Here's a new startup blog that looks like it may be interesting http://steplivelynow.com/blog/. Of course he links to me so it's got to have something worth reading in there :-)
interestingly I almost created a Live Chat program myself.
Lately I find the terms MicroISV and startup often used interchangeable. I don't believe this is correct and it's part of the reason I think there's been a little less interest (enthusiasm perhaps is a better word) in MicroISV's over the past year than we had a few years back.
A big part of which is which is determining your goals. Do you want to run a business with an office, a secretary, 10+ employees? If so that's a startup. It may just be you in the beginning, but if you envision that environment as your endgame then it's a startup. A MicroISV is a very different thing. It's a lifestyle as much as anything else. Are you content making enough money to have a high standard of living, but not enough to have an office of employees? Would you rather run your business than be a manager in it? Are you content sacrificing a higher probability of success for a lower probability of getting rich? If so then you're starting a MicroISV.
This determination is critical yet so many blogs I read seem to be confused on the difference or not have thought about it at all. Without understanding the difference it's hard to plan for your business, choose the right economic model, know the right expenses to incur. For instance, a startup needs to be in or create a market capable of millions of dollars in revenue just to them (the overall market may be larger, but how much can they capture). A startup probably needs a sizable chunk of startup money or at least be active in potential funding options in order to plan for future growth.
A MicroISV is a lifestyle. I recently took a big chunk of HelpSpot's profits and purchased a house. A great investment for a MicroISV, an insane move for a startup. I could have paid a few employees for a year with my down payment. I've paid off all our student loans, credit cards, etc. If I was a startup it would have been much smarter to take every dollar and reinvest in the business, not pull money out to pay personal expenses.
It's not that a MicroISV can't become a larger business, but when that happens it's more of an evolutionary reality than an initial goal of the company. I don't think wanting a startup is a bad thing at all. In fact some people seem built for it, but it's a choice you need to understand going in. I get the feeling some people who go down the startup path (or worse an in between path) are really more cut out to be MicroISV's and would actually be happier following that path.
With all the PR startups have received over the last year I think the benefits of the MicroISV option have been pushed aside. I'd like to see a renewal of MicroISV discussion and activism. There are so many other good examples of successful MicroISV's beyond UserScape (Antair, Gurock Software, Perfect Table Plan come to mind). Let's start spreading the word again.
I guess living so close to New York City and having been there so often you forget how massive it is. A top article on Techmeme right now is about Google doing a transit map for NYC. That's not that interesting, but one fact in the article is. The NY/NJ transit system has 468 subway stations. Only 35 less than the rest of the country combined. It's an amazing stat.
Amongst everything else going on last week we moved to a new home from our condo. The condo was really getting tight with the baby, the business, etc. My uncle is a home builder and was able to sell us this house at the "family discount" which was really generous of him. It's a really nice home, it even has a view of the Hudson River. Here's a few pics. It's a little barren still, but we're working on it.
Front:
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Entry:
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Office (still waiting for my bookcases, can you tell!):
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This was actually a formal living room, but what the heck do you need 2 living rooms for? So we added the doors and made it into the office. It's going to be nice to have the extra space.
Kitchen:
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Great room (my uncle didn't want his pool table, so we've put it to use :-)):
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Family room:
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This might be my favorite room. It's so nice to finally have a place where we can sit down and not worry about what the baby is touching or getting into.
On the Signal vs. Noise blog today Matt highlights Twitters online support form layout and it's unique 3 questions approach. The Twitter portal is powered by HelpSpot. It's always nice to get some 3rd party recognition, especially for a UI element that was a bit of a risk to implement.
Hat tip to JD for pointing out the mention to me.
I rarely get mad at blogs these days, mostly because I don't have time to read enough of them :-). One blog I learned to stay away from a long time ago though was TechCrunch. It's a total waste of time. I literally disagree with nearly everything Mike Arrington writes. So when I saw Alex King's post pointing to Mike's thoughts on Alex's former product Feedlounge I went ahead and read it against my better judgement.
Alas, the post has done nothing to improve my impression of Mike's web thinking. There are so many erroneous statements in the post it's hard to believe anyone bothers to follow TC. Forget any factual errors about the demise of Feedlounge, what's more shocking is how wrong he is in his thinking on various business topics.
First, people make BILLIONS of dollars selling and entering markets which are commoditized. So to say doing so is suicide is silly. He's so focused on every idea having to be new that he completely ignores the benefits of entering markets which are highly competitive or even commoditized. Namely that most of the work of generating a customer base has been done for you. No need to explain what your product is, the customer already knows. It's probably the biggest reason "new idea" startups fail.
Perhaps the most outrageous claim is that there's no money to be made in markets that are commoditized and have a price point at or near zero. There are many examples where this is not true. What about the bottled water business? Nothing is more commoditized and basically free than water in every US home and public space, yet it's a 16 billion dollar business that didn't exist 20 years ago. There's basically no good reason to buy bottled water, yet people do.
It's not even close to feed readers which can have different features, UI's, etc. Water is basically all the same, even most bottled water is simply tap water, the minority of the market is actually spring water. Bottled water is simply well marketed water. That's it.
Sure it may not be the easiest route, but then again bringing a new idea nobody has ever heard of to market isn't easy either. My guess is that he mostly writes this stuff to get links and I'm falling for the trap, but it's been a while since I've read something so out of touch with reality and it got my blood pumping a bit :-)
Great post by Andy.
http://successfulsoftware.net/2007/08/16/the-software-awards-scam/
Anyone else going to the FOWD conference in NYC November 7/8? I'm thinking of going if for no other reason than it's something actually going on in NYC. HelpSpot is probably going to get a pretty decent face lift in v3 and so I'm hoping this might get the creative juices flowing.
