It was in July 2006 when we launched Imagekind to the world for the first time. Here we are two years later and we are pleased to announce that the leading print-on-demand company has purchased the company. CafePress is a Sequoia backed company that needs no introduction. In our first meeting with co-founder and CEO Fred Durham we immediately understood this team to be smart, rational, hard-working and prudent decision makers. We are very, very lucky to be a part of this family. Congratulations to the whole Imagekind team who worked so hard to get us here. Kevin Saliba (CEO), Emanuel Bettelheim (CTO), Aleks Davidovich (GM, Ops) and all the others I’m not listing here by name…thank you so much.
You really have to wonder how a resignation letter like this winds up on the internet. But, it is great material for the folks over at Valleywag isn’t it! For a brief time I worked with Stewart as we tried to sort out the flickr/imagekind partnership. I found him to be an interesting, slightly eccentric character who has a real passion for doing things the right way. This letter makes the guy sound borderline crazy but I rather prefer to think he’s just an artsy guy living in the much-too-pragmatic world of the Silicon Valley. Had he been a follower of standard convention, we might never have gotten our flickr at all.
I found myself saying this today and I realized it is the shortest way to state the truth.
You must do twice as much.
Twice as good.
With half as much resources.
In half as much time.
No. I’m not kidding. This really does summarize my experience. You can go ahead and read between the lines to flesh out some of the less obvious things that make all of the above possible. For example, how can you do twice as much in half the time if you don’t have an unusual ability to be good at several different crafts that (would otherwise) require twice as many people in a “normal” organization? In a start-up, for example, there is no place for a CEO who is not at least exceptional at most marketing disciplines OR is exceptional at shipping high quality products that people like to use. Preferably, the CEO has an uncanny knack at both of those things. Similarly, there is no place in a start-up for a marketing exec who can’t actually execute on his or her own ideas. If you have to send all copy writing and creative out to a firm, how does that help the start-up do twice as much on half the budget? I’m not a big fan of start-up ceo’s and execs who are only capable of being strategists. Being good at strategy is a necessity. An assumption. Being able to do all the other tactical things well within the confines of massive constraint is basically the key. If you’re one of those few, you just might have a shot. Just remember that gravity will always conspire against you in the process. Gravity doesn’t want start-ups to succeed. That’s why most do not. And that’s the last thought I have on this start-up founder question. If you give up at the same point where “normal” people give up, you’ll wind up being another unhappy statistic.
It is only coincidence that I am writing about Apple twice in one day. But, this news which was released today from BrandChannel.com shows that in many respects, Apple may be the most influential brand on the planet.
The results of their recent survey show some interesting questions and a familiar name most common:
What brand would you most like to sit next to at a dinner party?
Apple.
What brand, if sent back 100 years, would have the biggest impact on the course of history?
Apple.
Which brand inspires you the most?
Apple.
If you were to describe yourself as being a brand, what brand would you be?
Apple.
What brand can you not live without?
Apple.
What brand is most likely to revolutionize the branding industry in the next five years?
My friend Mika Salmi reminded me of this post the other day because we were talking about the VC firm that backed him at AtomFilms back in the late 90’s. Sequoia Capital is a heavy hitter in the VC industry and I think this list of what makes a “sustainable” company is a great bullet list to internalize.
Elements of Sustainable Companies
Start-ups with these characteristics often foretells the success of a business and the likelihood of it becoming a sustainable, enduring company. We like to partner with companies that have:
Clarity of Purpose
Summarize the company’s business on the back of a business card.
Large Markets
Address existing markets poised for rapid growth or change. A market on the path to a $1B potential allows for error and time for real margins to develop.
Rich Customers
Target customers who will move fast and pay a premium for a unique offering.
Focus
Customers will only buy a simple product with a singular value proposition.
Pain Killers
Pick the one thing that is of burning importance to the customer then delight them with a compelling solution.
Think Differently
Constantly challenge conventional wisdom. Take the contrarian route. Create novel solutions. Outwit the competition.
Team DNA
A company’s DNA is set in the first 90 days. All team members are the smartest or most clever in their domain. “A” level founders attract an “A” level team.
Agility
Stealth and speed will usually help beat-out large companies.
Frugality
Focus spending on what’s critical. Spend only on the priorities and maximize profitability.
Inferno
Start with only a little money. It forces discipline and focus. A huge market with customers yearning for a product developed by great engineers requires very little firepower.
