
It’s time to nut up or shut up - johns
http://blog.asmartbear.com/nut-up-or-shut-up.html
======
msy
I'm genuinely looking forward to watching this but to me it also demonstrates
something about startups and silicon valley - who you are and who you're
friends with matters almost as much as what you do. There's no way in hell
he'd be launching with that client list if he was some random guy, no matter
how awesome the platform was. The network effect of having the right early
users increasingly seems like the dirty secret of the startup game. See:
posterous.

Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with that, I'm not certainly
suggesting there's anything unfair about it - people work on trust networks,
it's entirely natural and utterly rational - but it does make it clear how
important it is to network, get your name out there and build reputation.

~~~
smartbear
I agree (although I'm not in the valley).

It _is_ unfair in the sense of "unfair advantage." Of course I'll exploit it
-- I'd be stupid not to -- but it's unfair.

This is exactly why increasingly it's hard to do a startup _without_ teaming
up with someone with a reputation. Maybe this just proves that.

~~~
acangiano
I think that many people are taking issue with the way you phrased your intro.
Something like, "Hey, I'm launching a new startup, to prove to myself that I
can do it again. Why don't you follow along because I'll be sharing each step
of this journey on my blog!" may have been received better by the community.
Nevertheless, the approach you took is a legitimate one. And of course, you'd
be a fool not to take advantage of your notoriety as a means of propelling
your new startup. You worked hard to get where you are, and fully deserve to
take advantage of your position, connections, etc.

You can become Wordpress's Heroku if you play your cards right, and I don't
see how you are not going to make big money out of this company as well. My
only suggestion would be to reconsider your pricing, so as to make it more
accessible (while also meeting the needs of those who don't quite require
unlimited blogs). For example, you could charge $29 for a single blog, $49 for
3 blogs, $99 for "unlimited".

------
edanm
Some thoughts on the WPEngine itself (or at least, the site). These are in
order of thought, not importance. Also, these are purely my opinions so take
with a grain of salt.

1\. When I was starting my own blog, I looked around for exactly this. It
didn't exist, or at least not in any form that looked worth doing, so I ended
up (painfully) self-hosting.

2\. Having said that, for a beginner like me, $50 is _way_ too much to spend
on the blog. I'm sorry, but I can host my not-making-a-cent blog on Dreamhost,
and get the first year of hosting for $20 (the whole year, I mean). I really
hope this is just the initial price plan, because I honestly believe that as
you grow, it will make sense to let people host smallish blogs for less money.

3\. Someone on the blog post mentioned that "one-click staging" is confusing,
since the "one click" part is not important. I agree.

4\. I think there's a small alignment problem with the prices in the pricing
grid (they're top-aligned, not centerered). I'm on Windows XP + Chrome.

5\. (This one is really nitpickity): on the pricing grid, the "explanatory"
sentence in the first and last column have end-of-sentence punctuation, but
the middle column does not.

6\. I'd give more details and make it more obvious how to export. This will be
a sticking point for people, so one of the major features should be how easy
it is to import.

7\. Make it _really_ obvious that you can use your own domain name with this.
This is important to people, and isn't obvious.

8\. Part of your tagline is "We make WordPress fast, secure, and scalable". I
would actually stress the "easy" part more. I can make WordPress all those
things myself, I just don't have time/knowledge. Stress the idea that this is
a convenience thing.

OK Hope that helps, just some of my thoughts.

~~~
dotBen
RE #2, the price issue is interesting.

I could rewrite your point on #2 from a different perspective:

"$20/year 'dreamhost pricing' is way too little to spend my the blog. I'm
sorry, but I rely on my blog for my entire income and so I need to know the
support at the level I need is in place, the quality for the service I need is
there, I have the kind of traffic that needs performance optimization and CDN,
and I need to know that this is a clearly long-term viable business so you
guys will be around in years to come as my blog gets even bigger. I really
hope this is just the initial price plan, because I honestly believe that as
you grow, it will make sense to let people host much bigger comercialized
blogs on here."

The point is we're simply looking at the entire blogging space and carving it
up into different market segments based on needs and then super-targeting one
segment.

Tony Schnieder (Automattic/WordPress.com CEO) said today at TechCrunch disrupt
that WordPress blogs power 8.5% of the internet's websites - so we think it's
clear that one size does not fit all and there are opportunities for different
services to cater for different needs.

Finally don't forget there are much more expensive options out there... we're
not WordPress VIP either which is several $1000's/month for service and
support (TechCrunch, GigaOm etc run on this).

~~~
edanm
You're absolutely right, segmenting the market and choosing one niche over
another is great strategy. I wanted to point it out from the perspective of a
"beginner" for one reason: lots of people won't move the blog after it gets
started out of fear/inertia.

