Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Here is a great interview with the Smugmug founder and how they became a successful paid web service with no VC funding.
Don MacAskill, CEO of SmugMug
and
Seven Startup Lessons from Intuit
1. Paid web services are great. You should make/pay for a good quality product. Anytime something is free, some junk comes in with the good stuff. This could be ads, or could just be bad content or a poor experience.
2. Customer service is extremely important. It's not common on the web, but it should be. Smugmug, Netflix, Seamless Web all have great customer service.
3. People appreciate better products not just because of some huge features, but because of all the little things you wouldn't necessarily say are important to you, but they add to up to make a better product. Obviously, this is true of Apple, BMW, and hopefully anything I make.
4. You don't necessarily need to be the market leader in whatever you are going after. Just make the best product and have fanatical users.
5. Talk to users and build what they want, not what you want. Don't worry about competitive research and trying to best the competition. You're better off talking to users and building something fresh. "Your competitor is not other companies, but the way that things are done now."
6. Your goal should be an extremely high level of customer satisfaction and customer loyalty.
Don MacAskill, CEO of SmugMug
and
Seven Startup Lessons from Intuit
1. Paid web services are great. You should make/pay for a good quality product. Anytime something is free, some junk comes in with the good stuff. This could be ads, or could just be bad content or a poor experience.
2. Customer service is extremely important. It's not common on the web, but it should be. Smugmug, Netflix, Seamless Web all have great customer service.
3. People appreciate better products not just because of some huge features, but because of all the little things you wouldn't necessarily say are important to you, but they add to up to make a better product. Obviously, this is true of Apple, BMW, and hopefully anything I make.
4. You don't necessarily need to be the market leader in whatever you are going after. Just make the best product and have fanatical users.
5. Talk to users and build what they want, not what you want. Don't worry about competitive research and trying to best the competition. You're better off talking to users and building something fresh. "Your competitor is not other companies, but the way that things are done now."
6. Your goal should be an extremely high level of customer satisfaction and customer loyalty.