Lance Weatherby shot me an initial brand survey today. I filled it out and here's my first draft. The Microsoft Word doc has easier-to-follow formatting:
Interviewee: Joe Reger, Jr
Defining the Vision
What is your vision for Reger.com? Or said another way what is the one problem that the company is trying to solve?
We give people a way to bring their digital memories together into a single repository where they can better view, share and learn from them.
The Company’s Purpose
Imagine it is ten years from now and someone asks you to recall your time at Reger.com. What do you want to be able to say about the company, both what it accomplished and what it stood for?
We helped people realize that their lives are a lot richer than they give themselves credit for. We helped people remember things that they would have otherwise forgotten. We helped people find relationships between their memories which led to new memories. We helped people use memories to create wisdom. We helped people share this wisdom with their friends, family and all of humanity.
Extended to 1000 years: Through this sharing of wisdom came greater tolerance in the world. Through that greater tolerance in the world came peace.
Culture and Values
What is it like to work at Reger.com?
As with any good job, daily tasks are demanding and challenging. There’s a real sense of urgency to continue to innovate on a technical level while also getting the word out and supporting the existing product. With a small company each person must wear many hats and is expected to do their job well.
At the end of the week it’s possible to look back at the progress and gain a sense of fulfillment. We’re helping people use technology as part of their lives. We get direct feedback from users daily. We solve their problems. We see them create their first blog entry. We see them bring their families into the blogosphere. This makes the long hours worth it.
What is the company’s greatest strength?
In the long term the greatest strength is the founder’s dedication to the concept of personal nostalgia repositories. He has a passion for this and will continue to pursue it. This is a strength because it provides a focus through detours and business realities.
In the short term the greatest strength is the lead Reger.com has in supporting blogging with extended data. The platform was built with this in mind six years ago. This is a strength because it allows for much richer internet applications to attach to blogging as Web 2.0 takes off. It should also at some point lead to many reviews of the software as soon as people realize what it can do.
What is the company’s greatest weakness?
The greatest weakness is a lack of funding and/or substantial revenue. Reger.com is understaffed and is not able to take advantage of the many sales, business development and technical integration opportunities available to it. This understaffing also affects the quality of the launched product and the service uptime.
What type of people do well and what do not so well?
The founder of Reger.com has had the privilege of managing many types of technical, design and business people. It is his choice to work with “thoroughbreds” even though they are often high maintenance. A thoroughbred is a person who has an incredible natural talent within their job description. A thoroughbred shoulders the workload in larger organizations. They’re the go-to people. Organizational consultants tell large organizations to only have one thoroughbred per five “normal” team members. This approach is rejected for the foreseeable future.
Thoroughbreds are super-competent individuals who take their job skills and responsibilities personally. They’ll stay up all night to solve a problem after being told that they can/should go home. They have an internal drive and desire to see things done properly. Sometimes this motivation is learned from parents, sometimes it was taught by mentors and sometimes it’s simply a fear response.
While hiring more “normal” workers is generally less dramatic and lower maintenance, the founder enjoys the demands and challenges that thoroughbreds present. They challenge the founder to be a smarter and better leader. Thoroughbreds don’t censor feedback. They tell their boss exactly what they think and don’t mind leaving a job over ideals. They compare and contrast current leaders to past leaders they’ve worked with and seek the best of all of them.
Once running, thoroughbreds are amazing to watch. The founder knows that thoroughbreds are the fuel that will keep the company moving to the next level. Their ideas, high quality execution and contribution to the vision are critical. Once in motion they can create in short order innovations or pure task output that would take a more normal worker months to duplicate.
Given the founder’s desire to surround himself with thoroughbreds, a person who is not thick-skinned will not prosper. They will be able to get their job done, but they will likely not be happy. There is a subtle balance between process and innovation that happens with thoroughbreds and some people are not cut out for that balance. People who like to be respected for their title will not be happy because thoroughbreds don’t respect titles.
And people simply looking for a job or stock options will not be happy when they find themselves surrounded by thoroughbreds who care only about the best execution of the task at hand. A person who doesn’t enjoy competitive innovation would be swallowed whole and spit out.
What are the values of Reger.com?
We value innovative technology that helps users improve their lives in real-world situations. We don’t value technology for technology’s sake. Technology must crossover into areas of sociology and culture in compelling ways. It must improve our lives. Most technology doesn’t.
