Category: Drew’s Articles

Innovative Start-Up Making Products Out of Recycled Materials

Posted on by Drew Neisser

This is the transcript from my interview with Ashok Kamal, founder of Bennu, a start-up dedicated to making new products out of the stuff you throw away.  This is the first in a series of interviews I conducted for a FastCompany.com post on entrepreneurship that will go live later this week.  I also have Ashok to thank for the pearl metaphor I’m using for my larger story with his comment, “bu diamonds and pearls are made under pressure, and so are great businesses.”

Where did the idea for your business come from?

Like any good business, the idea behind Bennu was born out of a problem. The difference with Bennu and other social enterprises is that our problem affects society as a whole, not just individuals. We wanted to address the obscene amount of garbage being dumped into landfills. Therefore, we started Bennu to make products out of recycled materials, both solving a practical consumer need and protecting the environment for all of us.

Why are you doing this?  I mean why not just get a job at a fast growing company and stop killing yourself;-)

To me, entrepreneurship is another word for freedom. Freedom to live your values, freedom to work with people you care about, and freedom to innovate. Once you’ve experienced the freedom of running your own business, conventional employment feels like a prison sentence.

What does success look like for you personally and for your company?

When your lifestyle revolves around your business, the line between personal and professional success is blurred. In the short- and medium-term, my success entails creating a stable enterprise that delights both employees and customers. Bennu’s mission is greening the standard for a new lifestyle so our goal is also to influence peoples’ behavior by promoting sustainability. Over the long-term, I hope the business will outgrow its founders and operate as a well-oiled machine.  At that point, personal success would mean being in a position to help aspiring entrepreneurs to achieve their dreams.

How long have you been at it and where do things stand right now?

My partners and I began working on Bennu during our first year of business school in the fall of 2009. We entered and won the Baruch College & Merrill Lynch Invitational business plan competition and officially incorporated in July 2009. We continued to develop Bennu during our second year of business school and committed ourselves full-time to the venture upon graduation in June 2010. Currently, Bennu is a fully operational, revenue-generating company and we are focused on establishing our brand, designing products and creating marketing programs.

Other than money, what are the biggest barriers to your success right now?

Business is about seeing around corners. As a socially responsible company, Bennu caters to the green consumer segment, which is growing rapidly but still represents a fraction of the mainstream market. At present, the volatile demand for green products is a threat to our business, especially since sustainability adds cost. We’re betting on a green tidal wave that changes consumer preferences such that corporate social responsibility is the expectation, not the exception. The risk we assume is that we’re peering too far around the corner, waiting for a paradigm shift that may or may not occur.

Describe some of the highs you’ve experienced thus far:

As student entrepreneurs who made the leap from classroom to market, a definite highlight was being selected to compete in the 2010 Rice Business Plan Competition in Houston, TX. The event is considered the most prestigious student business competition in the world and participating validated our concept and potential. Additionally, making our first sale was a thrill. The idea becomes viable when a customer agrees to pay for it, suddenly making the business real. As a corollary, it was equally fulfilling to successfully deliver our first order. When customers are consistently made happy, it signals not only the start of a business, but also its likelihood to thrive.

And what are the low points?

Running a startup involves constant troubleshooting. From supply chain disruptions, to managing cash flow, to technical glitches — almost every problem could spell the end of the business because there is little room for error. While no single crisis stands out in my mind, the persistent challenge to withstand shocks and survive can be stressful. Entrepreneurship is an emotional roller-coaster and some days the low points compound. But diamonds and pearls are made under pressure, and so are great businesses.

Where has the money come from to get you this far?

Bennu was awarded $40,000 in seed money by winning the 2009 Baruch College & Merrill Lynch Invitational business plan competition. This capital injection allowed us to start up and earn revenue, and also compelled us to put skin in the game and invest in ourselves.

How hard has it been to raise money?

Bennu is a bootstrapped startup by design. Rather than exhaust resources chasing money for an unproven business, we decided to operate lean and focus on proving our concept. Raising external capital to support an unconventional business model in a down economy would have been extremely difficult. Now that we have an emerging brand, company infrastructure and base of customers, we hope that growth capital will be more accessible than if we had fundraised out of the gates.

