Annaliza E. Nebres

OOC

Case Study 15

 Paul Graham

(Co Founder, Viaweb)

Viaweb was a website for online stores. Software that runs on a server and let the use controls it through their browser. And so they had a web-based online store and they’ve launched it on 1996. They are the one who makes their small business an online store as good as those built by ding catalog companies and by 1998, their website, Viaweb store was the most popular e-commerce software. But on June 1998 Viaweb was acquired by Yahoo and turned it to “Yahoo Store.”

Before the viaweb Graham had a startup called Artix where in art galleries are online but they have a problem to convince the art galleries to make it online, they didn’t want to. So they switch in making software for online stores websites. The idea came from the most hackers they knew who use the program called X Windows, wherein all the brains were on the server. They use the program as an Xterm or  XTerminal, that the computer did nothing but run XWindows. It popped into his head of making the software run on the server, and they’ve got to try it. 

They’ve hot their funding from their friend Julian, who also worked with them in Artix. They’ve also got Trevor Blackwell too worked on them, because they think that it was going to be more works. Their turning point was, when they had a demo on some potential investors. From the view point of a hackers dealing with customers seemed like terrifying. So what they do they wrote a lot of software. Their first customer was a technical bookstore. 

The users like Viaweb because it was easy to use. Their secret weapon was that e-commerce was really about graphic design not transaction processing. What convinces people to buy was how good the site looks. After the first buyer of their company walkout they ultimately got bought buy Yahoo. But they kept on writing lots of software. There was a time when Viaweb has been imitated by a Japanese company named Fred Egar.

Three things I’ve learn are, first you can’t launched a thing like without having any users. You should be able to know if someone will use your program. Second is, it is natural in business world that you will meet many competitors but despite of that you’ve still to continue with your business. Third is, they have a goal like “making users happy”. They’re making sure that every program they’re coding, users will be happy and be able to use it easily. And some of the startup people who are good at programming were sometimes not good when it comes to business.