LIM, MARYLYN GRACE C.

OOA

            Tickle is a site that allows user to learn more about themselves by taking various personality assessments online. This startup was founded by James Currier in 1999. This idea came to James Currier when he was in his MBA class. There was a Meyers-Briggs personality test at Harvard. After answering it he noticed that the test generates more conversation than any book or movie ever had among the MBA students. So he thought of building a site for personality test, because he thought that the data that he will be collecting would likely be accurate and everyone would naturally answer the test honestly because if they’re taking the time to complete it then that means that they wanted to find out truthful results about themselves.

            There were so many kinds of test in Tickle like parenting, relationship, IQ and communication tests. But the problem was that no one checked their site. So James Currier thought of launching a dog test, because he remember that advertising agencies says that if you want people to remember an ad, include babies and puppies. So that’s where his idea of dog test came from. This test lets user to find out what kind of dog are they. 8 days after launching it, they already got a million people trying to enter their site. Once that they got many users using their and that their site is going down every 10 minutes, that makes an easier job for them to find VC’s for funding.

            I think for me, Tickle became popular because most people were amused by their site. Their site is like a relaxation for some people. This site also helps people to learn more about themselves. Sometimes people use this site as a past time when they don’t have anything to do.

            If I were at James Currier’s shoes, I think I will also do the same things that he does. His startup went smoothly, well there were some problems that he encountered but it went well. He already got millions of user just because of the dog test. And he was able to get VC’s to fund them easily. Once they got funding from VC’s, people would start wanting to work for them, loan for them and even investment bankers want to meet them. Just because of a dog test he became successful. For me, in a startup, you should be smart enough to attract many user and VC’s, that way you won’t mind so many problems.

            After 5 years, Tickle was acquired by Monster in 2004 for about $100 million. James Currier lets Monster to acquire Tickle than Yahoo because he felt that if he let Yahoo to acquire Tickle, they would have to move from Wall Street to Mountain View and Yahoo would make them change a feature on a division of a department. There would come a time that everyone would leave and the whole thing would just die, unlike in Monster, they managed to preserve the startup feel and keep doing their thing. Then after Tickle, James Currier founded another startup called Ooga Labs. Ooga Labs is a digital media studio that develops consumer Internet applications.

            Before reading this case study, I didn’t know that there was an online personality test. After reading this case study, I learned that Tickle was the largest career testing site in the world. I never thought that an online personality test would be this popular and that people would actually spend some time to take the tests.

LIM, MARYLYN GRACE C.

OOA

            Firefox is a web browser just like Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. This started as a hobby side project and was never intended to become a business. Blake Ross and Dave Hyatt were the creators of Firefox. They started Firefox in 2002 because of their frustration from Netscape’s browser. Before, Blake Ross had interned at Netscape, when he returned during summer, he found out that Netscape browser had become a frustrating one and they were sacrificing the user experience just to monetize the browser and become a promotional vehicle to support the Netscape.com portal site. So Blake Ross and Dave Hyatt thought of building a browser called Phoenix, which became Firefox, to solve the problem in Netscape.

            Blake Ross and Dave Hyatt didn’t feel financial pressure unlike any startups because money was just always sort of there. There were donations, seed money from AOL and they also got a deal with Google. So naturally they don’t really have to worry about money, they got so many sources. Also, one thing is that Firefox was just a hobby, so they didn’t care about money.

            They didn’t encounter any financial problem, but the only thing they were worried is about the name of their browser. At first, it was called Phoenix, but after a while they found out that there was also a company called Phoenix Technologies and that they were also doing a web browser. So they renamed it as Firebird, because of their logo. The problem was that there was already an open source database called Firebird, so they have to change the name again. Finally, they come up of the name Firefox which in Chinese means red panda.

            Firefox didn’t have any problem in getting users, but the thing was that the users that they were getting weren’t their target audience. The people who are using Firefox were geek people. They were doing Firefox designed to be usable for a non-technical people. In order to get other people to use their browser, they build a site called SpreadFirefox.com so that Firefox will be spread through the word of mouth. During the first week of launching, they thought of contacting 100 different bloggers that had written about it and they also found out that most of the bloggers were willing to display a “Get Firefox” button on their site. Just because of Spread Firefox and bloggers, they got 250000 people to sign up. That was a huge success for them.

            At first, Microsoft didn’t mind about the competitors but when Firefox became a big hit they got alarmed so they tried to be the best browser. But I think Firefox is still much better than Internet Explore because Explorer was basically been abandoned and Microsoft already disbanded the Internet Explorer team. I also think that Firefox is much faster than Internet Explorer.

            After Firefox, Blake Ross and Dave Hyatt started their next project which was Parakey. Before reading this case study, I didn’t know that there were so many people using Firefox and I was thinking that Firefox and Internet Explorer were the same that they don’t have any difference. But after reading this case study, I realized that Firefox is much better than Internet Explorer.