Great post. Lots of good ideas on marketing a startup business. I will be watching for the follow-up posts you mentioned. By the way, would you be willing to give some background on you and your wife--experience, what you were doing before you went the independent route? Also would you be willing to share more information on your 2 web site package deals--who you targeted with each, what were the differences between them, your pricing structure and how this compared to other local Web site providers (were you selling low cost, fixed price, guaranteed delivery in a week or some other benefit as the main hook and how did this compare with your competition's offering). Even for these in other industries I am sure there are lessons from your experience that would apply and the web site business is one that I think we can all relate to.
I'll give you some of the information in a private reply, but here's what I can give you on the list:
My story on how I got into computers can be found at http://navarro.basicguru.com
I am a graduate from the University of California at Santa Barbara with a degree in Computer Science and Physical Education (when I retire, I plan to teach computers and coach wrestling at the high school level). One thing I'd like to emphasize is that my degree has helped me very little in life. All it's done is "get me through the door" for interviews. Very little of what I learned about computers in college is applicable to the real world.
When I graduated from college, I was hired by Symantec as a programmer and I worked there for nearly two years. After which I spent the next two years bouncing around from one company to another (Software Publishing Corp, Lotus, Apple, & Adobe) until I started my first business with a partner (computer store in the middle of silicon valley). My partner ran the hardware side of the business while I concentrated on consulting as a programmer.
My contacts with the high profile companies I had worked for gave me leads on some great contracts and I did programs for Sears, Wells Fargo bank, Walt Disney Corporation, Seagate and others. I specialized in Inventory and Point of Sale software at the time.
I'm one of those people who gets bored easily when I'm not challenged and after a few years I wasn't being challenged by any of the jobs I was doing, so I sold my end of the business and moved to New York to be near my family (who had moved there a couple years previously).
While I was there I ran a popular BBS (if you go back that far) and wrong communications software. When I eventually ran out of money, I got a job with a company in New York City writing inventory control software. They had clients like UPS, Fedex, Anne Klein, Marshall's, and others. They specialized in bar coding equipment and it was my first taste of programming PDA's.
After nearly two years there (are we seeing a trend), I left to work for a company in California that created programming languages. I actually stayed there for a little over 5 years before I left to work with my wife in our current business.
My wife started working as a 911 dispatcher right out of high school and never finished college. When she and I met, she was working for 911 and was moderator of several chat rooms on the old CompuServe network (pre-internet). Her experience with computers up to that point was limited to the software she used in the dispatch center, a few games she played at home on her computer, and the CompuServe software.
When she and I got engaged, we decided it would be better if she quit her job because she was working the graveyard shift and because of the shortage of dispatchers, she had mandatory overtime. We got to see each other 5 or 6 hours a week. It was at this time that the Internet was just started to come into it's own.
The company I worked for asked me to create a web site and I didn't know anything about it. My wife and I were looking for something she could do and I asked if she could create the web site for me. If it was good, the company would pay her for her work. My boss liked the work she did and we decided that she should start a business creating web sites for other companies. And thus our company was born.
She got real excited about it at that point and worked very hard to learn everything she could. We lived in Monterey, California at that time and she would commute twice a month up to San Francisco (several hours one-way) to go to user group meetings. One in particular, the WebGrrls group, she was particularly excited about and got elected to their board. Approximately a year after we started her business, she wrote her first book on web design. She met a publisher at one of the WebGrrls meetings who was looking for a female author to write a book on web design and she talked them into letter her take a stab at it. The book did very well and she was on her way.
Not long after, again through contacts at WebGrrls, she joined the W3C HTML working group and helped them to with updating the HTML standard. She's been with them ever since. And she's working on book number 7 right now. All six of her previous books have all made money for their publishers.
We moved to southwest Florida a little over three years ago. The company I worked for relocated here. Six months after we moved here, we decided that we didn't need my salary to pay the bills and I could quit my job and come work with (although she'd say "for") my wife.
We are fortunate in that my contacts through previous business I've worked for and my wife's contacts through her books and association with the W3C have brought us a few high profile contracts. But the majority of our business has been local. Even with the advantage of our backgrounds, it's still been tough. We've been through a few tough patches where we almost had to close up shop and get real jobs, but we managed to muddle through.
These days we've got enough steady work to keep the bills paid and put a little (very little) away. But it takes 80+ hour weeks. Still, I enjoy nearly every minute of it. And I guess that's the biggest reason why we're doing well. We still enjoy our work.
--Dave
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