Looking back, what would you do differently?

Bennu took too long to evolve. We launched by selling customized backpacks made from recycled plastic bottles. While these Greenpacks have been successful, they don’t suggest the growth of a successful company. A singular product focus is risky and nothing is safely protected from imitation. By listening to both our champions and critics, we realized that our core competency was developing marketing programs for recycled products, which could include but were not limited to children’s backpacks. Our business model became an integrated product development and marketing company focused on the recycled market.  We can help larger companies deal with their waste by offering structured corporate social responsibility solutions based on our diverse products and marketing programs.

Looking back, did you think it was going to be this hard?

When you feel fear, you can either run from it or confront it. Obviously, an entrepreneur is someone who faces fear head on. The psychological leap forward is scary and nothing can prepare you ahead of time. Accepting that all responsibility falls on your shoulders and there is no safety net is something you can only digest in real-time. However, the anxiety becomes overshadowed by the excitement of positively impacting the world and achieving your dreams.

How much money do you need to raise now to get you to the next stage?

In order to scale up and accelerate growth, we will be looking to raise at least $800,000 by the summer of 2011.

If your friend was about to start a business, what advice would you give them?

First, I’d subject the person to a psychological examination to ensure that they are just crazy enough to start a business. Assuming they aren’t either too sane or too crazy, I’d advise them to become consumer-facing as quickly as possible. Regardless of the idea on paper, the ultimate success lies in the hands of the buyer. The most important feedback, especially at the outset, is also likely to come from consumers, so it makes sense to prototype and test before investing unnecessary resources in a dud. Lastly, I’d remind my friend that passion should be at the center of the business. It’s the driver that will get the person through setbacks and make the victories more meaningful.

 

 

Do you see yourself as a serial entrepreneur or is this your one big idea?

I see the entrepreneurial lifestyle as a chronic disease, and I consider myself hopelessly afflicted.

Someone said that “any idiot can learn from his/her own mistakes, it takes a genius to learn from the mistakes of others” — what lessons do you wish you’d learned from others?

I think you can avoid a lot of unnecessary mistakes by establishing an advisory board from the outset. It’s easy to neglect this task in favor of immediate concerns, but once we recruited seasoned and candid advisors, Bennu became much more efficient and productive.

Dear Social Media Santa, Here’s My Wish List

Posted on by Drew Neisser

Wrapping up 2010 with relief, if not joy, good little marketers are looking at the year ahead with both optimism and trepidation. Even the marketers that triumphed this year know Santa’s lump of coal awaits those who misjudge the rapidly evolving communications landscape as an aberration instead of a permanent shift in power from brand to consumer. To ensure good tidings in 2011, here is a social media shopping list worth checking once — if not twice — to slay your competition.

1. Social Media Strategy

Although more than half of all large companies have a presence on Facebook and Twitter, fewer than 25% have a clearly defined social strategy. Tactical experimentation pleased some, but left many CEOs wondering whether social media like the mythical Rudolph could really drive results. Since yes, Virginia, there is such a thing as a social strategy complete with CEO-pleasing metrics, put this on top of your shopping list — finding the expertise internally and externally to make it happen.

2. Dedicated Social Chair

In 2010, social media was treated by many marketers as a part-time affair, assigned to the junior staffers who just happened to have the most friends on Facebook. Unable to dedicate the time required, they also lacked the experience to put social media into the context of broader customer engagement, thus relegating social to a sexy but modest marketing experiment. Fixing this means assigning at least one dedicated professional who can champion social strategy internally, while coordinating execution across all the departments it can and should touch.

3. A Metric System

Given all the roles social media can play, from customer service to product development and WOM to lead gen, putting precise metrics in place is challenging even for those with well-defined strategies. That said, new tools are emerging that should make measuring results easier and well within the budgets of even the most cash-strapped operations. Startup ArgyleSocial, for example, links social media activity with “real business value,” for under $300/month.

