like that. One important unique feature in our case was that NO "Powered by Whatever" nonsense was added into the republished versions people put on their sites. Secondly, we let people blend feeds, rather than just republish a single one (this was very new in 2005!). We also supported filter by query, stuff like that. Oh, and perhaps biggest of all was allowing users to ENTIRELY change the template, free-form. We had predefined templates, but gave the user TOTAL control over the output. I'm not really sure about how those people found the service. There were a few minor writeups on reasonably unpopular blogs at the time, but 100 signups a day were coming in so I didn't care. Unfortunately I focused on the technology instead of the business so never bothered to keep track of it.
- trevelyan 18y ago
  >> (I used to believe you got the product right, then sold it.. no sirree, that's not how big business really works). What would you have done differently in retrospect?
  - petercooper 18y ago
    I'll say what I'd do now, and what I'm about to do on the "next" thing, having gained quite a lot of education and mentoring on the "business" side of things since then. I'd start selling. Day one. Even if the product or service I'm selling still needs to be developed, I'd work out who wants what I'm developing, what they'll pay for it, and how I can sell to them. Once I have the product working in a saleable form (think 37signals "Getting Real" levels of "done" here - not perfectionism at all), I'd switch 80% of energy to selling it. Cash is king. With cash coming in, I can pay other people to do the grunt work as well as work on improving the product. But.. selling is absolutely key. Last time I focused on making a kick ass product, and it worked, but I didn't know who the market was, and all the sales were from luck alone. I didn't sell the product whatsoever. It sold itself, but that's not a good strategy unless you have a mass market product. If you have a niche product, you need to be selling it yourself from day one. I would highly recommend a book called "Ready, Fire, Aim" by Michael Masterson ( http://www.amazon.com/Ready-Fire-Aim-Million-Agora/dp/0470182024 http://www.amazon.com/Ready-Fire-Aim-Million-Agora/dp/047018... ). It outlines the whole process of successfully generating a high revenue business from start to finish, and is written by someone who has launched several businesses that have gone on to reach 8 and 9 figure revenues.

by bkovitz 18y ago

What were the services and new features? And of course, how did you find those first few customers, so you could tell that they really liked the new services and features well enough to pay for them?

petercooper 18y ago

Good questions. It was an RSS filtering, reformatting and republishing service, so the audience was mostly geeks and what I call "media geeks".. people who run Web sites who wanted to republish blended feeds on their sidebars, stuff like that. One important unique feature in our case was that NO "Powered by Whatever" nonsense was added into the republished versions people put on their sites. Secondly, we let people blend feeds, rather than just republish a single one (this was very new in 2005!). We also supported filter by query, stuff like that. Oh, and perhaps biggest of all was allowing users to ENTIRELY change the template, free-form. We had predefined templates, but gave the user TOTAL control over the output. I'm not really sure about how those people found the service. There were a few minor writeups on reasonably unpopular blogs at the time, but 100 signups a day were coming in so I didn't care. Unfortunately I focused on the technology instead of the business so never bothered to keep track of it.

trevelyan 18y ago
>> (I used to believe you got the product right, then sold it.. no sirree, that's not how big business really works). What would you have done differently in retrospect?
- petercooper 18y ago
  I'll say what I'd do now, and what I'm about to do on the "next" thing, having gained quite a lot of education and mentoring on the "business" side of things since then. I'd start selling. Day one. Even if the product or service I'm selling still needs to be developed, I'd work out who wants what I'm developing, what they'll pay for it, and how I can sell to them. Once I have the product working in a saleable form (think 37signals "Getting Real" levels of "done" here - not perfectionism at all), I'd switch 80% of energy to selling it. Cash is king. With cash coming in, I can pay other people to do the grunt work as well as work on improving the product. But.. selling is absolutely key. Last time I focused on making a kick ass product, and it worked, but I didn't know who the market was, and all the sales were from luck alone. I didn't sell the product whatsoever. It sold itself, but that's not a good strategy unless you have a mass market product. If you have a niche product, you need to be selling it yourself from day one. I would highly recommend a book called "Ready, Fire, Aim" by Michael Masterson ( http://www.amazon.com/Ready-Fire-Aim-Million-Agora/dp/0470182024 http://www.amazon.com/Ready-Fire-Aim-Million-Agora/dp/047018... ). It outlines the whole process of successfully generating a high revenue business from start to finish, and is written by someone who has launched several businesses that have gone on to reach 8 and 9 figure revenues.