|
Five years and counting!
This month, Weblations celebrates its fifth birthday. To mark the occasion, I sat down for an interview with Ivan Vila at www.e-mprendedores.com, a Spanish website for Internet entrepreneurs. If you understand Spanish, you can read the full interview here. Failing that, here are some excerpts: Q: What were the biggest difficulties you faced at the outset? A: When we started in early 1996, the Internet was so new that it was very difficult to predict the size of the market and from that, the size of the company. Market estimates were wildly over-inflated. I remember reading absurdities such as, in 1998, "There are 2 million Internet users in Spain, growing at 40% per month." How could that be possible? I decided to ignore any forecasts that claimed the Internet would have more users than the entire world population. Weblations serves a relatively small, specialized market. It needs to be small and resilient. But the complicating factor is that many of our competitors (especially in the US) swallowed the market predictions and concluded that they should be very large. At first I thought that they would overwhelm us but in fact they have helped us grow. The advertising that they pay for brings more visibility to the entire sector, including the smaller shops such as us. Q: What did your business offer that differentiated it from the competition? A: Fortunately, a number of differentiating factors work in our favor on the technology side, but I'm proudest of something that any company should be able to offer: high quality service, delivered by an intelligent and attentive team. Our customers probably take our technology for granted, but they remember the quality of the service we deliver. That's fortunate because no company, not even an Intel, can plan on having the best technology forever. Q: How did you spread the word about Weblations? A: At first the Internet was so new, and our specialty so small, that there was literally no marketplace to turn to -- nowhere that potential clients and vendors could gather and do business. Advertising (online or in print) was hopelessly expensive and inefficient. Trade shows were (and are) productive only for kids who collect decals. And so on. We realized that only one place in the world had a sufficient concentration of potential clients: Silicon Alley in New York. In the space of a few blocks, we found the interactive agencies that became our first and still our best customers. Our solution was to fly to New York and introduce ourselves to new clients several times per year. Later, we used the prestige of those clients to attract clients in Spain and Europe. Q: What do you think are the keys for success in the Internet? A: When you come to the party, bring two things that nearly everyone else forgot: your common sense, and your nose for goods and services that people really need. Q: What advice would you give to future entrepreneurs? A: Know what you are good at and enjoy doing. Design your business to take advantage of your personal strengths.
President, Weblations
|
