At Business Logs we have been in talks with a couple Silicon Valley startups about design and logo work or what they like to refer to as “branding”. I always find this interesting because although I think many of us agree that quality design and aesthetics can play a major role in the success of your company, is it safe to assume that this is the only thing that makes up your brand?
What a Brand Isn’t
A brand isn’t a logo. A logo is merely a symbol that represents the brand. Your corporate identity, the stuff found on letterheads and signage, isn’t a brand either. A brand isn’t the product or service that you make. So if a brand isn’t all of these things what is a brand?
A brand is how an individual feels about a company. It’s an individual’s feeling because a brand is defined by how an individual feels about the brand, not what the company wants an individual to feel. Sure companies can’t control how an individual feels, but they certainly can influence the feelings of an individual by properly communicating the qualities that make their brand special.
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Going out on your own should mean freedom to set your own hours. I am a night person meaning that I am most productive at night because for some reason it becomes much easier for me to focus. However, most of the people we have to interact with are day people and expect things to happen during the day such as phone calls, email replies, etc.. I don’t know what defines a company as being “global”, but we have clients in three different continents and members in five so there is no such thing as a timezone with us.
The reason I bring this up is because I wonder is it fair for people to expect you to be available at at the same times of the day that they are available? I do believe you should cater to the people paying the bills, but if you begin to cater too much to all their time requests aren’t you giving up the freedom you so longed for in the first place? It seems the only way to get around this is to let people know what times are good for you.
I understand if you are a company that only deals with clients in timezones near yourself or are lucky enough to simply have great local clients, then you should be available at their times. However, I do believe less and less of us have that luxury so what do we do if anything?
Today while looking for some new domain names I began to wonder when does a domain name become too long for users to try and remember. Or even worse, when does a domain name become too long for them to even type? There are so many quality domain names already taken, it is becoming increasingly difficult to find useful ones. I consider a domain name useful if it is easy to remember for the users and is somewhat catchy. Sometimes you can get lucky and come up with a name such as Yahoo and over time people will begin to associate your site with searches and resources.
How big of a role does a domain name play in the user’s decision to go to a site? What I mean is if Amazon had been called Just Books instead, would it have mattered? I am sure there is no research for this, but I do wonder if there is some research showing the optimal letter count in domain names. What makes for a quality domain name? Any thoughts?
Also how do you feel about non-conventional domain names such as gada.be? Do these serve only to confuse users?
Remember back in the 90’s when it was somewhat tough being an Independent Software Vendor due to the simple fact that you were never sure if Microsoft was going to enter your niche and simply buy up your competition or create something of their own? They didn’t even have to create anything wonderful, just a product that was functional and they had already dominated that industry. The first release would get bashed by the public, but they would continuously pump out new releases that got better and better till there was no more competition. Those days weren’t very fun.
Now we have to worry about Google doing exactly what Microsoft did in the past. Last week Google launched Google Reader and it received many mixed reviews, however like Microsoft in the past, they didn’t have to release a product that was better, they just had to get one out and they have almost already won the online RSS reader wars (I know many of you geeks will never switch from your default reader, but I am looking at the millions and millions of people who don’t use your readers).
Not too long ago Bloglines dominated, but they grew complacent and new features or designs have been far and few between. Because of this new services such as Rojo have come and stolen much of the thunder and even worse Google is primed to now take all of the attention.
Same thing occurred with Google’s Blog Search. Google moves at the speed of a small company because its products are only worked on by a small team of people. Just because your product may be better it doesn’t give you the right to rest on your laurels because Om Malik or the guys at TechCrunch mentioned how wonderful it was. Everyday you have to wakeup and assume a big player is going to join the game. I know these are the happy money times, but you have to develop in fear. In fear that someone smaller and faster is going to launch today. In fear that Yahoo/Google/Microsoft will decided they want a piece of the pie. In fear that your customers will turn against you.
A couple of people question why we add so many sites so fast to the Network. It’s because I don’t want to look behind me one day and wonder our competition is catching up. I don’t want to have to wonder how we let it get like this or why we grew complacent. It’s not enough to be just one step ahead, you have to be 10 miles ahead. If that means doing things a bit unconventionally then so be it. I also understand that growing too fast can be detrimental to our image and so we are doing new things to take care of these issues. Developing in fear doesn’t mean just looking behind you because you have to know what’s ahead of you as well.