I've just done a small update to my little marketing/information site open source help desk list. You can now add comments on any of the applications listed. So if you've ever used them and have any feedback take a second and add your 2 cents.
As an interesting aside the site has produced 12 sales for $22,532.25 in revenue ($1,877.69 avg sale). Not bad for a day or two's work. Also I think it's an interesting indication that many people simply start their search for open source software, but don't actually consider it a requirement to be either free or open source (HelpSpot is neither).
I also suspect that it's probably really responsible for about double those sales figures or more as those numbers only count users who purchased with the same browser as they found the site with. So if a manager actually did the purchase or something like that then it's not counted.
Since I do a lot of email customer service (oh and my company makes an email customer service product!) I thought it would be interesting to put together a list of a few things I've found that can greatly improve the level of service your customers receive via email. It's not a perfect list and even I forget to do all these things all of the time, but I believe if you stick with them that your customers will feel better about your service level and you'll see tangible increases in satisfaction and sales.
1. Say Hello
It's very hard to communicate over email. It can be very cold and corporate and impersonal. I find that simply starting off a response with Hi Bob or Hello Bob compared with just your name is a great way to set the tone. You want the customer to feel comfortable and most importantly that there's an actual human on the other end of the email not just a corporate cog.
2. Thank Them for Their Time
Many of my responses start off with a thank you line after the initial hello. For instance, if it's a trial user with a question on a feature in the system I'll often start with something like this:
*Hello Bob,
Thank you for taking the time to evaluate HelpSpot.
........*
Again this reinforces the human relationship. It's also a crossover to your sales efforts and acknowledges that they're making an investment in their time and money with your product.
3. Always be the Last One to Respond
I've talked about this one before. No matter how an email conversation ends, I always try and be the last response. Even if it's just a simple "no problem" or "let me know if you have any other trouble". First, I like to make sure there's resolution in the customers mind. If I'm the last one to respond then there's no doubt that the request is completed to the customers satisfaction. Second, it shows that you're willing to go the extra mile. There are very few companies I've ever dealt with where after I sent a "thanks for fixing it" type message they responded. Those that have tend to stand out from the crowd.
4. Reply as Fast as Humanly Possible
This is always a tricky one, but I believe you should always try and respond as quickly as you can even at the expense of your other work. Even if you're a programmer and you're in the zone. Nothing is more important than your customers. Yes, this will cause you delays and some frustration and most Programmers Time Optimization Books would frown upon it, but it's the best way to do business. Having remarkably quick support has gotten me more word of mouth sales and links than just about anything else. This is another one of those crossover areas where your support is your sales.
5. Organize your Email
OK I can't resist. My company does make help desk software you know! Seriously though you have to have a solution to organize your inbound email and trust me your email client is not it. You need a tool that can organize emails so none drop through the cracks. If you have more than one person answering emails then you need a tool so you know who's working on what. You need to be able to spot trends and see where your product can be optimized to eliminate recurring support problems. None of this is possible with a standard email client.
6. Used Prepared Responses Sparingly
So you've followed my advice and have some type of email customer service package in place. Yeah, you can automate everything now. No! Resist the temptation to turn your support operation into an assembly line. Prepared responses (email templates to some) have their place, especially for extremely common requests but they should not be a majority of your responses.
The simple reason is that it's extremely hard to make those responses not sound canned. They always sound canned. The human brain is extremely good at detecting objects (or words) which are out of place. You can't fool it, you can however trick it sometimes :-)
My tip is to use your prepared responses for partial replies. Write the beginning of the email yourself, but use your canned response to fill in some of the middle which you write over and over. That way the initial lead in paragraph is custom and sounds right to the customer. The prepared response then fits right in with the flow. You've managed to keep the human tone and still greatly increase your support speed.
7. Always be Nice
This one is flat out hard, but you must always be nice. No matter what happens, no matter how much you want to grab your keyboard and write things you'd never say in person you must keep your cool. This is especially important in emails since there will be a permanent record of what you say. On the modern web that email could be on the front page of Digg in an hour. If you feel yourself loosing it walk away or simply don't respond if you can't be nice.
8. Have Phone Support Available
You remember in the Matrix how all the humans stayed in the Matrix, because on a subconscious level they knew they had the ability to leave if they wanted to. That's exactly like email support. You don't have to advertise your phone support, but there can come a point in an email support request where a phone call is just the easiest way to get something resolved. This is a critical moment in the support request. If you force the customer to continue via email and refuse to use the phone the interaction is going to get ugly very fast as the customer and you both get frustrated.
Just like in the Matrix very few customers will actually choose this path, but it's important that the option is open to them. In the end it will often save you time and turn a poor experience into a remarkable one.
9. Know Who You're Emailing With
This isn't always possible of course, but if you can try and know who you're talking to on the other end. If you store this type of info in your CRM take a second and look before you respond. There are many questions which require a different type of response for a CTO compared to a non-technical end user.
10. Link to Self Help
When possible avoid putting your answer (or full answer) in the email. Don't be afraid to link out to the relevant self help resources (you have a self help website right?). This is important because some things simply require more room than an email can provide (not technically, but comfortably). It also teaches customers that you have a self help area and where to find it.