2007 Q2 AboutUs Stakeholder Meeting IRC Chat Summary
Contents
Second Annual Stakeholder Meeting IRC Chat
Ray King: (Ward Cunningham notating)
Welcome to the second quarter stakeholder meeting. We call it a stakeholder meeting because more than shareholders have a stake in our outcome
- Wasim Sajid: stakeholder: people who would benefit by the company's performance
We're happy to have many stakeholders here. Refer to the agenda ... good growth ... visitor traffic growing by 2x every 2.5 months. We have growth goal to equal other user generated sites like facebook or wikipedia. That means doubling 8 to 10 times.
Improvements:
- Recent Changes patrolling tool ... improved 4x ... 3000 edits patrolled a day.
- Added presence meter to site ... many features ... gage for online and logged in users
- Added leucene search improved overall performance as well as offering better search
- Added image server to unload other servers ... improved performance
- Added open-id as an alternative login ... same id works lots of places ... will someday aggregate reputation via open-id
- Added video support ... using youtube tags
- Added wiki inventor Ward Cunningham to permanent staff
- Added the Lahore office and we're very proud to have staffed it well ... and want to collaborate in many, many ways
- Strong CommunityOffices in Canada and Chicago are just as important
- Signed lease for the OMCC building in Portland's up and coming central east side
- Office will be furnished as wide open space ... small desks on casters ... will reorganize every day if we need to
Questions
- Tanwir: How do you see the two offices collaborating in the future?
The CommunityProjects page is the a processes we want use to innovate our work into the wiki. Our effort documenting our current projects is first step toward working together. We'll make this more useful ... summarized ... complete ... self organizing.
Series A Funding
We've raised 1,000,000 in "angel" round, which included 18 investors. Their investment is "convertible note" ... which coverts to "A" round investment with funding. After "A" round, all investors are in same class ... very simple ... helps raise money later.
Angel money will run out a few months early ... after 9 months ... because we are moving faster than expected ... faster growth. We are accelerating "A" round fundraising ... looking for investors ... one from northwest ... one from San Francisco bay area
Investors want to understand what we do ... we explain ourselves (simply) as "Facebook for Organizations." While not the best description it gets at connectivity.
Ward Cunningham on Branding (Ray King notating)
We've sent out a note based on a Piper Jaffrey report that one of our potential investors had shared with us. We sent out 1 page from the 400+ page report regarding advertising trends which correspond to the user revolution. Most of the trends are not so surprising to the internet savvy, but one that was fascinating was brand creation will no longer be the sole responsibility of advertisers. In the past there would be a logo and then meaning attached to that logo via advertising; the notable exception, of course, is search, which matches products and services, not brands, with specific user demands at the time the user has the need for the product or service.
As a result, we believe the best way for advertisers to create brands is to target specific groups of people - not just demographics with similar spending patterns, but groups that share certain views, as demonstrated by their “communitainment” activities, among others.
We believe branding is still alive and consumers continue to be driven by brands, but building and maintaining a brand requires different marketing methods, specifically ones that involve consumers contributing to the brand message.
Sites provide a significant marketing opportunity for user-generated brands, but the key is that the advertiser must be willing to “let go of the brand.” When investors look ahead, they see us. We are impressed with the number of people who look for a solution and find us.
We may have to extend our convertible note to cover our expenses through the summer as investors don't make many investments in August. We're preparing to do this just to have all options available. We're a values-based company ... investors understand this ... and appreciate it.
Investors ask how we are going to sustain our rapid growth. We answer in four ways:
- More algorithmic content
- We will build and buy good content
- We will seek areas of passion
- We will improve wiki technology ... on our site ... and on users own site ... and users sites on our sites
Our product roadmap includes "project Topsoil" which will host many new features ... disconnected use ... keystroke simultaneous use.
The last question is always "how are we going to make money?" We explain, traffic makes business and we have many options (advertising, sponsorship). Good experience with sponsorship on icannwiki ... $100,000 a year for a group that isn't selling anything.
Affiliate Opportunities
Amazon book sales ... we could search their text copies of books ... find interesting reference ... offer link to buy book ... valuable for everyone involved. Also voip should promising.
Competitors
The Portal:AboutUsPlan page has competitive analysis including:
- Other wiki sites
- Other wiki farms (not strong competitor)
- Domain directories (like alexia, dmoz)
- Local search (yelp, citysearch)
- User powered search (serve up better result for only most popular search)
Goals of Funding
We will raise 6 million ... spend mostly on people ... expand both offices ... execute on plan we have been describing. We will develop process that guides our feature development in a collaborative way ... people ... processes ... technology ... We expect to be in a sustainable position in year three.
More investment then is always an option, fueling even further and faster growth.
This has been the pitch we give investors
Comments/Questions
- Tanwir: It sounds like a very exciting time to be part of AboutUs
- Wasim Sajid: we'll look forward to seeing you Ray with Brandon and Ward here in Lahore
- Scott Keeler: comment: User powered search is a very exciting concept. "Our" search results
- Wasim Sajid: it sure is Scott