We value our customers/users and realize the incredible resource that they are in building our company. At various times they play the role of visionary, quality assurance agent, sales referrer and technologist.
We value the team members who work at Reger.com, including their families. What’s the point of starting a company on the mud ball called Earth if you can’t improve the lives of those working directly with you? We want people to see Reger.com as part of their life, not merely a job. Reger.com should be a social entity that people enjoy and are challenged by.
We value revenue. Not because money has intrinsic value, but because money represents our progress in a competition. More money means more people believe in what we’re doing and want it to continue.
We value honor. Owning up to your own mistakes and limitations.
How is Reger.com perceived by its customers?
Reger.com is seen as a small blogging outfit that has a very compelling technology. It is not seen as part of the Big Time blogging scene… yet. Enterprise customers see the potential in datablogging and realize that they can’t get a similar product elsewhere… so they see us as unique. Users and customers clearly understand the small nature of Reger.com and contrast it to Reger.com’s potential.
If Reger.com were a famous person who would it be? Why?
If Reger.com were a famous person it would be Hugh Hefner. Ignoring the allure of the Playboy lifestyle, Heff is a famous person obsessed with his own history. He has entire rooms in his mansion dedicated to his own pictures, press clippings, etc. He has an archivist help him organize his life’s data into bound volumes. He assigns photographers to capture candid photos. He requests video feeds from networks that attend his events. He has a show on E! tv chronicling his three most recent girlfriends. Everything is meticulously organized by date and topic. He spends much time reviewing his life, gaining wisdom and warmly remembering. This drive and desire to capture your own life is at the core of Reger.com.
If Reger.com were a car what type (brand/model) would it be?
Reger.com would be an Escalade. Escalades are premium cars that allow their owners to carry much cargo with them wherever they go. With 16.3 cubic feet of cargo space, the Escalade moves the possessions of its owner in style. And after many years of use, Escalades provide memory triggers of travels, adventures and daily life. It wouldn’t be uncommon to hear “we rolled to Florida in the Escalade,” indicating that the Escalade was actually part of the process of creating memories, not simply a spectator.
While an Escalade is practical, it‘s also an expression of ego. Often seen in the wild with custom wheels and undercarriage lighting, an Escalade allows the owner to make a customizable statement. And finally, Escalades are often known for emitting (publishing, if you will) content from their interiors to the outside world. Whether this takes the form of thumping bass or a young lady hanging a glass of champagne out the window, the Escalade allows its owner to communicate with others on the road of life.
As an Escalade, Reger.com helps people move their personal data from place to place, sharing it as they go with style and presence.
Reger.com Brand Attribute Assessment Form
Please review the attributes on the next page as they relate to Reger.com. The goal of this exercise is to end up with five to ten attributes that best describe the company. The best way to proceed is to go through the list crossing out all those attributes that do not at all apply. Then look at the list again and continue to narrow it down until you reach about five to ten attributes total that together completely describe Reger.com. Please don’t eliminate words that seem less than glowing. It is important to have an accurate reflection of attributes even if some of them may not be entirely flattering. If there are adjectives that better describe the company but are not shown, please add them in the spaces provided at the end of the list.
Reger.com Brand Attribute Assessment Form (Original List)
Reger.com Brand Attribute Assessment Form (Final List)
• Egotistical – Reger.com helps you express yourself proudly. • Intelligent – Reger.com is an intelligent way to organize your digital life. • Trustworthy * – Reger.com can be trusted with your memories. • Introverted – Reger.com helps you look back at yourself. • Community oriented – Reger.com helps you share with the community. • Mentoring * – Reger.com must at first show people how to live their lives online and then step aside, offering critical support, like a good mentor. • Human – Reger.com celebrates humanity. • Just – Reger.com operates in a just and fair manner. • Collaborative – Reger.com will work with you to improve its product. • Assertive – Reger.com must assert its place in the market before somebody else does. • Ubiquitous * - Reger.com must get to a point where capturing your life is always happening, but rarely noticed.
* indicates a word that was added to the list
Market
Can you give me a high level overview of the market that Reger.com is currently pursuing?
Reger.com is pursuing the consumer market and the enterprise consumer aggregator market.
What analyst firms follow you and what market do they place you in?
Outsell, Inc. is a research and advisory firm that specializes in “Market Analytics for the Information Industry.” They’re concerned with the collection, storage and publishing of content for enterprises. Talking to Marc Strohlein, he places Reger.com as a knowledge management tool within the enterprise.
