James Mackay of 2large2email.com writes in about Getting Real, getting personal, and "getting on with it."
I read Getting Real during a three-hour plane trip, and the plane hadn’t landed before I knew I’d found something that could revolutionize my business plan. We had a “work-in-progress” product (www.2large2email.com) that was in danger of being kept on the back burner. 2Large2Email aims to make large file sending easier for small businesses and professionals. We knew we were on a winner but Getting Real’s focus on getting lean, getting personal and getting serious kick-started our commitment and drove us to finally get down to business.
At the time I was running a software publishing company that distributes products to retail. I stepped down from my position in the retail side of the company and, with two other guys, got serious about our web apps.
Starting Small
We’re part of a public company (Manaccom) but our little division remains cash-flow positive on its own. So, one decision we made early on was to reject funding from our parent company. That was an eye opener; without funding, big ideas can seem difficult to achieve. Getting Real’s philosophy about keeping it small made a lot of sense to us. We were three guys without a direct external cash pool, relying on each other to get our product right. In the end, our small numbers were one of the best things we had going for us. Our numbers helped us to stay true to the core of the product and be very clear on what those were. That meant once we got serious about our product, productivity was upped and the whole process was more fun.
Getting On With It
If fourteen years of working with software developers taught me anything, it’s that it doesn’t take much for an exciting idea to spin into an endless maze of pandering and dead-ends. Long-term plans might look nice, but too often, they stunt the growth of actual results. In the beginning, 2Large2Email was something we worked on sporadically, adding bits and pieces when we found the time. Getting Real’s belief about getting your product up and running convinced us that there was no use in trying to perfect our product before we’d actually created it. We realized our part-time attitude would never be enough to build something real. Getting Real gave us the push we needed to get off the fence and get serious about getting real about our goals, and our product, up and running. We shelved our other projects, and went for it.
Keeping It Simple
When a product is still in the planning stages, it’s easy to assume that because it makes sense to us, it’ll make sense to anyone. With 2Large2Email, we wanted to transform the tech-head concept of FTP into something even my Mother could use. It wasn’t until we took Getting Real’s advice and made those ideas into a real product that we could understand how to accomplish that aim. We made the concept of file sending more accessible by taking out the guesswork and creating an easy to use formula. We took the point about “keeping it lean” to heart, and it payed off in a big way: making simplicity a crucial feature kept our product streamlined and accessible to small businesses and individuals just like we wanted it. Getting Real makes great points about making your product accessible, which taught us never to take customer knowledge for granted. That meant adding FAQ lists and how-to videos, although we’re still working on them. We learned that combining simplicity with useful tips made for a product that was bound to succeed.
Making It Personal
With 2Large2Email, we wanted our users to know that their companies, and their needs, were something that we took to heart. We didn’t want to be a faceless corporation, so we took Getting Real’s attitude about making a product that catered to users and applied it across the board. We made it a goal to give our users choices, allowing them to customize their page with their own colors and logos, meeting their desire for professional appearances with personal needs. Getting Real showed us that keeping it professional doesn’t mean deferring to the dry and boring (we ain’t no bank).
Letting Feedback Guide Us
Once we finally got up and running, we realized that Getting Real was right on target about user feedback: put your product out there and user feedback will guide the way. There was nothing more useful than feedback from real users. Though it was hard to trust this method, it made so much more sense in the end. When a user suggested that they needed an easier way for their business partners to share files on their account, we added a drop-box that did just that. Accepting that users are the best guide to building our product was the smartest move we could have made.
Getting Real’s philosophies, grand and small, changed the way I looked at building a quality product. Now that 2Large2Email is growing and thriving, I believe more than ever that Getting Real took our focus to where it needed to be. Talk about good airplane reading!
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