Launch week has been pretty successful. Even though we are purposely not blasting all the web 2.0 news sites with our arrival due to low inventories, we still managed to get a lot of helpful advice from our friends and mentors who have been checking out the site. In fact, if you’re in the Atlanta area and are looking for a Panoz, we can hook you up!
With that said, much needs to be done. We have to optimize our code, we have to create and fill in content, we have to find and squash bugs and last but not least, we really want to get at least 100,000 cars for the metro Atlanta area. (that would be 2x what AJC Cars has)
Before we get there, we need to pick up our speed - our server has been killing us. This part of the growing pain has actually been an interesting experience for our team considering none of us have faced this problem before. When we first started, we did what we could to save money. This included borrowing old servers on T1 connections from our jobs and using them when the resources are available. Alas, our network of old servers and slow connections that make up Frankenstein could not handle our daily chores. With that, we decided we need to really invest on a new server - one that can handle the daily imports and the request of 10’s of our fans.
Well, when there’s more to report, I will let you know. In the mean time, any suggestions on where to find servers and when to upgrade would be greatly appreciated.
Now that the site has launched, I’m looking forward to blogging more about advertising, marketing tests and of course, the details of the results. While I do think we will revisit the development side of things every now and then, what most entrepreneurs want to know is how to promote their blog or services to the masses.
If you have things you’ve tested or would like to see tested, we would love to hear from you. Feel free to drop us an email, send us blog comments or use the Skribit widget to the right. If the plan fits what we’re doing, we’d be happy to test it out for you and report back on the results.
Following 37Signals’ advice, we launched our beta site today to the public and will continue to work on bugs and enhancements as we gather user feedback. I must say, it’s been a huge sigh of relief to see the project get to this point. If you had asked two days ago if we’d be ready for this forced launch, I probably would have laughed and jumped out the window.
However, I am proud to say my team and outsourced developers came through and our first beta is actually pretty good. So far, most reactions have came back positive so I hope that trend continues!
Over the past several weeks, we’ve been talking with a number of startup entrepreneurs, successful serial entrepreneurs and even angels at helping us better define our venture. Through the various practice pitches, brainstorming sessions, and chats, we’ve received numerous feedback from just throwing the idea on the table.
If a typical person’s attitude towards giant (evil) corporations is jealousy and hostility, the opposite would be true when they are presented with a startup.
From our networking sessions, it would seem the average attitude towards a nameless startup is the sincere desire to help. If you’re at that stage, make sure you put yourself out there for others to critique. While I know many are still weary of asking help from strangers and would like to remain in stealth mode, I would venture to say 9/10 entrepreneurs out there would fail if they don’t at least seek some feedback from their social network. Every bad or great idea needs some tweaks and this is where brainstorming with like-minded people can be useful.
Let’s face it, unless you’re building a real time machine or teleporter, the chances of someone stealing your idea is probably not that great. Even though we have a passion for our project, we’ve definitely encountered more people who could care less about the idea than people who are plotting to clone it. In the end, you should still be careful who you go to for advice, but if you stick around in the good neighborhoods, you will probably find more allies than frienemies.
Wei on March 18th 2008 in Business Development
As you all know, we are based in Atlanta, GA. As recently as earlier today, we have had multiple tornadoes today touch down in the city and cause some pretty heavy damage. Even my own family saw some damage due to extreme hail and we had quite a weekend of picking up and cleaning up after the storm. Heck, my phone and internet even suffered through the weekend due to this damage. The people downtown were even worse though:
AJC Tornado Damage Pictures
All the images shown are images submitted by readers of the AJC who have sent them into the news paper. I recall a day when you had a staff photographer at news papers that were sent to take all pictures. A majority of all pictures taken still show either the AP logo or some sort of freelance photographer that the newspapers pay for their pictures. However, with the invention of Flickr, Webshots and Google Images Search, it begs the question: why should I pay someone a full-time salary or expensive freelance fees when I can ask for people to send us images with the privilege of having their images show up on the AJC website. For example:
Flickr Atlanta Tornado Damage Pictures
Here’s another example of the recent crane collapse in New York City:
Flickr New York Crane Collapse
Not only are the pictures better than anything I’ve seen on TV or any media website about the accident, they were done immediately after the incident without having to send out a team to get pictures or manage the logistics someone on the payroll.