4. An Aggregation Plan

One of the unexpected yet joyous benefits of a strong social program is its potential to significantly improve organic search results. But in order to turn social content into the gift that keeps on giving, brands need to aggregate and archive the content on their own Web sites. HubSpot, a software-as-a-service (Saas) platform, makes this process relatively easy for small business. Larger companies will seek out more robust solutions, including a surprisingly strong social offering from IBM.

5. Customer Feedback Loop

While listening to the customer has long been an important business credo, it is only lately that marketers are turning to online tools like Get Satisfaction that truly enable and track instantaneous feedback. In 2011, offering customers the ability to engage with fellow customers right on the company website will become more the rule than the exception, especially as companies come to realize that a few negative comments increase credibility and ultimately increase online sales. These conversations also enhance search results by creating tag-able content.

6. Social Business Enlightenment

In the brave new world of social business enlightenment, all businesses are social and all social is business. Even large companies will want to present all their employees, not just those in customer service and marketing, with unfettered, yet guided, access to social media tools. These employees will begin to see what the fuss is all about, quickly realizing that social isn’t just something their kids do but rather a way that generates leads, captures sales, services customers, and advocates new product development well beyond this holiday season.

If you’d like to add to this social media shopping list, just send me an email, preferably not addressed to the North Pole.

Turning Customer Service into a Marketing Weapon

Posted on by Drew Neisser

How Thor Muller and the gang at Get Satisfaction have helped thousands of companies and millions of consumers transform the fundamental notions of customer service. This article first appeared on FastCompany.com.

Just three years ago, you needed to be a prominent blogger like Jeff Jarvis or Bob Garfield to make an online noise loud enough to inspire a company response to a particular product or service issue. It was about that time that Thor Muller, Co-founder and CTO of Get Satisfaction, developed an online tool that would “allow anybody that same power,” to in essence, “get satisfaction by pulling the company in.”

Forty months later, Get Satisfaction is well on its way to transforming the way companies interact with consumers, turning customer service into the kind of measurably effective marketing that even John Wannamaker could have fully blessed. Gleaned from my conversation with Muller at Get Satisfaction’s San Francisco headquarters early this month, here are eight ways community driven customer service is changing the ways brands go to market.

1. Re-humanizing consumer interactions

For Muller, it is simply not enough that companies use their tools. “We really want people to change their whole approach to what it means to talk to customers,” he explained. “For a long time, maybe a hundred years, we’ve been gradually squeezing the humanity out of our interactions; scripting it, automating it, scaling it.” Instead of asking people to take a number, “Companies now have to revolve themselves around individuals.” Muller noted, adding that in doing so, “we’re making the world a better place, certainly more human!”

2. Elevating the conversation from transactions to aspirations

While traditional customer service is often about addressing transactional issues like resetting passwords, Muller believes that community-driven customer support can go much further. “Customer communities at their best are really tapping people’s deeper goals, their deeper desires,” explained Muller. This requires companies to, “rise above writing help documentation and be more of a good cocktail party host.” Muller links this change with the new staff post of Community Manager who is part therapist, part help desk and part cruise director.

3. Reducing the costs of the traditional help desk

For years, companies have sought to drive down support costs with automation and the ironic goal of minimizing human interaction with their call centers. Part of the reason Get Satisfaction has grown so quickly is that it flips this notion on its head, increasing human interaction but decreasing costs by making support more peer-to-peer driven. Noted Muller, “we’ve seen with our communities at scale typically reduce the number of [service] tickets that go to [call center] agents by 75% or so.” Muller referred me to case histories for Mint.com and Yola, both of which reduced “repetitive support by two thirds.”

4. Extending support beyond your website to Facebook

While most companies recognize the need to engage consumers on social media, only the savviest have begun to offer customer support on platforms like Facebook. For these enlightened marketers, Get Satisfaction offers a Facebook application in two distinct versions, “one for enterprises who have a lot more demand for customization/controls and one for everybody else,” noted Muller. Having a support tab on Facebook gives fans one more reason to “Like” a brand and get the information and support required to encourage and enable over-the-top evangelism.

