LIM, MARYLYN GRACE C.

OOA

            Six Apart was founded by Mena and her husband, Ben Trott. This is a software company where Movable Type and Type Pad came from. The name Six Apart means the number of days between their birthdays. Six Apart’s first product was Movable Type.  Before Movable Type was created, Mena Trott was using an existing system which was a personal blog.

 They created Movable Type because their existing blog, Dollarshort, was becoming popular and Mena Trott was not satisfied with the blogging software available during that time so they decided to create their own blog and share it with friends.

            Movable Type is a professional blogging platform. At first they acted as consultants for awhile delivering customization on Movable Type. Then after Movable Type became popular, they decided being a consultant they rather just productize it and sell it to consumers.

 After getting fund from Neoteny, they started another product called Type Pad. Type Pad is the world’s premier blogging service, hosting the leading blogs and small business websites and powering the most influential voices on the social web.

 

 

            Like any other startup and founders, Mena and Ben Trott lack experience especially when it comes to business things. But even if they lack experience they were still able to go through difficult times because they have the strength and determination to face those problems. But their startup won’t be successful without the help of their CEO who was Barak Berkowitz.

He helped coach them through some of the basics in setting the business strategy and doing the things that are needed to be done like establishing the basic operational infrastructure and negotiating a lease. Another thing about their CEO is that, Barak Berkowitz was willing to do everything that Six Apart needs and he wasn’t an investor who would just gave them money and check them every quarter.

            At first they got their funding thru donations. Even if they didn’t ask for money people would actually give them money. What they did is just that they had one page up that said, “We take donations and this is why you should donate.” I think people would actually give donations because they love their product and I think the second reason was that Movable Type gives recently updated keys. People would actually pay $20 just to get a key. So that’s how they got their funds to pay the expenses.

            Before reading this case study, I was thinking that if you are planning to start a startup you should know how the business runs and you should also have some experience with it. But after reading the case study, I realized that I was wrong, even if you lack experience you can still start a startup but you should find a CEO that would manage your business.

LIM, MARYLYN GRACE C.

OOA

            Lycos like Yahoo and Google is also a search engine and web portal that centered on broadband entertainment content. The founder of this startup was Bob Davis. Lycos began as a search engine research project by Michael Mauldin at Carnegie Mellon University in 1994.

Michael Mauldin was thinking that Lycos might be a big hit in the future but the problem is that he isn’t a business person. So he decided to sell his project to Dan Nova of CMGI. They ended up starting a startup. Dan Wetherell, founder of CMGI’s venture firm, bought 80 percent of the company and 20 percent of it was owned by Bob Davis and Michael Mauldin.

            The first problem that Lycos had was about their work place. Their headquarters was based in Boston but Carnegie Mellon wanted them to keep a presence in Pittsburgh. So even if they have headquarters in Boston, they are obligated to have a meaningful presence in Pittsburgh.

            The second problem they had was about staffing. During the first few months of Lycos, no one had ever heard about Lycos so they had a hard time in hiring people. Because people didn’t know what is Lycos all about so nobody wanted to be part of their company back then.

            Their first customers were their employees, their advertisers and their users. In order to promote their product, they focused on partnership with other advertising companies and getting other people to promote Lycos. The first 3 companies that were their licensees were AT&T, CompuServer and Prodigy.

 After a few months, they tried to make some joint ventures overseas. They got somewhat partnership with Bertelsmann which was the largest media company in Europe. After that, they created Lycos Europe.

One of the things I learned in this case study was that, in an entrepreneur’s life, there will always be setbacks, challenges, disappointments and failures. You can say that you are really successful once you were able to overcome the hardship and challenges that you are facing. That would determine that your business had succeeded.

I also realized that in a startup, everything is a complete revolution and there will always be new opportunities and new challenges that a founder will faced every single of his life. After a founder overcome one obstacle, there will always be another obstacle waiting. So in order to succeed you should a strong will and determination.