Ruth Ann S. Basnillo                                                                                               7/1/2008

SYSANAL

O0C

Case study

Mark Fletcher

Founder, ONElist, Bloglines

Story:

            ONElist was started in 1997 by Mark Fletcher when he was a senior software engineer for Sun Microsystems. This startp is basically a free Internet email list service. He ran it as a side project until he received venture funding a year later. Then, he sold it to yahoo and it was then renamed eGroups. Fletcher left at the acquisition in September of 2000. Then, after having a break by traveling around, he realized that he’s into working with computers all his life and should not deprive himself in working on startups. So, he started another company and it was called Trustic- an anti-spam company. And while working on the anti-spam project, he’s also into a side project that became Bloglines. It was a web-based news aggregation service that’s a solution for managing his bookmark list. Then, he decided to throw it out to some of his friends and it started doing some marketing. It went from there and that’s when he hired again his coworkers with ONElist before. Since his startup was something that doesn’t require a lot of money, he just self funded it and put in a total of $200,000. He used the same company set up for the anti-spam company and went online in the late June of 2003. They started press coverage from there. Bloglines got far on its way to becoming the most popular news aggregator on the Internet. And in February 2005, Bloglines was acquired by Ask Jeeves.

THREE THINGS I LEARNED:

            I learned from Bloglines that in a startup, you need to first solve the problem you have because chances are other people may have the same problem too. But, you also should make sure that you don’t invest immediately on something that you’re not yet sure that’s going to be welcomed by people. You need to assure first that that problem is also the problem others have and the solutions others want before working on a startup.

            Next, I learned that when you’re already in a startup, you need to be open to suggestions most especially the ones given byy0ur users. It’s because loyalty from your users takes acting on feature suggestions given by them. Through that, they’ll see that you are actually listening to them and then they’ll become more loyal to your site. Oftentimes, it may be a disadvantage to your company but it’s most of the time advantageous.

            I also learned something from the last statement of Mark Fletcher. It says there, “So, now I’m taking a little time-off. I’ll do some skiing, and then I’ll start something else.” This statement caught my attention because I saw determination from those words. I also saw open-mindedness from the founder. He’s into working on something else that made him successful. Though he knew that doing startups is so crucial and tiring, still, he’s into doing and doing it. And I believe that that’s the essence of having passion for your work. If you have an interest on what you’re doing, you’ll never get tired with it. Instead, you’ll face difficulties that you’ll experience with a big smile in your face and with open arms.