Maria Lourdes C. Capilitan

SysAnal

July 1, 2008

Case Study

Mike Fletcher

Founder, Onelist, Bloglines

            Mike Fletcher was a senior software engineer for Sun Microsystems when he started Onelist. It is a free internet e-mail service list in 1997. In 2003, he crated Bloglines. It is a web-based news aggregation service. It ia natural to felt like quitting at your first attempt in developing a start-up. Encourages from the family will help a lot in being successful from your project.

            Onelist became e-groups yet it was sold to Yahoo. He started an anti-spam company which is Trustic, and also starting Bloglines. Onelist is a project for his parents as mailing list while Bloglines is something for himself. In doing Bloglines he hired a core group composes of a marketing person, PR person, UI person, and a programmer. At first, it was self-funded as like people starting a tart up. One of their biggest turning points is when NTK(newspaper company) wrote about them for two weeks. Wingedpig.com was also their Blog but it was more of marketing. They are also being apple of the eye of big companies.

            When they are developing Bloglines, they have this philosophy which is consumer-based internet companies. For them users is the big key. They have difficulty to explain to people the concepts. In that time nobody knew what a blog is. Their competitors are; first, News is Free because both of Bloglines and News is Free have this desktop aggregators. It is a program that you could download. Second, the News Gator they are web-based aggregator. They are being launched six months after Bloglines was launched. Those competitor make Mark Fletcher as competitive as they are.

            They raised $4M from CMGI and Bertelsmann Venture in December. They survived a year with $55,000 for Million of users. The VC’s ask mark to replace as CEO but conflicts occur. They brought new CEO and turned out that was a good decision for the company. Even though Mark F. doesn’t have any mentors. His parent s is one of his resources because they are managers at IBM. The most surprising in Bloglines is that people’s behavior visit the site four times a day.

            Graham said to the founders who could not release new features it that release the company in early. This results to have a commitment to the users. As you listen and act yo what they want they will be loyal to you.

            The time came that Google is making out of something and yahoo too. Fletcher ask help to their lawyer. The lawyer suggested three persons. They deal with them, who recently deal with AskJeeves in October- November 2004. The acquisition process is bout when the product is to be sell.

            Fletcher advices that the people that they should want to have a start up is that they should get a lawyer. You should also have a accountant. Be outsourcing about every sites. Fletcher also recommended doing a start up while someone is employed but still you have responsibilities to be done.