The key players in the blogosphere also follow Reger.com. They see Reger.com as an odd, bit player in the overall blogosphere. They acknowledge our innovative datablogging platform and believe that it has a future. John Robb, former CEO of blogging company Userland said: “Personally, I think this method of weblogging has more of a potential to storm the enterprise than any other application.”
Are there other analyst firms that you want to follow you and do you believe that there is some other market in which you could be better placed?
Yes. We should be tracked in the social networking and general web categories. While the enterprise connection to datablogging is evident in 2005, we are more interested in the connection to consumers which is only starting to happen.
Target
Tell me why you selected the target that you did.
A number of reasons: First, the technology was originally built to help people. While it works well for enterprises too, there is a level of passion and excitement when talking about the consumer market. Second, the consumer market is large, meaning the possible upside is huge. Third, the consumer market is difficult to crack. After so many meetings of being told to ignore the consumer market I want to go after it… to some degree simply because it’s a more difficult challenge. It involves understanding the collective psychology of humanity instead of a focused psychology of a single company. It involves responding to larger players. It involves getting much feedback. It’s hard but rewarding.
We have discussed a hybrid target which is the enterprise consumer aggregator market. Newspapers, radio stations, television stations, magazines, charities, churches, fitness clubs. These aggregators of people allow us to make an enterprise sell today, giving us much-needed revenue, while also granting us access to large numbers of consumers.
What other types of companies currently buy from you?
The U.S. Army. Legal firms. Restaurants.
Tell me some characteristics of your ideal customer.
In the short term: a consumer, a collector, an early adopter, a digital user, vocal, open, sharing
In the long term: a person
Why do these ideal customers buy from you instead of your key competitors?
We have a stronger set of features that allow them to better collect, organize and publish their data.
Are there any other buying motivations?
Competition
What advantages does your key competitor have over Reger.com?
An established market of millions of users. Funding. The eyes and ears of the industry and the market.
In addition to your key competitor what other players compete in the same segment?
High end: Oracle, data mining companies, knowledge management tools.
Low end: numerous standard blog publishing platforms, wikis, shareware data management solutions.
Tell me why you win and why you lose in competitive situations with each of these competitors.
We win because of our unique features which consumers stumble onto every now and then.
We lose because we do not have millions of users and are generally unknown in the consumer space.
Product
What does datablogging do for your customers?
It allows them to track, in a predictable manner, data which they would otherwise lose: Running heart rate data. Movie reviews. Restaurant directions. Names of people in pictures. Dates of vacations.
Datablogging allows them to track things that other blogging tools don’t and then extract information from them in the form of charts/graphs, etc.
Why is this important?
It’s important because people are increasingly able to collect data, but not leverage it. There is immense knowledge stored in personal data these days, but nothing to grant access to it. Reger.com is important because it is dedicated to this quest… finding value from personal data.
How is this more then what they are getting now?
Current web technologies are string-based. Paragraphs of text make up the web. Search engines index that text and allow dumb keyword searches on it. If a user asked a personal version of Google “show me runs where I ran greater than 10 miles on pavement” they would likely find some relevant results. But they’d also get other data, like the time they “passed out 10 times on the pavement.”
With datablogging people can say “show me runs where I ran greater than 10 miles on pavement” and get only those entries that exactly fulfill the criteria. Datablogging grants much more control over personal data.
How is it better?
This control of personal data is better because it is more transparent. Users spend less time searching and more time learning, sharing and remembering.
Does it cost less than other solutions?
For a consumer the costs are comparable to other blogging/publishing solutions, although those solutions do not include the datablogging capability.
Is it less risky than the current customer solution?
No. It is more risky because Reger.com is small and there is not a massive user base.
Reger.com Positioning Form
The purpose of positioning is to identify yourself to the market that you are serving, present yourself as the market leader, and to support your unique selling proposition.
Positioning requires focus on a specific market. You must choose.
For _Joe Consumer_____________________________________ (Your target buyer)
Who _wants to keep track of his memories____________ (Buying motivation)
So they can _better collect, organize and share personal data.____________________________ (Your product’s key benefit(s)
Unlike __traditional blogging and publishing tools_____________________________________________ (Your primary competitor)
datablogging _acknowledges and embraces the browsing of your own data as at least 50% of the point of collecting it in the first place.___________________________________________ (Your differentiator)
Sunday, February 7, 2010