On the eve of LeWeb09, we wanted to give you an update about everything that’s happened in the last year since we won the People’s Choice award at LeWeb08, and what we’ve learned while doing it. It was a great conference, and where Silentale was unveiled for the first time, which really helped us to kick off our launch.
In the last year we’ve accomplished a lot, and learned even more:
- a great team can do great things (even if small): we added some world-class folks to the team, both experienced managers with a track record of rolling out new products at brands like Netscape, ComScore, AOL, Orange, BSkyB and Yahoo!, and even more importantly some great young development talent. We’d love to have even more folks on the team, but if you have to have just a few, they gotta be great.
- it’s lonely being the only one at the dance: when you’re launching a new service that can’t be compared to anything, it really helps to have other entrants in the same or similar space for people to reference, or growth in the general space you’re operating in. The launch of Threadsy, MessageBunker, the impending arrival of Raindrop, and indirectly even GoogleWave demonstrates that there are others looking at a similar market. Plus the obscene growth and fragmentation of real-time communications helps demonstrate the need for a service that consolidates and archives all your conversations and contacts. And it doesn’t hurt that we’re in the Cloud either…allowing users to access that information where they need to.
- meeting and talking to people gives great ideas: we attended as many events as we could on our travel budget, and met /engaged with as many people as we could (keeping dry mouth at bay with copious amounts of lubrication)…everyone from respected investors to journalists/bloggers, other startups, suppliers, potential partners etc. We can’t tell you how invaluable it is to not live in a silo, but to get feedback, share best practices and brainstorm ideas with as many folks as possible. Trends start to emerge that you might otherwise have never thought of on your own…no matter how great a team you have.
Great events we participated in from 2009 include: Plugg, The Next Web, Web 2.0 Berlin & SF, various TechCrunch meetups, OpenCoffee Club, Nordic Venture Forum, Ignite Paris and Geeks on a Plane. - users really are king: in the same vein, we’ve tried to listen to our users as much as possible, by conducting market research, conducting polls, and reviewing feedback from the site as well as tweets, blogpost comments etc., and use their comments to prioritize our development and improve the service.
- there is nothing better than launching: we launched our Private Beta on 8 September, and we can’t emphasize enough how much it helps to just get your product out there and start getting all that great feedback from your real (and royal) users, so you can iterate and improve your product to truly meet their needs.
- social media saves the day: being lean means $0 marketing budget, in whatever currency you care to count, but the community on the web means you can get the word out without having to spend. If you have a decent product, engage with the community and respond to feedback, you can grow.
- lean is HARD, but sharpens your focus: you never have as many resources as you want; whether you work for a 5K employee company or with a handful of people, so prioritization of product development and everything else is key. Re: fundraising, we have learned that you need to have a) a sufficiently decent-sized user base (still wish someone could tell us what the magic number is), plus growth of that base going in the right direction, and b) ability to demonstrate that your business model will work, before you get any serious funding. Sort of a Catch-22, since you need the funding before you start to make money…but we get it. Heard loud & clear. Did we mention that we love our angels?
- scaling on a large scale is REALLY hard: our dev team worked their butts off building a process that can adequately scale to both process and store tens of millions of messages and contacts. We now have more sympathy for sites that sometimes have FailWhales during growth.
- tools of the trade make it possible: we’re operating at a great moment, where there are so many inexpensive tools and open platforms available, without which it would be impossible for us to function. You name it: customer support (Zendesk), surveys (PollDaddy & SurveyMonkey), email marketing tools (CampaignMonitor), databases (MongoDB, MySQL), cloud infrastructure (Amazon Web Services), collaboration (Yammer, Highrise and Box.net), marketing (HubSpot Marketing Tools), analytics (Google, bit.ly)…the list goes on and on, and we are grateful.
- going global is not a choice, it’s mandatory: altho our HQ is in Paris, our team of 8 represents 5 different nationalities (some with 2 or 3 each!), and we believe that to be truly successful, we have to be global. Our current beta users come from 57 different countries, and we have deliberately launched in English only initially to cater to the broadest possible audience. This may seem slightly controversial, and there can certainly be successful companies that cater for just one particular market, but if your ultimate goal is to compete on a global level, you have to prepare for that from Day 1.
- we get high off of buzz: we try not to obsess about it too much, and look at all feedback as good feedback whether positive or negative, but we do really get a buzz from positive buzz. As a startup, you hit so many walls, its important to get your high where you can! Anything from being called “Europe’s Hottest Startup?” in TechDigest (even with the “?”!) to a user tweeting “Everyone check out Silentale!!! F***ing great!” (thanks @harmen_h) really keeps us going.
So thanks again to LeWeb for providing the startup competition as a launchpad and showcase for startups in Europe. We hope you all have a super and productive conference this year, whether you are attending in person, or watching from “home”. We’ll be at the conference and the events handing out beta invitations, so come say hello and grab one! We are also celebrating our 1 year anniversary by giving away 365 invites using the code HAPPYBDAY…just click here while supplies last.
It is this time of a year again, the week where a large number of Internet companies converge to San Francisco from everywhere to attend the 
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