Sutori: Blast Radius goes to work for customers as well as clients

I was finally introduced to Sutori this week by a friend that works at Blast Radius, a digital agency with Canadian offices in Vancouver and Toronto. Sutori is a site that lets people rate products they buy and encourages corporations to participate and react to the feedback.

Sutori in their own words:

We believe that today’s customers have more power than ever. Power to make informed choices. To connect with each other and share unbiased advice, opinions and stories.

We’ve created Sutori to channel that power. To capture the stories that bind us all together in our shared lives as customers. And to make it easy for companies to listen to and learn from those stories.

Sutori was created by a small team at Blast Radius, and from what I can gather it was built on company time. I’ve always respected Blast from a distance for their commitment to innovation, good management and honesty. I’ve lost count how many times I’ve been told stories by current and past employees about how great their policies are and what a good working environment they have created. In fact, when I was editor at Dose magazine we wrote a story about what a great place Blast is to work.

But Sutori looks like a cool initiative even for a company like Blast.

The idea that the world is a different place now and that customers can talk back to corporations seems to be, unfortunately, still a pretty novel concept in the advertising world. Blast have obviously come to terms with this and have decided to create a dialog not just between their clients and customers, but between anyone and any corporation who will listen.

I hope that Blast are encouraging their clients to participate to Sutori: to listen to what customers like and what they don’t like about their products, and to react accordingly. I think that this will not only be the key to success for Blast’s clients, but also the key for Sutori. Sutori needs to be a place for customers to organize their opinions and then get corporations to listen, not just a place to complain. If they can achieve this then I think Sutori will gain momentum and become a valuable tool for all of us and all of the corporations who market to us.

I wish them the best of luck.

Appendix (can a blog post have an appendix?):

From Sutori’s FAQs here is a bit more info about them:

What is Sutori?

On Sutori, you can rate companies by posting stories about your experiences with them.

Each story is accompanied by a “goodwill rating”, which contributes to the goodwill meter—an aggregated view of how the Sutori community feels about each company.

When other users read your story, they have the option of leaving a comment or voting to agree or disagree with you.

To reflect the power of consensus, stories with many “agree” votes have a stronger impact on the goodwill meter. Similarly, stories with many “disagree” votes have less of an impact.

In addition to a centralized goodwill meter where companies can track how customers feel about them and why, Sutori also includes a mechanism whereby companies can post official responses to any story.

You can also check out the Sutori blog here.

Grindhouse double feature

Tarantino and Rodriguez know movie prices are out of control. Grindhouse, which is out on April 6th, is a double bill – ‘two great movies for the price of one”. It’s like movie madness without the cinema hopping or the chance of being thrown out. Nice one fellas.

I am a thief

Some time in the last 5 years the price of going to the movies went completely out of control. My wife and I can easily blow $40-50 on a movie and a few snacks and in my mind that just isn’t right.

So, how do you change this picture and get better value?

One way is to search out the smaller, independent cinemas and go there instead. They’re usually a lot cheaper and if you pick the right one they are often playing that great alternative film you have been meaning to see for ages (Manufactured Landscapes anyone?).

The other way is to bend your morals and steal your way to better value! (the option I’ve been choosing more and more often). Now every time I go to a big cinema chain I turn my single ticket into a double bill. Pan’s Labyrinth followed by Letters From Iwo Jima, or Children of Men followed by Casino Royal.

It’s a pretty simple trick. Do some research and find a couple of movies you like that are playing right after each other, buy a ticket to the first one and after the film just wander next door for movie number two!

The one hassle is finding two films playing back to back that you actually want to see. So, I was chuffed when my friend Dre sent through a link to this little app. Movie Madness lets anyone in the US or Canada create the perfect double, triple or quadruple bill movie line up by just entering your postcode and selecting your local cinema. For example, the site tells me that today I could check out 4 films in a row at Famous Players Paramount cinema in Toronto with no more than a 10 minute wait between movies. Nice.

So, go out and steal your way to good movie value my friends. Happy watching!