I think Empty Easel is doing a good job following the evolution of art on demand. This blog post is a fairly reasonable overview of the two larger players in this $50 billion space which is the art economy. RedBubble is based in Australia. Our own Imagekind is based here in Seattle. While our traffic is comparable, I personally believe that it is difficult to compare RedBubble and Imagekind on a number of other levels not mentioned in this post. We do all our own printing which means that our quality control is carefully monitored. Further, we are based in the US. That means we ship faster and usually cheaper. Finally, we don’t currently sell tee-shirts, mousepads, coffee mugs or anything else that might not resonate with the serious artist or photographer. So, while they may now have comparable traffic, the quality of the traffic is not the same as it might matter to a serious artist. For now, we believe we offer the right product for artists. As more art purchasing moves online, which we know it will, we believe we are well positioned to make both customers and artists very happy. If it makes sense to offer other lines of products, such as tee-shirts, in the future then we’ll consider it. For now though, I think we’ll stay focused on what we’re doing. Both RedBubble and Imagekind are working hard to pioneer this notion of art buying over the web and, for our part, we’re going to prove that the internet is the ultimate distribution platform for creative types all over the world.
Appeal to the person on the opposite side of the table with PERSONAL INCENTIVE. Not reason. What’s good for their company is one thing. What’s good for the being is another thing entirely.
FYI. This is not the same thing as a bribe. It’s more about being sensitive to their own motivations.
But, I’d like to add one more to this list because I think its important if you are trying to compete effectively with other companies in your sector. And, who isn’t trying to do that? Any SEO firm that isn’t naturally curious what other companies in your space are doing from an SEO perspective AND doesn’t or isn’t willing to share that information with you is not a good SEO firm. Getting a snapshot of the competitive landscape looking through the SEO prism is the first thing a firm should do, in my opinion. If you don’t know who you are fighting against and how good they are then you are going into SEO battle alone.
I was sitting on the plane the other day next to a mid level marketing manager at Microsoft. This person was pretty proud of the fact that they read all the blogs to keep up with what is going on within the Seattle start-up community. I was given all manner of explanations as to why Redfin will never work and why Pluggd needs to add more differentiation to their product offering. As I listened, this conversation made me think about a broader phenomenon…
When you start companies, there will always be a lot of people who don’t want to see you succeed.
While they’ll rarely say it out loud, these will be former co-workers and other “pundits” who are secretly jealous by the very decision you’ve made. As I thought more about corporate America, I remembered what the game used to be like for me. 50% of your expended energy is invested on internal politics. The other 50% is spent trying to actually make a measurable and noticeable impact on anything. It seems funny to me now, but looking back I remembered all the actions and behaviors of most everyone. They spend a lot of time doing “work” and then spend a lot more time shopping around the results of their “work” to try to convince someone more important than them (e.g. upper management) how useful and important their work product is. They have to spend time and energy doing this hand waving because in reality, the work most people do within larger companies really isn’t that impactful to the overall business anyway.
My smartest of friends who work for large companies don’t kid themselves. They know that a lot of the trips they take and things they do are as much boondoggles as they are useful. Or, they know that they can’t really get done as much as they like but they are hamstrung by the big paycheck and nice perks. I can relate to that. It’s not an easy thing to walk away from and in most cases it isn’t a good idea to do so!
But the arm chair quarterbacks will be the ones who get under your skin. They are drawing paychecks from a company somebody else started. They have never raised money against their own ideas. The have never put themselves out for others to put under the microscope. They will never be need to be judged against their true abilities because their faults are hidden within the infrastructure of something much larger than they are. So, entrepreneurs I hope you pat yourselves on the back today. You live and die on how you do. That earns you the right to say whatever the hell you want about things because now you don’t have to appear politically correct in meetings so you’ll get that holiday bonus or that promotion. You are not perfect and the armchair quarterbacks will be sure and remind you of that fact. But you have courage in spades because what you do is too scary for most people to try.
Ever wanted to find that perfect image on flickr? How about if you wanted to search by an image where the original had been placed in flickr while excluding the rest AND you wanted to search for images that could be used by you under Creative Commons? Also useful for finding licensable photos heh? It’s easiest with Compfight. Just hover over each image to see what is available and what the pixel dimensions are. Simple but very, very handy.
One of the best free magazines for product managers and marketers anywhere. The Pragmatic Marketing magazine series is something I wished arrived on my doorstep more often. This free mag is packed full of really great product management articles and is really a must-read for anyone working in th software or web world. There are no wasted words in this semi-monthly publication.
Learn how to consider patents in your design process. Learn how to better integrate with development and design teams. Learn how to guide teams to success. Learn how to be a better problem solver. Learn how to use social media to better market your new product.
This is a magazine that I’ve kept as my little secret for years.
What a fantastic website. Ever seen TED? TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds. The site makes the best talks and performances from TED available to the public, for free. Almost 200 talks from the archive are available and they add new videos each week. Beautiful website too.
Don’t we do our best work when we’re inspired? The Netdiver Best of the Year is sort of the Time magazine “best of” for websites. These are not awards for web apps but rather for innovative design. Even if you aren’t a design freak I think some of this work pushes the boundaries of what is possible in a web browser. Mostly, it is just a lot of beautiful stuff.
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