What seems like a like time ago I had a job that had me on an airplane at least once a week; it was exhausting, I got sick a lot, but what I loved was the constant 1 on 1 interaction with customers, investors and interesting companies.
Being, fundamentally, a communications platform YouSendIt has the pleasure of hearing from our customers 24/7. While we see most of our activity on the web we’ve always had loyal users who are thrilled to meet us face to face and I was delighted to spend time with them at three different industry events last week. I thought I’d share the highlights of my road trip, enjoy:
Monday: Free! Summit, San Mateo, CA
The Free! Summit was the first show of its kind to explore the use of free as part of a viable business model. I was invited to participate in a panel discussion alongside Ooma.com and PracticeFusion.com to explain why free users are important to our businesses. While our three companies are very different it was striking how all of us had to get through similar challenges in the early days (like building trust around free services). We discussed lessons learned, “Freemium” business models, and the future of free (my contribution was comparing free adoption inside enterprise vs. consumer services, more on this soon). Mike Masnick from TechDirt.com moderated and, since he’s written about it all, kept things moving.
Chris Anderson’s keynote did a great job outlining the history of free, common misconceptions, and growing business models (including free to play games and virtual goods); hope to work with him more in the future. He’s got a new book coming out that is making use of free distribution at launch, look for it in July. I also met Dave Allen who is the bassist for the Gang of Four and expert on licensing issues around music recordings; he had many interesting stories about how bands are using free for marketing and merchandising.
Wednesday: Red Herring 100 North America, San Diego, CA
I was invited to speak at the Red Herring North America event in San Diego as YouSendIt was a finalist for the Red Herring 100 Awards. I enjoyed the insights from the group of active venture investors who attended; topics ranged from capital efficiency to how China may lead the startup charge to how venture funds are re-thinking (sometimes more aggressively) investment strategies in this economy. There was a lot of energy and innovation from the finalists themselves, every company I learned about was thriving by differentiating from the crowd (be it through really understanding their markets, technology breakthroughs, company culture, etc.). In the spirit of the event I told the story of the evolution of YouSendIt (get a copy of my slides here and more details here) and got a chance to demonstrate our upcoming mobile offerings (stay tuned). We were a Red Herring 100 winner, by the way, thanks so much for your support!
Friday: TiECon 2009, Santa Clara, CA
TiECon 2004 was the one event that I can think of that changed the direction of YouSendIt from being a lifestyle business to building a lasting brand with over 100,000 customers. I’ve attended the event almost every year since then (I missed 2006 and regretted it). It was good to catch up with some familiar faces that continue to thrive and are rooting for YouSendIt as well as meeting entrepreneurs and funds who are coming up. Highly recommended.
To conclude, while I missed the action-packed days in the office I always prefer hearing from our customers (current and future) directly, so please feel free to write to us here, by email, twitter, or any other method that works for you. We’re always listening.
Ranjith
Founder and CTO