5. Turning customer support into searchable content

Given the fundamental importance of search to customer acquisition, finding ways to improve organic search results (SEO) is a top priority for most businesses. That said, few have recognized that content generated via customer communities can do just that. Explained Muller, “somebody asks how they can use a particular camera to take better pictures, that is then indexed by Google and then next person who searches finds that conversation. Get Satisfaction] is taking something that used to be a cost center, customer service, and turning it into lead generation.”

6. Listening builds trust in and of itself

Dell famously solicited customer ideas and ended up producing a Linux based laptop that no one bought. This kind of listening and responding is not the ultimate intent of Get Satisfaction. While community members are encouraged to offer ideas, Muller does not advocate, “design by committee” or conclude that the customer is always right. “Even if [a brand doesn’t] build what I want them to build or do what I want them to do, I may be less likely to change to another product because I feel close to them,” explained Muller.

7. Integrating customer conversations with your CRM system

Many sophisticated marketers, especially in B2B, rely on well-honed CRM systems to track leads through the funnel. Get Satisfaction allows these companies to take this one step further by connecting the social web with workflow systems, trouble tickets and project management tools. Explained Muller, “Knowing who a customer is, what their buying history is, and what they care about is important to servicing them well.” Suddenly a customer complaint becomes “actionable within an organization,” given the CRM integration concluded Muller.

8. Measuring C-Sat on both a qualitative and quantitative basis

While some pundits strive to simplify customer satisfaction to one basic metric like Net Promoter, this may not be the ideal approach for your particular business. Having witnessed thousands of customer comments and complaints, Muller encourages clients to take a “more holistic approach” and “measure satisfaction in various ways.” Having developed something called a Satisfactometer, that explained Muller, “might be something fun like an emoticon and other times might be something more structured and numeric,” Get Satisfaction is delivering both sides of the measurement equation.

Final Note: Having recently hired a CEO to drive the company forward, Muller is re-focused on his true love, product development, so we can expect even more satisfying features from Get Satisfaction in the days ahead.

A Wine Lovers Guide to Entrepreneurial Success

Posted on by Drew Neisser

Plato’s words, “No thing more excellent nor more valuable than wine was ever granted mankind by God,” would find no argument from Snooth co-founder Philip James, who turned a 30-page business plan into a profitable media business in under four years. Just before handing the reigns over to a new CEO, James spent an hour with me, reflecting on his company’s growth to-date and providing, with a little help from other illustrious oenophiles, a wine lovers guide to entrepreneurial success.

Life is too short to drink bad wine–Anonymous

As is often the case with successful start-ups, the original idea may not be the big idea, so entrepreneurs must be prepared to pivot. Explained James, “Snooth was originally going to be an installed kiosk company,” that provided detailed information on wine in understaffed grocery stores. Having built the database and a demo site to support the kiosks, James and his partner, “fumbled around as every-start up does looking for a revenue model.” Fortunately they quickly eschewed the hardware business for a software-driven alternative made possible by the well-timed rise of smart phones. Noted James, “we realized people are just going to use it on the phone, they don’t need it in the store.” Thus Snooth.com, the ultimate wine lovers resource, became their focus and mobile iterations became essential.

Wine gladdens a man’s heart–Psalms

Once you build your product or service, it is essential that you really understand what business you are in. Having grown Snooth.com into the world’s largest wine database with over 5 million unique searches per month, the Snooth team does not see themselves as educators. Explained James, “it is not our job to make you an expert in Burgundy, it is actually our job to entertain you and give you what you want, otherwise you just don’t come back.” Recognizing the importance of entertainment to the Snooth.com experience, the editorial team covers a wide range of products and topics from expensive Bordeaux’s to cheap chardonnays, from baby backs to box wines. If consumers respond well to a particular topic, more posts along a similar vine follow thus enhancing engagement.