------
tptacek
I just had a client asking for this service. Companies are completely price-
insensitive about blog hosting; most of the time, they're getting screwed over
by contractors building "custom" blog solutions. For sites with custom domains
and no branding, you should price this mid 5-figures annually.

My only nit: I understand the high-wire act you're performing to message
"security" on this, but your story on security (summed: "FUD. Everything's
insecure if it's managed poorly. That's where we come in.") was a huge turn-
off. Wordpress _is_ distinctively insecure, which is why it needs hosting
solutions like this. Your security graf made me think you don't actually know
how Wordpress security works.

~~~
technosailor
My only nit with your nit is that the security you are attributing to
WordPress is more inherent with PHP and exists in any PHP-based CMS, including
Drupal. Hate to be the guy that keeps defending WordPress but the problem is
PHP and Apache and those file permissions... not WordPress itself. ;)

~~~
tptacek
I think you're wrong about this. I've explained why many times on this site;
here's the first one Google finds:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1328214>

Now, PHP is definitely part of the problem. But there are huge PHP sites that
manage not to have these kinds of flaws.

------
Mc_Big_G
For a real challenge, do it without using your notoriety.

By far, the greatest challenge for any bootstrapped startup is marketing. Just
from this blog post, tens of thousands of people will check out the site, blog
and tweet about it, post links etc...

Obviously this is an advantage that you've worked very hard to gain and you
must exploit, but you can't say you're standing in the same shoes as all of us
other, completely unknown, bootstrappers.

~~~
smartbear
You're correct!

But I didn't say I'm standing the same shoes. I said I'm going to see if I can
do another startup.

~~~
gizmomagico
That's a bit of a cop-out.

You did present it as following your own advice and seeing if it works. Seeing
if it _really_ works requires you to be in square one.

------
nadam
Just a very minor observation:

I've read this on the site : "15 years of combined experience". Lots of people
find this 'n years of combined experience' pattern a bit lame.

For example:

[http://www.socialsecurityinsider.com/2010/02/combined-
years-...](http://www.socialsecurityinsider.com/2010/02/combined-years-of-
experience-another-stupid-lawyer-trick/)

~~~
golgo13
I know what you mean. A team of guys at my old company had "40 years of
combined C# experience." Not bad for a language released in 2002!

------
ryanwaggoner
Doing something like Heroku for Wordpress is a great business idea. I have
tons of clients I'd happily point to such a service if I knew it was solid.

------
jhuckestein
Am I the only one who's a little disappointed?

Of all things he had to start another WP hosting company? He has the name and
the money to do something bigger. I can't think of any motivation other than
making money that went into this.

That being said, the staging area for testing changes seem like a really
useful feature that I haven't seen in any other WP hosting service.

~~~
smartbear
Do you also think Heroku is boring because it's just Ruby hosting?

Taking the largest, most vibrant blogging (and now general website and for
some CMS) platform on Earth and trying to not only make it awesome but
contribute new features and plugins back to the world isn't big enough for
you?

Finally, you should know that for me "doing something bigger" isn't a
motivation. I don't have a need to "change the world" or somesuch thing. I
want to do something valuable, something understandable, something fun and
interesting, and yes of course also make money.

~~~
jhuckestein
Congratulations to your new business! I'm sure it'll be successful and I'm
glad that you're happy with it.

I'm not sure if I'd call WP Engine whipping out your dick and getting a ruler,
though.

------
markbao
I know we've been told to "double your price. then double it again." but does
the same apply in hugely saturated market spaces like hosting? Lots of hosts
will bill you $8/month, oversell their servers, but still give you big numbers
AND install WordPress for you. I'm curious what kind of reasoning went behind
the pricing model.

~~~
cwilson
I do not know of a single $8 host that does the following:

\- We upgrade the curated plugins we offer for you (though you can use any
plugins you'd like)

\- We keep WordPress itself upgraded (when ready, new releases are not always
perfect)

\- We make sure all the standard security stuff you'd read on any WordPress
developers blog is in place (file permissions, admin account, etc)

\- We go further by offering hardware DoS/DDoS mitigation, intrusion
detection, and redundant firewall protection

\- Aaron Brazell (Author of the WordPress Bible, <http://goo.gl/mGgi>) answers
your support questions

\- Speed. Tuning of various caches, memcache for database/object caching,
modifications to your theme or plugins, and so on.

\- Scale. We make sure your site stays up when you receive spiky or sustained
traffic. Don't get Fireballed.

\- On top of that, we're the only hosting company (that I know of!) who also
puts your static content (images, CSS, JS) on a CDN for you as part of the
base price! Which means even faster load times plus more scalability. (Granted
we haven't advertised this on the site yet, something we'll be fixing soon!)

