3 ms·

An Open Letter To Tony Hsieh (CEO of Zappos)

31 points by kunle 14y ago

hoodwink 14y ago
I'm excited to see if he responds
- kunle 14y ago
  Haha thanks, we are too :)
Ataub24 14y ago
Good luck. Definitely a creative attempt to land a client :)
ameyamk 14y ago
great marketing!
stfu 14y ago
Not sure if I just jumped into an employee upvoting scheme, but its a nice idea. Good luck!
- kunle 14y ago
  Haha thanks. We dont (yet) have enough employees to have a scheme, but good idea. It's coming.
xxpor 14y ago
I don't know if Zappos' CS infrastructure is the same as Amazon's, but if it is I will just say I feel getting this to integrate would be.... non-trivial.
- kunle 14y ago
  CS infrastructure is quite a bit different from Zappos (Amazon doesn't provide live chat support for example from what I understand), and as entities, both their customer service philosophies (while focused on keeping the customer happy) are quite a bit different - Zappos is very high-touch, and Amazon is not.
dangrossman 14y ago
Is HipMob funded? How do bootstrapped startups handle huge companies like Zappos? Would they be able to take on a client whose resource usage (in terms of hardware and people) would outstrip all the startup's current clients by a few orders of magnitude? What if they find their architecture doesn't scale and they really can't handle it -- is it worth the risk of going under because you spent all your savings on servers and employees to handle this company-changing client, only to lose them immediately when things don't work out right away? I guess that's why startups seek funding, eh? I'm not sure what I'd do if a Zappos wanted to sign up with one of my apps, honestly. Spend the money scaling up quickly for them, not knowing with certainty that I'd be able to keep ahead of their usage, or just turn them down?
- kunle 14y ago
  Hi there - Ayo from Hipmob here. You raise a fair question - we believe we can handle the scale challenge well (we're built on Heroku & AWS), and we've deployed with that in mind. That being said, only time (and deployments) will tell.
  - javajosh 14y ago
    That is wrong. You should be eminently prepared for this question. At the very least, you should have estimated the scale you need to be able to support, and demonstrate that your systems can handle the load. This means spending development time and effort to create a scaling test environment, with instrumentation, and then spending time to present the results.
    - kunle 14y ago
      Didn't mean to sound dismissive. My reply wasn't stating that we're unprepared; we're absolutely prepared and we think about this ALL DAY. We're also seasoned enough to know that behaviors sometimes deviate from test environments while in the wild.
  - dangrossman 14y ago
    Hi Ayo. I don't mean to pick on Hipmob specifically. It's just a question your post raised that I have for startups in general, especially bootstrapped startups. I don't think I've ever seen a blog post or case study about how startups have handled landing major clients and while still small, relatively unproven teams & systems. I'd love to know, for example, how a company like MixPanel or GinzaMetrics goes from handling a few million data points per customer, to perhaps billions. It seems like making the leap from helping other startups to helping Disney could take not just exponentially more resources, but a whole different architecture.
modarts 14y ago
Well played. Definitely a move to boost traffic to hipmob rather than a legitimate open letter to Tony, but I like the creative thinking behind the campaign.
hamxiaoz 14y ago
Nice try! Although the iphone picture on your website is not clear/sharp. Do you need a photographer to take a better pic for you?
- kunle 14y ago
  Hit me ayo[at]hipmob.com!!
jordanthoms 14y ago
Cool approach - but my nitpick is the misquoting of Fry - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QfSzgV1q5g http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QfSzgV1q5g
rhizome 14y ago
Where's the printer friendly version? I'm not playing too-clever scrolling games.

31 points by kunle 14y ago

hoodwink 14y ago

I'm excited to see if he responds

kunle 14y ago
Haha thanks, we are too :)

Ataub24 14y ago

Good luck. Definitely a creative attempt to land a client :)

ameyamk 14y ago

great marketing!

stfu 14y ago

Not sure if I just jumped into an employee upvoting scheme, but its a nice idea. Good luck!

kunle 14y ago
Haha thanks. We dont (yet) have enough employees to have a scheme, but good idea. It's coming.

xxpor 14y ago

I don't know if Zappos' CS infrastructure is the same as Amazon's, but if it is I will just say I feel getting this to integrate would be.... non-trivial.

kunle 14y ago
CS infrastructure is quite a bit different from Zappos (Amazon doesn't provide live chat support for example from what I understand), and as entities, both their customer service philosophies (while focused on keeping the customer happy) are quite a bit different - Zappos is very high-touch, and Amazon is not.

dangrossman 14y ago

Is HipMob funded? How do bootstrapped startups handle huge companies like Zappos? Would they be able to take on a client whose resource usage (in terms of hardware and people) would outstrip all the startup's current clients by a few orders of magnitude? What if they find their architecture doesn't scale and they really can't handle it -- is it worth the risk of going under because you spent all your savings on servers and employees to handle this company-changing client, only to lose them immediately when things don't work out right away? I guess that's why startups seek funding, eh? I'm not sure what I'd do if a Zappos wanted to sign up with one of my apps, honestly. Spend the money scaling up quickly for them, not knowing with certainty that I'd be able to keep ahead of their usage, or just turn them down?

kunle 14y ago
Hi there - Ayo from Hipmob here. You raise a fair question - we believe we can handle the scale challenge well (we're built on Heroku & AWS), and we've deployed with that in mind. That being said, only time (and deployments) will tell.
- javajosh 14y ago
  That is wrong. You should be eminently prepared for this question. At the very least, you should have estimated the scale you need to be able to support, and demonstrate that your systems can handle the load. This means spending development time and effort to create a scaling test environment, with instrumentation, and then spending time to present the results.
  - kunle 14y ago
    Didn't mean to sound dismissive. My reply wasn't stating that we're unprepared; we're absolutely prepared and we think about this ALL DAY. We're also seasoned enough to know that behaviors sometimes deviate from test environments while in the wild.
- dangrossman 14y ago
  Hi Ayo. I don't mean to pick on Hipmob specifically. It's just a question your post raised that I have for startups in general, especially bootstrapped startups. I don't think I've ever seen a blog post or case study about how startups have handled landing major clients and while still small, relatively unproven teams & systems. I'd love to know, for example, how a company like MixPanel or GinzaMetrics goes from handling a few million data points per customer, to perhaps billions. It seems like making the leap from helping other startups to helping Disney could take not just exponentially more resources, but a whole different architecture.

modarts 14y ago

Well played. Definitely a move to boost traffic to hipmob rather than a legitimate open letter to Tony, but I like the creative thinking behind the campaign.

hamxiaoz 14y ago

Nice try! Although the iphone picture on your website is not clear/sharp. Do you need a photographer to take a better pic for you?

kunle 14y ago
Hit me ayo[at]hipmob.com!!

jordanthoms 14y ago

Cool approach - but my nitpick is the misquoting of Fry - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QfSzgV1q5g http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QfSzgV1q5g

rhizome 14y ago

Where's the printer friendly version? I'm not playing too-clever scrolling games.