May 2009
14 posts
“When it starts accepting clients in June, Ancestry.com’s ExpertConnect service...”
– Nice mention today of Genlighten in Diane Haddad’s Genealogy Insider blog, part of Family Tree Magazine’s online presence.
“The golden rule of the ethics of viral spread is: try to only do things on a...”
– danieltenner.com — How to make your application viral (via hiten)
We need to do this…
Some NGS09 Highlights Today
Several potential providers who signed up a year ago or more are still eager for us to finally get launched
Nice people from several genealogy magazines stopped by the booth today to offer support and encouragement
Bunch more beta signups today not directly related to NGS09
Positive mention from kind Twitter follower on Transitional-Genealogist message board
Updated Tour pages and homepage...
NGS2009 -- Busy at the Booth
Well, yes, but not necessarily because there’s been tons of traffic. There was first thing Wednesday morning, and at occasional intervals since. But today’s been much quieter.
I’ve been cranking on everything I can do myself to get ready for the Genlighten private beta. Provider tour copy and screenshots. Revised client tour copy and screenshots. Revisions to the Terms of...
Genlighten AdWords Experiment
This was the week the Kellogg MBA Student Team launched their Google AdWords campaigns for Genlighten.com. So far, only a small trickle of people have clicked on their ads. I suspect we’ve managed to kill our PageRank pretty quickly. But hopefully they will learn from the process, and I’ll learn from their learning. I’ve already had at least one very positive e-mail exchange with...
“They say that when you’re trying to get into shape, the best motivation is...”
– from Diane Haddad’s Genealogy Insider blog on Family Tree Magazine’s website.
I see Genlighten accelerating positive results in the genealogy research process. As Diane says, “The best inspiration to do more research is getting results”.
April 2009
18 posts
“If you can’t manage chaos and uncertainty, if you can’t bias yourself for action...”
– Preparing for Chaos - the Life of a Startup « Steve Blank (via hiten)
Scary thought… I like to think I “bias myself for action”, but there are days where I feel I’m waiting around, too.
Rails alpha is up!
We took a big step today and pointed the www.genlighten.com domain at the Rails Alpha that Justin’s got running on EngineYard’s Solo service. It’s scary, in that there are public pages on the site that could use lots better styling and content. But it’s a good kind of scary — the kind that should motivate us to improve it quickly.
In the meantime, EV/SSL certificates...
New England Regional Genealogical Conference
In 90 minutes, talked seriously about Genlighten to perhaps 15-20 people tonight at the booth. Most were interested in being providers. One follows me on Twitter. Another said “one of the speakers today was raving about your site”. Wonder who that was!
I almost always seem to get a huge amount of renewed energy and motivation from these conferences. Soon though, I hope to also see...
“But entrepreneurial leaders sometimes forget that in startups, you can’t allow a...”
– Steve Blank, Killing Innovation with Corner Cases and Consensus
I have already fallen victim to this… but I’m getting better at fighting it — and keeping the momentum going.
“I like to start with free customer acquisition channels since they obviously...”
– From To Pay Or Not To Pay To Acquire Users? by Sean Ellis on his Startup Marketing Blog
My take: this is our roadmap exactly… get enough revenue from users we acquire through free channels that we can afford to eventually pay for ads to reach additional users. It’ll be tough to pull...
“For example, I’ve talked a few times about how IMVU raised its first venture...”
– Eric Ries, “Validated Learning About Customers”, from his Lessons Learned blog.
This guy is amazing! He and Steve Blank together basically make most of the other stuff an MBA covers seem superfluous.
“It is, I think, that we are all so alone in what lies deepest in our souls, so...”
– Sheldon Vanauken, A Severe Mercy (via elwhit)
via This is going to be BIG! by Charlie O’Donnell
“We’d love to have professional genealogists join our provider network, but we...”
– Brainstorming a post for the Genlighten blog regarding the recent APG thread on Ancestry’s “Expert Connect” 