I like best the wine drunk at the cost of others–Diogenes the Cynic

An essential ingredient to rapid growth is the ability to find new customers on someone else’s dime. With site traffic up 60%, page views up 100% and time spent on the site up 15%, Snooth is expecting triple-digit revenue growth in 2010. A large part of this growth can be attributed to numerous partnership deals on sites like Epicurious, Yahoo! And MyRecipes.com on which Snooth powers wine pairings with recipes. Explained James, “we reach about 10 million people per month through these partnerships which are branded and link back to Snooth.com.” Because these are revenue sharing deals, “there are benefits for both parties, they get unique content and it helps recipe sites tap new ad verticals,” enthused James. It also means that Snooth can avoid investing in what James calls, “paid marketing.”

Wine is the most healthful and most hygienic of beverages—Louis Pasteur

When it comes to the health of a start-up, it is important to have multiple means of customer engagement, staying top-of-mind and encouraging word-of-mouth. Adding over 1000 registered users a day, Snooth.com has done an especially good job with its newsletter, which “goes to a quarter of a million people and is Tweeted, ‘Liked’ on Facebook and shared really extensively,” offered James. In addition to pushing out content, consumers are encouraged to participate on the site itself. Explained James, “users used to come just to read about wine and look up prices and over time that has expanded into an active forum.” This rapidly expanding community has multiple tiers, with the most engaged considering Snooth’s headquarters a home away from home. Noted James, “the top 1% have my cellphone number, email me and come by the office unannounced, so we know what they are thinking!”

Wine is a puzzle yearning to be solved–Aaron B. Sherman

Web-based businesses like Snooth.com capture a tremendous amount of data, data that can be used to increase customer satisfaction AND to create new revenue streams. Currently, Snooth “serves over 41 million food and wine matches per month and we expose some of the data to wineries, and that is really helpful to them,” explained James. Snooth also encourages wineries to certify their content which 2,700 wineries have done thus far increasing the accuracy of the data and improving the ranking of those wineries. Each winery can also access their own data through a merchant interface, so they can see in real time, “which area in the country or the world have the most interest in their products right now,” reported James. Though this information is very helpful to the wineries, James admits that when it comes to data mining, “we could do a much better job.”

“Wine is inspiring and adds greatly to the joy of living” Napoleon

While most entrepreneurs can inspire the launch team, there comes a point when they need to ask themselves if they are the person to bring long-term joy to investors. When I asked James if he was the guy that could get Snooth to $20 million in sales and beyond, his response made the announcement of his successor as CEO one week later only a modest surprise. James spoke to the need of any entrepreneur, “to hire really smart people, way smarter than [he is] and to give them responsibility.” “I think people like me are really good at vision, creativity, hiring and inspiring the team,” explained James. James went on to tout his soon to be successor, Rich Tomko, as “an operations guy who knows how to make it from $5 million to $20 million.”

Final note: As a long-time member of the Snooth community and a wine lover from way back, I must ultimately side with Alexander Fleming who said,”Penicillin cures, but wine makes people happy.” And it would really make me happy if Verizon had the iPhone so I could use Snooth’s mobile app in NYC liquor stores to find my faves at even better prices!  This article first appeared on FastCompany.com.

What Conference Organizers Can Learn from the Texas Rangers

Posted on by Drew Neisser

When the mighty Alex Rodriguez watched the final strike whiz by him it was a fitting end to a pathetic performance by the most successful franchise in the history of professional sports.  The unheralded Texas Rangers had not just beaten the Yankees, they had demolished them on every front, a fact that made me exceedingly cranky while attending several recent social media conferences.

Stewing in defeat as a sub-par speaker droned on, my mind drifted back to the Rangers, wondering how this particular collection of players managed to out-hit, out-steal, out-field, out-pitch and even out-fun the nearly immortal Yanks.  It didn’t take long to conclude once again that payroll alone does not determine outcome, that coaching, chemistry and clutch performances by both stars and unheralded newbies carry the day whether you’re on the field or at the podium.

Conference Organizers Must Coach the Presenters

In their series against the Yanks, the Rangers manager played “small ball” to perfection, stealing and bunting runners into scoring position at every opportunity.  This was undoubtedly the result of careful coaching long before the big games.  Conference organizers take note.  If you aren’t holding highly structured advanced calls with your panelists and speakers, the quality of the output will suffer dramatically.

