George Black on Help From Professionals

George Black is a founder of Phuser, a new social start-up in the UK that recently had a serious hiccup in their adoption around the time that Facebook and Twitter started to become a real force in the world. He writes about some nickel-dime advice I offered over drinks one night in London:

[from Help from the Professionals]

[…]

Looking for inspiration I contacted Stowe Boyd who by coincidence was going to be in London the next week. He was happy to meet up and chat over dinner before we went to the Library House after party at the IMAX. I hadn’t met Stowe before and found it a pleasure to talk with such an affable veteran of the industry.

I explained how Phuser is this great private social website with practical tools to save you time, frustration and money when planning with a team but that we were struggling to get any traction in the market. Stowe hit the nail on the head: our best strength, privacy and control was also our greatest weakness. There was no public side to Phuser and it was killing us. Without a public side there was no way for the good word of Phuser to spread virally.

Stowe also had another good point. Entrepreneurs don’t like to backtrack and reassess the fundamentals of their ideas. But, as they say, when you find you are in a hole, stop digging.

Sounds like George&Co have turned things around. I know they have a new beta, which I plan to review at /Message in the next week or so (after my mini vacation).