Thoughts On Business

Running a business is the most exhilarating and challenging experience of my life, rivaled only by my tours overseas. What I've learned in a very short time is that very few people actually know what they are doing, while most of us are just trying to figure it out. Here I hope to share my own insights and opinions, in the hopes that my experiences can be of some value.

Thinking Through the WP Engine Acquisition of StudioPress

Published in Business on June 28, 2018

As a fun thought exercise I decided to think through the WP Engine and Studio Press acquisition. Specifically, what I would do, and think they will do, with the new asset. While I know all the parties, I have less than zero knowledge about the deal or intentions. In other words, this is pure conjecture and insights from a dude in his hammock and flip flops thousands of miles away from the discussions.

I will focus on what I would do with the asset and why I think it makes a lot sense. I won’t focus on the people or the community. I encourage you to also read StudioPress’ Release, Jason’s (WPE Engine Founder) Thoughts, Brian Clark’s position, and finally Bob Dunn’s insights.

Strategic Alignment

Strategically this deal makes sense. To understand this you have to understand the penetration the Genesis framework has amongst developers and integrators, and WPE’s strategic direction.

This is chess, not checkers motherfucker – Ben Horowitz (Hard Thing About Hard Things)

In my opinion, the Genesis framework is one of the most powerful and utilized framework in the market. They have been for years, and while the theme market has dramatically changed they continue to be at the forefront.

Interestingly, it’s not it’s themes I find most attractive – it’s the framework. Countless developers and agencies leverage it as the foundation of their development work. It’s so prevalent in this specific community (the Agencies) that I would argue that it powers more sites in WP than even the website owners are aware of.

I can also attest to its prominence amongst this market with my experience at Sucuri, agencies are also an important cohort for us, and I can tell you, without-a-doubt it’s the preferred preferred platform.

Understanding this point makes the strategic partnership oh that much more so sweet.

Winning the Agencies

Coincidently, this week I read a report highlighting WPE initiative to win over agencies. It’s grown well over the past twelve months. This is an important insight, it speaks to what and where they are focusing their energy, where they see the opportunity

Note: You could argue that Agencies have always been at the core of their strategy, whether intentionally or not.

If I were to guess, WPE realized that the Genesis framework is most prevalent in their environment and amongst their core market.

Give the people what they want!

If you are strategically pursing a market and you realize they all use a tool, then the next step is obvious – buy it or partner with them. In this instance, buying makes the most sense. Buying will allow WPE to execute against their strategy to provide a fully immersive platform. Speaking of which..

Simplifying the Experience

If you think that WPE is competing against hosts, you’re wrong.

While WPE might have started out as a host I would wager they are positioning themselves towards a fully immersive experience. WordPress just happens to be at its core, but like Automattic’s .com I’d wager that soon it’ll be similar only in name.

What the hell is a fully immersive experience ? Think Hub-spot.

If you haven’t tried Hub-spot, you should. It aims to put all the tools you need around marketing, sales and the core application at your finger tips. As Sucuri grew, this became exponentially that much more important. I think this is where WPE is going. To do this though, they have to do it in pieces.

While they have simplified the end point experience (you never have to worry about the servers availability, state, security, speed, etc..), they have to move upward in the stack, into the application layer, to truly encapsulate the “experience”. That’s where the real opportunity with the Genesis framework comes into play.

In today’s world, those with the desire to get their presence online via a “website” have a number of things to think about across multiple vectors. There’s the endpoint, the application, the supporting systems and services, and the list goes on. Just to get online!

Imagine a world where you streamline that experience. Imagine a world where getting online is a seamless click of a button, and now you’re simply tuning. You’re not starting at zero, you’re starting at the 50 yard line. You don’t have to worry whether something is in the application, the server, the service provider.. it’s all one thing. You’ve removed all the blurred lines.

Oh yes, and all while giving your audience the tools they already use and love.

This is where I would go. This is where I think they are going.

Congrats to the Entire Team!

Huge congrats to the entire team. Having just gone through my own acquisition, I can tell you this is where the real work will began. I fully expect this acquisition to be very different than the last one with Copyblogger. In this instance you have a technology company buying a critical asset to propel them closer to their strategic objectives.

It will all come down to their ability to integrate.

The Lost Art of Making Decisions

Published in Business on June 25, 2018

At the end of one of my keynotes last year I was asked:

Tony, how did you know what decision to make?

In war, there is nothing worse than a leader that can’t make a decision. People die. While not as dire in business, your indecisiveness will slowly kill your product, your team, your moment, and eventually your company.