Speakers need to be coached, given tight limits on the quantity of slides and told in advance the kinds of questions they might be asked by the moderator. Importantly, there needs to be a moderator, who can cut off the windbags before they ruin it for the rest, keeping the conversation moving and summarizing the results at the end of the panel.  Without these things the audience will drift away, checking email or worse yet complaining to others via their Twitter feeds.

Chemistry Matters

In their victorious 2009 season, the Yanks were all giggles, with AJ Burnett using whipped cream to douse the daily hero.  This year it was the Rangers who had all the fun, making a goofy antler sign with two fingers after each of their nine stolen bases.  Their chemistry was particularly apparent in the dugout during the games and in their on-field victory celebration, when they sprayed each other with ginger ale not champagne out of respect for Josh Hamilton and his past struggles with alcoholism.

Some of the panel discussions I saw recently struck out, challenging drying paint as a major league soporific.  The panelists seemed completely content to agree with each other and the overall energy was just plain foul. And while an enthusiastic moderator can liven things up, the organizers really needed to think through the topics of discussion, seeking opposing views as well as differing personality types to keep everyone including the audience on their toes.

Clutch Performances Carry the Day

In the recent American League Championship Series, the Texas Rangers out-hit the Yankees on all measures, scoring twice as many runs with a team batting average that was 103 points higher than vaunted Bronx Bombers.  As expected superstar center fielder Josh Hamilton came through in the clutch as did many of his lesser-known teammates, including a rookie shortstop named Elvis who managed to get a hit in all six games.

At the recent Pivot Conference in New York City, clutch performances by a range of presenters from the always stunning Arianna Huffington to the erudite Doug Rushkoff, from the scholarly Kit Yarrow to a rookie named Alexa Scordato, carried the event over the top, distinguishing it from a host of also-rans.  These presenters commanded your attention with both style and substance that entertained and enlightened, making one’s decision to leave the office a clear victory for all concerned.

Final note: Despite losing to the Giants in the World Series, they Rangers have left a mark on baseball, playing the roll of David to the Yankee Goliath.  Bitter as I was, I couldn’t help be touched when the series MVB Josh Hamilton admitted shedding a tear of pure joy after the final out. To push this analogy just one step further, I only wish all conference organizers had this kind of heart, striving for the extraordinary even in the face of limited resources, doubling up on prep time long before the game’s afoot, insuring all attendees head home happy.

How HopStop is Giving Google the Run Around

Posted on by Drew Neisser

Like the sling-wielding David of old, Joe Meyer, the CEO of HopStop, fears not the battle before him. Instead, he welcomes it, having already faced off against Google twice in his career. “For some companies, it’s intimidating and scary,” explained Meyer, but “Google leaves a lot of crumbs on the table,” crumbs that have helped HopStop achieve profitability, positive cash-flow and extraordinary growth over the last 18 months. How Meyer and his small band of compatriots at HopStop have stayed out of harm’s way while building a loyal army of fans is an enlightening tale of entrepreneurial chutzpah and dead-eye focus, all inspired by The Boss.

Born to Run: Product above all

When Joe Meyer arrived at HopStop 18 months ago, the pedestrian navigation service already had an avid group of followers, having been the first in the market in 2005. What attracted Meyer to HopStop, in addition to the fact that Google’s entry into the space validated the market, was the utilitarian nature of the product and “the fact that the technology was very difficult to replicate—you can’t build it in a weekend.” That said, Meyer put all his energy and that of his team into “enhancing the user experience.” Explained Meyer, “people come to our site to get directions and we have to nail that experience and [though it’s very good], it can get even better.” “Unless you have a frictionless user experience, it’s tough to justify doing nice-to-have’s versus must-have’s,” offered the relentlessly focused Meyer.