Same goes with this blog. I write often for fear that I will be forgotten one day. Maybe having the best blog doesn’t mean much to you, but it could mean the difference between getting a client or not. It could be the difference between being recognized by 10 other blogs or just one. They say every second a new blog is born. That means there is another second that your blog could be forgotten by your readers. Why give them that option?
If you are a follower of the eXtreme programming methodology you know that one of the mantras is “release fast, release often” (sorry, 37signals did not come up with this). Well I think you should apply this to your web app, your blog, or even your client work, but should add one more part to it.
Release fast, release often, release quality.
It’s tough for anybody to beat that.
Monday I wrote an entry concerning the struggles a small company goes through when the decision of taking VC money must be made. Today I would like to talk about all the craziness that is starting to occur around us and why it worries me.
It started with Yahoo! acquiring Upcoming.org and then AOL acquiring Weblogs, Inc. and finally Verisign purchasing Weblogs.com. I seem to recall this type of craziness happening before and a lot of people promising themselves that they wouldn’t allow it to happen again. Well I fear the bubble will be much stronger this time around and its burst will be even more damaging because many of us really did believe we learned from our mistakes the previous time.
We are at a point where everyone has an idea that they feel will succeed and earn them a significant amount of money. However, what’s the gameplan if that doesn’t happen? Impossible right? Any idea can work in this type of environment and that’s why everyone starts a blog network. If WIN can be bought then surely anyone who decides to launch a network with over 10 sites will have a chance to be bought…
When I had the idea of the 9rules Network in my head I got really excited, not because I thought it would make me rich, but because it had the potential to leave an impression on the web. I know many outsiders are still skeptical of what the Network is and that it just a club of sites. Because of the Network some writers have received greater exposure and others have acquired new jobs. New friendships and partnerships are being formed on a daily basis that more than likely would never have occurred if the Network didn’t exist. Cheesy? Possibly, but if there ever is a crash, I know this idea will still be around and running on all cylinders.
But what does 9rules, Inc. get out of all of this? We get to be right in front of almost over 100 (and growing) influential sites on the web in many different categories and now two languages. We have developed relationships with each and every site not by trying to sell them anything or making false promises, but just because we have put them first. How many companies have the opportunities that we now have?
A couple of months ago if you would have asked me whether or not I would have taken funding for this company I would have responded by telling you that is the wrong question to ask. The real question would’ve been whether or not a VC would have had the patience to allow us to build these relationships first before we moved on to making them money. I don’t think any of them would and I think that is a very good thing because it means the idea of the Network should be around in any type of economy and environment. Not just the ones that get people giddy.
Exit Strategy
If you have ever written a business plan or talked to an investor you know that you are expected to come up with an exit strategy for your company. Although a very good idea for a lot of companies, I hate trying to come up with one for just the Network. When I look at the big picture of what 9rules, Inc. is going to accomplish I can see an exit strategy, but for just the Network I would like to think there is no need for one. Even if all my partners left me because they are tired of me not brushing my hair, I would like to think that this Network that we have built can still stand on its 100 legs.
Idealistic? Yes. That’s just how I work at times.
So what happens if a company comes up to me and offers me 8 or 9 digits for everything that we have created? That’s easy, I take the money, but it would be much easier to create a couple products and services where I don’t have to worry about that exit strategy occurring and that’s the path we are about to take.
So Why Are You Worried?
Because AOL paid $25 million for 31 blogs in which only a couple should be considered quality and Verisign forked over around $2 million for a pinging service. Not the only one on the web, just the one with the weblogs.com domain.
Well I guess I shouldn’t be that worried because this just means that if you create a quality product that is useful to many people you should do just fine in the future. Isn’t that how it always is though?
What happens to all the information and sites that we link to from our own sites? I was thinking about the plethora of information on the web today and the beauty of links and how wonderful everything seems. But then I wondered what the web is going to be like 20 years from now and will all the resources we use now be around still? Linkrot now is one thing, but what about 5 years down the road? Websites come and websites go, but how many will stand the test of time?
If I continue with this site for a couple of years and end up with thousands of sites linking back to me, is it my obligation to keep the site up for as long as possible? When you really start to think about it, pressure starts to mount. Maybe there is some responsibilty for you to keep the site up, but should you? I can read the words of a book printed in 1604, but will people be able to read the words of this entry in 2404? A lot of questions I have, yet no answers.
Who am I kidding? My words mean jack.
Few of the other community sites like Friendster and MySpace allow the personalization of profile pages like MySpace allows.