Google is watching you

This is a little spooky. Check it out for yourself here.

Week one: announce company. Week two: hiring.

In classic startup style we’re already hiring at GigPark ;).

This going to be a busy (and extremely exciting) summer for Paul, Noah and I so to help us along the way we’ve decided to recruit a developer. All three of us believe in giving opportunities to young people so ideally we’d like to find a talented student for this role.

Here is the job posting:

Build a web application in Ruby on Rails this summer: GigPark is hiring a Developer

Who are we?
GigPark is an early stage startup based in Toronto (www.gigpark.com). We’re made up of three entrepreneurs who have collectively launched web applications, a communications company and the national newspaper, Dose.

What are we looking for?
Someone with a passion for the web.
Do you build web applications in your spare time and contribute to open source software projects? – we’re looking for you! Experience with Ruby on Rails would be great but it’s not essential, especially if you have had experience in a variety of other languages (experimenting tells us you are passionate and able to learn!).
We’d love to see a demo app that you have built.

What will you get out of it?
> Mentorship from a very experienced developer.
> A supportive and exciting startup environment.
> The chance to work on and release version one of our application.
> A competitive salary and a comfy chair.

We’re looking forward to meeting you!

Paul, Pema and Noah.

For more information: http://blog.gigpark.com
To apply: jobs@gigpark.com

We think this is a great opportunity for a young developer to hone their skills and learn about the process of building and releasing software in a startup environment.

I would be very grateful if you could forward this posting to any groups you think might be interested and help us spread the word.

Beautiful New Zealand

In the middle of the Canadian winter when I sometimes say I miss living in New Zealand, this is what I am talking about.

This is a photo from a friend, Ebony, taken at Palmers Beach on Great Barrier Island. Beautiful.

Joost

Anyone need an invite to join the Joost beta? I have one left.

Drop me a line at the email address on the right(——->).

UPDATE: All gone now I’m afraid. I’ll make sure I post when I have some more invites.

Das Park Hotel

I think by now you are probably starting to get a feel for my taste in architecture ;).

I came across Das Park Hotel today via this blog. If you find yourself in Ottensheim – in the summer! – this place looks like a fun experiment.

Introducing GigPark

Today I’m excited to tell you a little bit about the startup that Noah, Paul and I are busy building:

What’s it called?
GigPark

What will GigPark do?
GigPark will help you:
> recommend your favorite service providers to friends and family
> instantly get service recommendations from people you trust
> build your service business through word-of-mouth

Who will use GigPark?
You, we hope.

People like you and I will be able to quickly and easily tell all of our friends about our favorite service providers: our wonderful hairdresser, accountant or interior designer. And when we’re looking to hire a new service provider, we’ll be able to see if our friends recommend anyone. Better service recommendations from people we trust will mean we all receive better service.

If you are a service provider, GigPark will help you attract new customers by amplifying all of the great word of mouth already generated by your happy existing customers.

Why are we building GigPark?
Because we love great service and we believe great service providers should be celebrated and rewarded.

Why did we choose the name?
Well, a gig is a fun name for a job or a service you provide, and what better place than a park to share recommendations with your friends about great gigs? Makes perfect sense, doesn’t it?


In the future you can check out the GigPark blog (looking a little sparse at the moment ;)) for more news and, in a few months, invitations to give GigPark a try before we release it to the public.

This is only the first step on a long road for GigPark but I’d like to thank everyone who has helped us so much already. Thanks for the advice, the thoughtful critiques and the encouragement.



More lessons about pricing

A follow up to the post about pricing yesterday:

First Round Capital had a great post on their blog, Redeye, about the pricing challenge. They say that convincing a customer to part with the first penny, and pay anything at all for your service, is the hardest thing you will ever do….

Most entrepreneurs fall into the trap of assuming that there is a consistent elasticity in price – that is, the lower the price of what you’re selling, the higher the demand will be.

The truth is, scaling from $5 to $50 million is not the toughest part of a new venture – it’s getting your users to pay you anything at all. The biggest gap in any venture is that between a service that is free and one that costs a penny.