Man Is The Media.
The World’s Shortest Monocle Interview (The Long Version)
October 28th, 2009 by Martin
A while ago I did an interview with Monocle (together with their Danish correspondent Kim Flyvbjerg). The print version of the new issue is now out, and, eh.., let’s say they edited it a bit. Think quote-size interview.
As happy as I am with any mention by established media, I thought it would be good to put it all up here, as I imagine it won’t make it into either print or web. It’s a Q&A focused on entrepreneurship and learning from your mistakes. It talks about stuff I and our team learned from starting up Issuu:
What is the most important thing to think about, in practical terms, when you are setting up a new business?
”We started to talk about people in everyday situations, rather than talking about cool things you could do with new technology. We asked ourselves: Where is the pain? Not physical pain as such, but something that annoys the hell out of people in daily life. If you can find a way to ease that pain and know how to scale that solution to an international crowd, then you’ll probably end up with a successful business.”
What mistakes did you make when setting up your business?
From the get-go we were so focused on being innovative and doing things differently. I guess we focused too hard on cutting edge technology, as it was at the core of what we believed in. But it was too early for the average user and we found that more common technology actually performed better for certain things. You should never blindly expect people to adopt technology because it’s new, rather you should always try to adjust technology to fit people’s habits and needs.
What did you find was the most useful thing you discovered when working out how to brand your company?
”We believe that the best marketing comes from people in love with your product, so all our resources went into design, innovation, and development. We would then invite people from the creative industries to try Issuu, and hoped they would spread the word and invite their network to use it too. To this day we haven’t spent a dollar on conventional marketing.”
How did you decide the name of your company and how does it work? How much do you think it has to do with your success?
”We brainstormed for a month and it was on a long list of possible names. We chose it because it’s both descriptive of what we’re about, but it’s also something new. It looks good in a logo, it’s easy to type and works both as a noun and verb. Choosing the right name is probably one of the most crucial decisions a business can make. If people hate your name or, worse, can’t remember it, they’re probably not going to share it, right? People seem to remember our name pretty well, and although some misspell it and a few found it too dotcom’ish at first, it’s worked really great for us so far.”
