Judy's Book farewell party

We had a really great farewell party last night with lots of past employees from the company attending. It's strange -- I had a little nervousness about having past employees attend the farewell party but in the end it was a great thing to do. I'm really appreciative to all those that were able to make it.
The whole event reminded me that endings are just as important as beginnings. It's usually harder to celebrate at the end of a relationship that didn't go the way you wanted it to (whether that be with a company or with a person) but in fact a celebration is exactly what's needed. Tequila sunrises don't hurt either.

My feelings surrounding Judy's Book public wind down

My wife asked me how I was feeling about the fact that the wind down of Judy's Book got so much press in Seattle (Seattle PI, TechCrunch, etc).  At first, I admit there was some shame. I felt like a failure and I was ashamed of not succeeding. Lately, however, I've been feeling (in an odd way) somewhat pleased about the public nature of the flame out. From my perspective, the publicity means that people cared about what we were doing at Judy's Book. This feels good.
In addition, the publicity means I don't have to have the awkward and painful experience of telling everyone about the failure.  You know -- seeing people in cafes, holiday parties, and in public and being asked "how's it going at work?" and having to tell them some version of -- "oh, I laid everyone off a month ago and am winding down the company". People already know the facts and they come up to me and say "I'm sorry to hear about Judy's Book. What are you doing next?". This is much better in my opinion than having to constantly tell people the same story over and over again.  Don't get me wrong -- I wish Judy's Book succeeded. I didn't start the company to end up winding it down. I'm just trying to share some of my feeling about having the wind down being so public.

Mistakes in the early years of Judy's Book

We did a lot of things right in the first 2 years of Judy's Book business (FYI - July 2004 was the start of the business), but I think we made two reasonably big mistakes.  Both mistakes prevented us as a company from achieving critical mass as a company in a specific geography -- i.e. Seattle.

The first mistake: we weren't aggressive enough in customer acquisition. We had the idea of using the address book as a hook into customer acquisition but we never spent the energy and focus to really maximize the use of the address book in growing the social network. We thought that using the web address books was too "spammy". In retrospect, this perspective on customer acquisition was a little too ivory tower and not enough boot strappy. In fact, there's a broad spectrum of what constitutes spam in the eyes of a consumer. We/I didn't understand the subtleties of consumer perceptions sufficiently to build the app that grew our social network AND that consumers wouldn't perceive as "spammy". Linked In and Facebook today have finessed and pushed these consumer perception boundaries -- but back in 2004 and 2005 it was difficult to see just how willing of consumers were to send out invites from their address books. 

The second mistake: we expanded out of Seattle in August 2005 and went national. We did this because Insider Pages expanded nationally and we were feeling the competitive pressures to keep up. The fact is that neither company had figured out what it took to create a community directory that achieved critical mass. I remember when we were raising money for the series B round and Bill Gurley of Benchmark challenged me on the decision to nationally. I defended the decision at the time. Looking back, I think the decision to go national in Aug 2005 was an error. We ended up spending the better part of 6 to 9 months building a local search web site that could be accessed nationally -- going national was more work than we expected. Ultimately, this decision prevented us from focusing on the customer acquisition problem I mentioned above as well as other improvements that would have made our product more sticky and compelling.

More mistake and lessons learned blogging to come....

Another major lesson learned: baby steps come first

I think it's useful to think of start ups as babies. The metaphor works pretty well. Start ups and babies require lots of love to get from infancy to the toddler stage. And when it comes to starting a technology business, it's necessary to take baby steps before walking and you have to walk before running. 
At Judy's Book we had a BIG vision -- I think in retrospect, perhaps too big for a start up and in retrospect I think we didn't take the necessary steps to break that BIG vision (your friends yellow pages) down into sufficiently small enough baby steps to prove out the concept before expanding the concept nationally.

Judy's Book and Mpire

John Cook of the Seattle Times has been writing here about the similarities between Mpire and Judy's Book.  I actually think that the two companies are more complimentary than competitive.  Judy's Book is really about local shopping.  We are a destination site for you to find out what's on sale near you. If you want to do shoe shopping this weekend -- and you're wondering what's on sale / where near your home....i.e. where you can get a deal on shoes then Judy's Book is the place for you. Mpire -- as I understand it, is about shopping analytics of new and used products. You want to know what's happened to the price of ipods over time then Mpire will deliver this to you.  I'm looking forward to seeing how both services evolve over time.

A good week

It's Friday and I'm feeling pretty optimistic about life despite:

  • Having a cold
  • Being in a dispute with the contract on my remodel
  • Having a disagreement with my wife
  • The supreme court decision regarding abortion
  • The war in Iraq
  • Still being above 200 lbs.
  • Not moving as fast as I'd like at Judy's Book
  • And all the other shitty things like global warming etc.

Why...you ask?

  • It's sunny
  • My kids made $19 at their lemonade stand last night after work (it was awesome)
  • My good friend doesn't have terminal cancer
  • There's progress in my fitness and at Judy's Book
  • It's Friday
  • I'm alive and healthy.

Love these market numbers

Greg Sterling -- one of the leading analysts in local search has written a couple posts about what we're doing at Judy's Book.  Check the full posts out here . I love these market numbers though (taken from his post)....

Of course, people love deals and saving money. But you still might be surprised to hear that the total face value of distributed coupons in the U.S. was a whopping $332 billion in 2006 (most of which were never redeemed) and that more than 79% of the U.S. population uses coupons. There are also data that show more than 50% of Sunday newspapers are purchased for the coupons.

Judy's Book -- Let's go, go, go!