Streets of Philadelphia: Expand from the core

In early 2008, HopStop was in six markets and by the end of 2010, Meyer expects they will be in 26 markets. This remarkable growth required a technology overhaul and again, a singular focus on their core product offering. Explained Meyer, “We spent almost a year re-writing our entire routing engine to make it more scalable,” so pedestrians can route themselves not only within these cities but from one city to another. Explained Meyer, “When I go to Philadelphia [from New York], I never go to the airport–we’re all about alternative forms of transportation and pedestrian navigation.” With his newly engineered routing engine, Meyer expects to “scale to hundreds of markets” in the next year or two, a fact that will bring cheers from Carnegie Hall to Independence Hall and then some.

My Hometown: Don’t forget your first fans

The way I found my way to Meyer’s office was rather unusual. As I regular user of HopStop, I was one of several hundred thousand MyHopStop users who received a personal email from him in which he explained some recent changes they’d been making to the service. I responded to his note and he quickly responded back, something I wasn’t really expecting. Meyer had, in fact, sent out the message to HopStop’s most avid fans from his own email address which he admitted was kind of scary. “We need to communicate directly with our users and if we are doing something that might screw things up or if there are opportunities for us to improve, then we need to give our users the forum to voice their thoughts to us,” explained a contrite Meyer. Having dropped the borough boxes from the NYC navigation page early this year, Meyer and his team quickly learned the error of their ways resolving the issue with refreshing honesty and measured haste.

Hungry Heart: Have your fans do the marketing

After I noted that HopStop’s website last posted press release was from back in February, Meyer admitted, “we’re kind of anti-marketing, anti-PR.” Meyer explained that “in Silicon Valley, every startup is trying to get buzz, issuing press releases every week and I think its just noise.” Instead, Meyer devotes all available resources to engineering, believing that satisfied users will wave the triumphant flag, which indeed is exactly what happens. While this approach might not work for every company, HopStop users repeatedly tell Meyer, “Wow, you’ve really made my life easier,” inspiring a “pay it forward mentality” among his customers. After telling me several personal encounters with customers who expressed their love for HopStop, Meyer noted, “no marketing in the world can replicate the power of word-of-mouth and a positive personal referral.”

Dancin’ in the Dark: Let partners extend your reach and your revenue

While Meyer is thrilled with all the positive word of mouth HopStop receives, he by no means relies on it exclusively to spread the word. In addition to a massive SEO program that treats each direction search on HopStop as “taggable” content, HopStop also licenses its API. “We power directions on thousands upon thousands of sites throughout the edges of the Internet, both large and small,” noted Meyer. A large percentage of these are co-branded, with ad revenue being split between the host site and HopStop. “This gives the publisher a service they aren’t going to build for themselves and a value-add for their users, which also generates incremental revenue for both companies [thereby creating a win-win-win situation]”, enthused Meyer. And in the process, millions of more users have come to know and appreciate HopStop powered-directions from sites like The Wall Street Journal, TimeOutNewYork, NewYorkMag.com and many others.

Glory Days: Don’t get stuck in the past–go mobile or go home

Starting as an online utility, HopStop was quick to realize the importance of a mobile offering to their service. Among the first to offer Web-to-SMS and SMS-to-SMS routing functionality, HopStop has embraced mobile in a number of other ways. In addition to having a top ten iPhone app within the iTunes navigation category, HopStop also has a widely popular mobile site and a Blackberry launcher. Meyer noted that mobile usage of HopStop is growing “several hundred percent per year,” outpacing the growth of an already healthy web-based service. Recognizing the need to go beyond the iPhone and mobile web, and an in continued effort to be multi-platform, Meyer explained that, “Our users are telling us they want an Android App, so we’ll have an Android App launched by the end of the year.” An added benefit of going mobile is that customers are able to provide feedback on the spot, keeping Meyer and his team on their toes 24/7.

Final Note: Before we parted, Meyer told me of his admiration for Bruce Springsteen and “how The Boss resisted the temptation to do too much too soon,” after emerging from a three-year legal battle in his early days. As the leader of of his own band at HopStop and much like his favorite musician, Meyer is staying focused and setting the stage for record growth, without countin’ on a miracle. For the greatest hits of my interview with Meyer, click here.  This article first appeared on FastCompany.com.