If someone heard that you were a great company to work with (and decides to use your product/service/app because of that) and they then experience the exact opposite, it's not only a neutral outcome. Instead, that customer has an exponentially bad experience.
Most markets that you can enter right now, are already quite saturated and you're likely to face existing competition. Due to the very low barrier to entry to build a new SaaS/web /mobile app, you'll also find that the competition's offering is mostly the same as your solution.
In my inbox this morning was the latest newsletter from Hiten Shah, which is part of a series of newsletters (if it can be called that) in which Hiten is sharing his experiences as an entrepreneur. This morning's topic was how brands need a greater purpose to really be successful and as his thoughts got stuck in my head, I've been trying to figure out what I'd say WooThemes' greater purpose is.
When we started WooThemes, we were designers / developers and totally inexperienced in all of the other things that come along once you create a new business (admin, marketing, branding etc.). Suffice to say, something like a "greater purpose" is not something that ever came up in our discussions and we were more than happy to simply tackle the challenges that we could actually see ahead of us in growing the company as organically & quickly as possible.
So when I now try - in hindsight - to attach a greater purpose to our business, I can see it taking on a variety of shapes & directions, which has changed over time and also differs if I compare my personal aims versus the company's aims in terms of the purpose.
In the beginning, I think our purpose was quite simple: personally, we wanted to create a company that could be an extension of our web development skills and at the same time would result in a passive income. From a business perspective, I guess our purpose was to innovate and create beautiful WordPress themes, unlike those that were available at the time. And I think that this purpose has probably stuck ever since, even though our marketplace today is filled with many more competitors (compared to 3.5 years ago when we started out) and innovation itself has become a lot more complicated in general.
This does however leave me questioning the validity of this purpose given the maturity and size of our business at present. Should we not be aiming a little higher? We could possibly make it our purpose to "beautify the web" or "democratize great design", but whilst those definitely resonates with our core values & passions, they almost seem fluffy and a bit like a "double rainbow". I don't know.
I'm sure that Woo has a greater purpose at the core, but I'm just not sure that we've ever verbalized that in its entirety. We obviously have something incredible at the core which is driving our company forward at full steam, but pinpointing those exact details is a tad harder.
Does your company have a greater purpose? What are your thoughts on having a greater purpose?
As a firm believer in self-promotion and a keen thinker on the dynamics involved with building one’s personal brand, I really loved this post.
Read this article by the 37Signals folks and whilst I agree with them 99% of the time, I’m just not feeling very agreeable today…
See, I can agree that an obsession over a product name isn’t worthwhile as that time could be better spent doing stuff (i.e. developing your web app) that will create a bigger return on your investment / effort.
But the thing is, those product names become your brands too, which means you do need to put some initial thought into how you want to brand, market & position those products. If you go with a shitty name from the start (because you’re taking the approach of not obsessing), then it’s definitely gonna limit the space you have in which to tweak & market in future.
In the end, it comes down to finding a balance in terms of the things you spend your time on. So do spend time on deciding your product / brand names, but don’t be overly anal either as that is just valuable time being lost…