\- Staging feature. Again, I'm not sure of any host who has something like
this. We'll be adding more cool tools soon!

\- We spell WordPress correctly =)

At the end of the day you shouldn't compare us to an $8 host. You pay for what
you get. We go above and beyond regular hosting.

~~~
markbao
Good answer. I didn't know that—that should be on your site somewhere :)

~~~
cwilson
Haha you are correct, we definitely need to update our site to avoid confusion
like this! Thanks for the feedback =)

------
pierrefar
This to me sounds a lot like wordpress.com, albeit over-priced.

I did a cursory price comparison. WP.com is the most annoyingly secretive
website I've seen about it's pricing, so all these are from the second hand
accounts in the forums ( [http://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/please-be-more-
up-front...](http://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/please-be-more-up-front-
about-upgrade-pricing) ):

CSS upgrade $15 Map domain: $10 25GB space: $90 (I know WP Engine is 10GB)
Unlimited users: $30 No ads: $30

$175, per _year_ , which is roughly $15/mo.

The one thing missing from WP.com is the custom plugins and support. Honestly,
if you're running my blog, why do I need support, really? And they have proven
infrastructure, which is another selling point you're making. The plugins make
for an interesting offering, but is it really worth it?

Please don't take this as me being rude. I just can't see much of a difference
between WP Engine and wp.com after reading the websites to justify the price
difference. Maybe that's something to work on?

~~~
technosailor
WordPress.com is a great service and you can get a lot of the same "stuff"
that we offer. Obviously, they've been around a lot longer and have a ton of
experiece.

WordPress.com has, essentially, two pricing structures - free and custom
pricing starting at $500 for VIP customers. They make a ton of money in
upgrades, as you noted.

They don't give you access to the files, unless you're VIP, and then you're
still limited. You don't have access to plugins of your own choice. The
freedom that you have with WordPress.org (self-hosted) doesn't exist on the
theme, plugin or user side. But you get an amazing architecture, with almost
no downtime, and a crack staff that knows WordPress inside and out.

WP Engine targets an entirely different market. We're targeting self hosted
WordPress and trying to provide premium value for premium blogs. You couldn't
take my blog, for example (<http://technosailor.com>), and put it on WP.com.
There's too much I've done with it for it to make sense even if I bought the
Custom CSS add-on. I can put it on WP Engine (and do) and get all the stuff
that is offered.

I don't know if I'm making sense. I hope I am. Certainly, we are still honing
our messaging.

One big bonus that no one else will give you is free CDN. If you need it,
you're going to start at $40/mo roughly. And maybe pay up to 20 cents/GB
bandwidth. I think you can see where this, essentially, pays for itself.

Plus, we are working with Automattic/WordPress.com and our customers should be
seeing the benefits of that soon. Stay tuned. :)

------
Mc_Big_G
I'm curious if you're using Wordpress MU for this or if you've built your own
system. I built an app & plugin installer (flooha.com) which could be used to
build, install and customize any php app, so I have some experience in this
area.

It's a smart move to limit which plugins can be installed, to offer a very
short trial and to have no free plans.

~~~
smartbear
We allow our customers to use WordPress v3.0.1, which means either with OR
without MU. Up to you.

We're NOT limiting plugins that can be installed. We're just building a list
that we'll SUPPORT.

------
bherms
How much interest is there in following something like this? I've had some
startup ideas I've been mulling around with for years and finally decided to
jump in head first. One thought that crossed my mind was writing a blog
detailing my progress, obstacles, thoughts, etc throughout the process. I feel
like, whether successful or a failure, the process would be interesting and
useful to others. Any thoughts on this? Anything you'd like to see
specifically covered?

------
anguslong
Looking forward to following behind the scenes on this. Saw the initial tweets
about WPEngine and mighty interested in the 'lessons learned' re: using social
for first block of customers.

From the comments: SmartBear's measuring initial success as $360k ebitda ($30k
a month). While arbitrary, seems a smart goal. Makes for a sustainable and
salable business (with room for a bit of R&D and bonus structure).

Oh, and Austin FTW.

------
peteforde
Curious whether the just-announced partnership between Microsoft and WordPress
will impact your new venture?

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1732761>

~~~
mikeleeorg
I was just about to ask the same question. If anything, this probably
legitimizes the WordPress platform for thousands of small business owners -
the very people who could be WPEngine customers.

If they were on the tipping point of this platform ("It's open source? Is it
safe? I don't know if I can trust it."), they may be tipping now. ("Ah,
Microsoft uses it. It must be safe.")

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mdolon
I think <http://www.wpwebhost.com/> will likely be your biggest competitor
(next to WP.com), however they seem more like a standard host that just
installs WP for you.

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flacon
Great Article! Obscene title. Best of luck with it.....

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crux_
Startups: Not For Women.™