Gutenberg and The Impacts It’ll Have on the WordPress Business Ecosystem

Published in Business on December 4, 2017

As has become customary over the past 8 years, I joined thousands of fellow WordPress enthusiasts and supporters for WordCamp US 2018 in Nashville, Tennessee. For me, the highlight is always the State of The Word (SOTW), delivered by Matt Mullenweg (Co-Founder of the platform).

The SOTW provides an opportunity to reflect on the last year, and where the platform is going. Where the platform goes is often a strong indicator of where the rest of the ecosystem will follow.

The WordPress Business Ecosystem

Last year it was a pivotal year for the platform. We did away with release cycles, introduced a multi-lead approach, but more importantly it introduced the hottest and most contentious idea since the platforms inception- Gutenberg.

We were treated to a live demo. It provided a fresh, awe-inspiring, view of Gutenbergs power. It wasn’t at this point that I gained a completely new appreciation for the role it will undeniably play in reshaping the WordPress business ecosystem.

How many plugins would it have taken to achieve this experience?

This is what I kept asking myself as I watched.

Today the WordPress business ecosystem is comprised of products (e.g., plugins, themes, etc..), integrators (e.g., Pro’s, Agencies, etc..) and services (e.g., hosts, security, maintenance, etc..). Tomorrow, it’ll look dramatically different in large part to what Gutenberg is doing. Are you prepared?

Gutenberg site customization…

Future of 2018 – Matt Mullenweg

As Gutenberg moves beyond the posts / pages, into the world of site customization I find myself wondering how many more thing it’ll simplify and consolidate. Specifically, how that will impact the small businesses that power today’s WordPress platform; those that have built themselves dependent on a platform’s specific design.

If it was not apparent, the platform is changing. If your product is meant to simplify some aspect of the platforms experience, your future is inevitably numbered, as it’ll likely be commoditized at the core level.

The message and direction is clear for the platform. We achieve our BHAG if we can optimize the users experience. We’re doubling down on this.

Good or Bad – Doesn’t Matter

It’s not that the plugin / theme community isn’t valued or that no one sees the platform exists because of it. But it is about hitting goals, and what the platform needs today to get to it’s BHAG is very different than what it needed when it required growth / user adoption.

If I were Matt I would be doing the same thing. It’s about combating the encroaching affects of outside closed-source platforms, the threats they pose on the larger open-web conversation, and also hitting that platforms big hairy audacious goal (BHAG) of 51% market share.

If I were the plugin / themes shops I would be rightfully concerned and upset. It’s this feeling of frustration, and possibly betrayal. As a small business, there is already limited time and resources to support the needs of acquiring new customers, let alone supporting the ones you have, and now there is new requirement that feels extremely exhausting.

The real question I would be asking myself is not whether I can support it, but rather what does it do to my product category when it becomes standardized in core? My general feeling is that the WordPress business landscape will be look dramatically different in five years. Where does your product / business sit?

This does not mean that there won’t be a plugin ecosystem in 5 years, but rather that it’ll be dramatically different than today. Tools that prove invaluable in moving the platform forward will prove market need, and this need will be productized at some level.

The impacts here will move beyond just the plugin domain, there are affects to be felt within the theme space as well. One could argue that when the site creation process is introduced how themes are leveraged will fundamentally change. When you simply the creation process, do you really still need a theme at all? If so, what does that theme really look like?

There is also the impacts to integrators, specifically the professionals that make a living on helping users establish their online entity and do it by taking a theme and configuring it. I’m talking about that process that many Pro’s take today – sell a site to a customer, buy a framework (think Genesis), read the document and configure the site for their customer. In many ways, you can argue the Do It For Me (DIFM) market exists predominantly because the Do It Yourself (DIY) space has proven to hard. What happens when that technical divide becomes smaller? We’ve always known the platforms achilles heel is 5 minutes to install, 3 weeks to configure.

There are certain things / products that deliver such intrinsic value that it transcends any platform. Security is a good example such a product. These are the areas we, you, should place your energy as a small business if you’re targeting WordPress. These are the areas that cannot be consolidated or commoditized. If you build around how something works today, you might find yourself out of a job tomorrow. This evolution is not unique to WordPress, it happened with Google, Twitter and the list goes on. The platform will always do what is in the best interest of the platform.

Just because WordPress is democratizing publishing, it doesn’t mean it is a democracy.

CaboPress – A Business MasterMind (I Think)

Published in Business on October 21, 2017

For the past three years Chris Lema has invited me to join him at his event – CaboPress. For three years I have declined the request.

I declined previously for two reasons:

Didn’t think I had much to offer,
Afraid of the impressions hanging out on a resort in Mexico would have on my team.

What I failed to realize however is that it wasn’t about what I could offer, but the impacts it would have on me as an individual, and more importantly the renewed insights I could bring back to the team. In short, like many of the decisions in my life, I was an idiot.