– Steven Ametjan
How important is it for a site or page to differentiate itself from the rest of the crowd? Facebook although wonderfully desinged (nice going Bryan, doesn’t allow for the customization of pages and therefore every profile page looks the same. Now there are many other factors to the success of MySpace over Facebook, but I wonder how big of a role did customization play?
When Weblogs, Inc. started, every single site looked the same. I always hounded Calacanis about branding and making every site unique, but I also understood the dilemma he was facing. When you have over 80 sites, it’s not feasible to make every single one look different. Sure you can change some colors around and do a different logo, but 80 unique designs in a short period of time is nearly impossible.
How much of a role did design play in the success of WIN? Again, I am not too sure of this, but I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the most popular sites in the network are the ones that offer their own unique designs.
With the Fine Fools sites I never had any intentions to change the designs of the sites so that they all stood out on their own because it was just my own little project and doing a unique design for 2-3 new sites a week just wasn’t going to happen. However in just this short period of time since I introduced the Community I realized it won’t be just a small project and that the writers will want their sites to be at least slightly different from the rest.
But how can this be achieved? The challenge involved is that I would like for each site to exhibit a bit of personality while also maintaining a certain look and feel so that people are aware it is part of a Community. But really how important do you think something like this is with regards to the success of the site? I know I have asked this question a million times in the past, but can you really have one template that helps each site achieve its own branding, while also maintaing the overall brand of the Community?
VC funding. It’s something that you read about almost daily on someone’s site. Every new venture seems to be getting money pumped into it and you can only imagine how much easier that makes their lives right? Well that’s what I thought until it happened to us.
Last week we were offered a “generous” sum of money to fund some of the projects that we wished to work on. Initially, we jumped all over the offer for the simple reason that we continue to tell ourselves that if we could get away from doing client work for a couple of weeks/months then we could dedicate 100% of our time to the stuff we really want to do. After some time though and a lot of discussion we decided to turn down the money mainly because the offer didn’t feel right to us. I wish I could say it was an easy decision to make.
I admit to being very proud of what we have accomplished with the 9rules Network in just under five months, but also realize that it is just a small step to where we plan on taking our company. I am also very pleased to see the work we are doing at Business Logs and glad to say that we are overloaded with client work. But again that is only a step in the direction we wish to take.
If we wanted to do client work for the rest of our lives then the situation we have at Business Logs would be the perfect scenario, but we wish to make our own little mark on the web just like every other startup. However, we seem to have encountered a problem that no other person in the world has encountered: we need money for survival. I know, I know this is insane, but for us this is the case and therefore we continue doing client work with the ability to make some small dents in our projects while also running the Network.
37signals talks about how bad VC funding is and the fact that it is anti-Web 2.0. Well Scrivs talks about how they have been one of the most successful design firms in the world since 1999 so they had a bit of time to save up some money and hire David to code Basecamp for them. Well then you should’ve started with a project that was going to bring in instant revenue before you worked on the Network says the audience.
In time hopefully everyone will understand why we started with the Network and why we have made it our core. In our eyes, it just made sense.
Do You Want To Be Funded?
It would be nice to know where your paycheck is coming from, but it isn’t so nice to have that added bit of pressure and departing with a share of your company. However, as my good friend Mike Davidson likes to say:
Better to own 75% of $1M than 100% of $0.
And wait till you see what his new company is coming up with…hotness x Web 2.0
Before last week I thought if we ever got an offer for funding I would take it no matter how ridiculous it was simply because it would free up a lot of time to devote our resources to secret projects #1-85. But that wasn’t the case and believe me its not easy walking away from six digits. Now we just know that if we do take any funding it will have to be an offer we are comfortable with and not just one that allows us to work on what we want to work on.
Are You Looking For Funding?
Like the question above the answer is yes and no. We are not actively seeking out VCs to talk to, but we definitely won’t turn our backs if any wish to speak with us. We can continue to move along doing what we do, but probably not at the pace we would like. We don’t need funding, but we do want more time away from client work.
Don’t take this entry as an excuse for not getting things done. On the contrary, it probably has more to do with our inability to turn clients away. It’s tough to walk away from the new challenges presented to us daily. With that said we have decided to devote small periods of time to what I call Quick Hit projects. What are they? Nothing special. Just offering services that are already available, but just doing them a little bit better. A little bit more our way.
Finally, let me offer this piece of advice to all the CEOs of young startups out there. I know how it feels to be responsible for a team of individuals that look for you to guide them and help them reach that big payday, but if a VC comes with an offer and it just doesn’t feel right to you, then just walk away. There will be more down the road.
