Being Googly
Matt Marshall's story on the cover of the Mercury News business section provides the entrepreneurs' perspective of Google's success. Comments include empowering individuals to innovate on their own, good benefits, equity incentives, adhering to good ethics, developing for users first and having fun too.
``The garage is back in business,'' says Ross Mayfield, chief executive of Socialtext, a 10-person Palo Alto start-up, referring to the valley's tradition of starting innovative companies in a garage. ``Google has been a shining example for us.''Doing good
Socialtext's Mayfield also took a page from Google's book by trying to ``do well by doing good.'' He gave his software -- which helps users collaborate -- to academic and non-profit groups. These users, in turn, are helping spread the word for him, and he's making inroads with the for-profit sector.
Another Google lesson, Socialtext's Mayfield says, is to let users decide what they want. Google demonstrated the keep-it-simple rule, he said. So Mayfield lets users provide feedback, and he has a testing site, giving users previews of products under development.
Finally, there's the make-sure-you-have-fun lesson, he says. ``We goof off, too.''
To clarify, we don't provide free services to academic communities and non-profits, but we provide discount (about 50%) pricing to them so we can sustainably serve them as any other customer.
Some of the lessons are borrowed from Google, but most have been entrepreneurial learnings from going from boom to bust. During the boom, we forgot that relationships were central to business and throught they could be simply disintermediated. To succeed through the bust, you had to value employees, customers and partners. Google's success validates the approaches many are beginning to take.
The unfolding opportunity is leveraging the Net to build your startup. You can leverage open source, the LAMP stack of Linux, Apache MySQL & Perl, and commodity hardware to develop a prototype rapidly at the cheap. Innovate in the user experience, commodity management (as Socialtext and Google does for its hosting complex and Appliances) and integration of services. Release early and often, empower users and developers to build upon what you do -- and enable the market to find you and shape what you supply. Distribute through the network and market in social networks to gain a base of enthusiastic users and you can build a sustainable business with less upfront investment and a greater total potential.
But its the weekend, time to get out of the garage and play with the kids in the driveway.