This year, with the beginning of a new chapter in my life I said yes. As I sit here and reflect on that decision, I feel strongly it was one of the best decisions I have made in a long time.

Automattic’s Push into Managed WordPress and It’s Potential Impacts to the Hosting Ecosystem

Published in Business on August 7, 2017

The Managed WordPress ecosystem welcomes a new entrant – Automattic. Today they officially announced that WordPress.com Business now supports plugins and third-party themes.

I am fascinated by the move because I believe it to be an obvious impact to the Managed WordPress ecosystem. In the interest of full disclosure, I work in the security division for one of the largest Managed WordPress hosts – GoDaddy – via my affiliation with Sucuri.

Define A Financial Structure Early

Published in Business on June 20, 2017

If you’re looking to exit your company, building the financial structure for your business will be important. It will be the most important piece of the equation in any future conversations. Unicorns need not apply.

It is the most under appreciated. They will get you to the promise land, but then they will also fall back into the abyss. There are only a few groups of people that really care about your financials.

Understand the Problem To Build A Better Mousetrap

Published in Business on June 13, 2017

When I talk to organizations that are entering a new market I can quickly identify the ones that will succeed. I do so by looking for answers to two questions:

Do they understand the problem space?
Are they building a better mousetrap?

Lacking appropriate visibility, that assessment often comes at a distance and fueled with personal bias (impossible not to). It can be defined by paying close attention to a) the way they position themselves and b) their understanding of the customer, specifically the customers journey (which is reflected in their positioning).

Establish a Personal Brand

Published in Business on June 11, 2017

It’s only recently that I have grown a deeper appreciation for personal brands. Prior to 2010, the idea of establishing a personal brand was a foreign concept to me. In 2010 Dre Armeda came up with perezbox, and the rest is history. It’s perhaps the single most impactful thing I have done for my own individual personal and professional growth.

While I don’t believe everyone needs a personal brand, I do believe that as a business owner it should be part of your larger go to market strategy.

A Chapter Ends. A New One Begins.

Published in Business on April 8, 2017

This chapter in my life began March of 2011. I was invited to join the team by Dre and Daniel. Coincidently, it ended on the month that I officially hit 6 years with the company. The idea was never mine, it belongs to Daniel; it was his vision, his idea. It was something I found fascinating and challenging, it was something I felt I could execute against.

We often joke that it’s about the experience, and what an experience it has been.

Lessons Learned Playing With Pricing

Published in Business on May 4, 2016

When we first started, our pricing by all accounts was absurdly low. In my last post I chronicled the details of our pricing journey at Sucuri. Developers were finding that the cost was low enough that it was easier to send websites to us rather than invest their time, that could, at the time, run $40 to $100 an hour or so. Also, contrary to the traditional Information Security (InfoSec) domain, focused on the enterprise, there weren’t that many players in the website security domain focused on the everyday website owners. There were a few competitors in name only, not in product or quality of service.

Here are a few things we were working with:

Didn’t have the capital investment others had (we wanted build something sustainable);
Weren’t going to go the freemium model (zero sum game that devalues security outright);
Knew diddly squat about SaaS, selling to anyone (let alone consumers or businesses);
The market was not established (people weren’t waking up thinking security);
It was never about building a business (it sounded like a fun project);
We were focusing on a market in which the expectation was either free or low cost (think open-source and hosting);

Accounting for the Pricing Journey

Published in Business on April 23, 2016

You will undoubtedly undervalue your product or services, and your pricing will be wrong; this I am sure of. It will be echoed by every seasoned business person, professional coach, and everyone in between. You will start researching and googling how to raise your prices and you’ll find over 7 million results offering you advice.

Your inability to make any sense of it will be frustrating, and with every article you read you’ll find some qualifier that holds you back. The fears you feel – “what if we’re wrong”, “can we just revert?”, “what will the impacts to the brand be?”, “will my market work with this change?” – never really go away. Your frustrations won’t be that you don’t understand the idea of raising prices, but more along the lines of how.

A Pricing Journey with Sucuri

While we are all accustomed to reading advice that starts at the conclusion, I instead want to focus on our journey. Specifically our journey with pricing at Sucuri. The real insights come from analyzing how someone reached a conclusion, because what we’re really after is the thought process more than the end result. How do I navigate the process of raising or changing my prices? I honestly have no idea, but I’ll tell you our story.

The Fallacy of Measuring Everything

Published in Business on April 8, 2016

We have all been in those talks. You know, the ones in which they are telling you to measure all things? Test everything!!! The one in which they share the secret to achieving a 300% growth! How it’s impossible to make a decision without data? How data will set you free? You know, the talks that make you question everything you’re doing and leave you so confused at the same time?

I’ve found myself in the same situation as most, struggling to grasp the discussion. Not because I didn’t understand what they were saying, or disagreed with the logic, but I was having very different results and the experiences with the journey of testing. My failures in the domain were overwhelming and exhausting, especially since the rest of the industry kept saying this was the way to go.

I had become content with my thoughts of confusion until I heard Beka Rice, with Skyverge, speak at WooConf this past week and was compelled to revisit my thoughts on the subject.

Accounting for Irate Customers

Published in Business on March 13, 2016

What is it about customer support that drives us mad? Not just for those of us that manage and provide customer support, but ourselves as consumers. Is it that as a society we have lost all faith in the ability to get what we perceive to be quality service that we immediately begin each engagement with a chip on our shoulder?

As a consumer myself, I can attest to this feeling. Try picking up the phone, calling your bank, maybe your ISP, or god forbid a government agency. All I want to know is why my bill is so high, or why my network is performing so poorly. You follow all the phone prompts and somehow the call is disconnected, or you’re in the wrong group. Let’s say you get to the right group, but they’re unable to assist and have to push you over to another group, but that group is unfamiliar with your problem and you have to start from scratch. Sound familiar?

This is the sad reality of customer support these days, and as someone that runs a company that also provides customer support, it provides for a challenging dilemma. Whether we like it or not, it’s these experiences that create an overly negative disposition to working with support that our teams have to work with.

Thinking About Competitors

Published in Business on December 25, 2015

When you think about your competition, how do you account for it? Do you stress over them? Do you find yourself constantly looking at what they are doing? Maybe comparing yourself to them?

I know I did, and sometimes still do. Every move felt like it would change the game for us.

It rarely did! It rarely does!

Conflicted with Business Processes

Published in Business on November 15, 2015

The idea of implementing a process is one that should provide insight and guidance. Yet, I find myself conflicted when I think about the idea of putting them together. Not because they lack value, but because I know that their intentions will be lost over time, and they’ll inevitably be leveraged as a crutch and seen as an absolute.

This bring about a fear within me around the idea of processes. There is no denying their effectiveness, but you also can’t deny their ineffective attributes; like their affects on the innovative qualities your team sometimes requires. Granted, there are obvious situations in which you require them.

The Dilemma of Fake Work

Published in Business on September 6, 2015

I read a fascinating piece by Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator, in which he talks to the Post-YC slump. The premise of the article revolves around two very important, yet simple, points: fake work and momentum. Specifically, it’s affects and importance on the companies once they leave the YC cycle.

Quick Aside (over-simplified description of what they do):

If you’re not familiar with YC, it’s a tech start-up incubator out of San Francisco. They focus specifically on providing seed funding to startups; seed funding being the earliest stage of fund-raising an organization can do. They are unique in their configuration, as they have 3 month cycles in which they bring every startup they invest in to work locally with their team and help build momentum for their respective ideas / projects / companies.

5 Practical Tips to Building and Running a Business

Published in Business on July 2, 2015

Regardless of industry, there is always a constant in that every day you’ll be presented with new challenges when running a business. I believe that these challenges introduce insecurities in our personas in which we often fear that our lack of knowledge in a subject makes us exceptionally vulnerable to failure.

To account for this we look at others experiences and try to find similarities in their stories and experiences. What I come to realize though that no one really knows what they’re doing, we’re all just trying to figure it out. What sets people apart however are their experiences and insights, and more importantly their ability execute.

Knowing and Doing

Published in Business on June 18, 2015

Lately I have been having different conversations with people in which I talk to the idea of Knowing and Doing and how they are not mutually exclusive to one another. I think a perfect example that best illustrates what I mean can be found at conferences.

I believe there is an important distinction to be made. It comes in understanding that the idea of knowing something doesn’t necessarily mean you know how to apply that same knowledge.

Knowing How is Different than Doing

We have all sat in, or watched a presentation, in which we listen to the speaker and think to ourselves, “Man, they have their stuff together!” or we hear them speaking at a get together, and think, “Holy smokes, they are on it!” This is in fact attributed to knowledge, and often comes down to charisma and a well crafted delivery. A skill-set in it of itself, there is no denying that fact.

The Beauty in Being Naive

Published in Business on June 16, 2015

I think there is an elegance to being removed from opinion or bias. Too often we tend to shake our heads at the other and think, They just don’t know…

This clouds our way of thinking, and in some instances blocks our ability to think beyond our norms. I ask myself every day, with every decision, what is driving this decision? Is is it previous experience? Is it my curiosity of the outcome? Is it my own stubbornness to be right or wrong? Yes, you can be stubborn in wanting to be wrong.

What exactly does it mean to be Naive?