Small Town, Big Ideas

Tweets for Today

• 14:57 I'm in San Antonio for the next two weeks. The Drury is my home away from home these days. #
• 21:44 Listened to "The Dip" yesterday by Seth Godin. You need to quit things if you if you want to be the best in the world at something else. #
• 21:46 Looks like I picked the party time of the year to be in San Antonio: fiesta-sa.org #
• 21:53 @kr8tr I'm around for two weeks. Propose a couple of times and we'll figure it out. #
• 21:59 @kr8tr Email me and let's set something up - pat@ #
• 22:02 Upgrading to Exchange 2007 on your own sounds complex and expensive - tinyurl.com/5842zr - yikes! #

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Tweets for Today

• 09:45 @bboebel AOL bought Netscape for billions. That's not too bad. ;-) #

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Look Up, We're Hiring!

We recently hired two Virginia Tech students to help us find creative ways to spread the word about some of the jobs we're looking to fill here in Blacksburg. Here is a picture of the first project they pulled off. Pretty creative, I must admit!

My Parent Company is [Finally] Blogging

Rackspace launched a corporate blog today. I'm really happy to see this. Rackspace is a great company and I think they need a stronger voice in the industry. Blogging should help.

Here is the feed to plug into your RSS reader if you want to subscribe.

The Name Change: from Webmail.us to Mailtrust

Last week we announced that we've changed our name from Webmail.us to Mailtrust. Naming a business is an incredibly hard thing to do (coming up with a name is actually easy—coming up with the right name is the challenge). So I figured that giving the details behind our name change would make for a good blog post. Hopefully this will provide some good insight into why we changed our name and how we came up with the new one.

The first challenge in the naming process was coming to the realization that we needed to change our name. Even though we knew our name was flawed, we spent a lot of time, money, and energy building our brand over the years. And all things considered, I think we did a pretty good job. We’re no Nike or Yahoo!, but in our industry, people know who we are. Starting from scratch seemed like a daunting move. But then one of my business mentors said something I will never forget. He said, "Pat, it's never too late to change a bad name." He's right. As soon as I heard him say that, I never looked back.

The Old Name and Its Weaknesses
- Over the last few years, "webmail" became a generic term. For some reason, I thought this would help our cause. But the opposite happened. It caused confusion on many levels. When it comes to marketing and branding, confusion is really bad. For example, locally, everyone thought we were Virginia Tech Webmail. Since it seems that most students hate VT Webmail, this didn't really help our recruiting efforts. On a broader level, whenever I would tell someone that I work for "Webmail" or that they should consider "Webmail" as their email host, the responses I would get were "Oh, I've heard of Webmail," or "Oh, we already use webmail!" I always knew they were mistaken but it got so annoying that I just stopped correcting people. In a way it was pretty cool because everyone thought they had heard of my company. I was sort of a rock star wherever I went!

- The .us extension hurt us a lot. When we first bought the domain name for Webmail.us, I thought .us extensions would really take off. But the reality is, your everyday Internet surfer only thinks ".com." And since we called ourselves "Webmail," everyone would type "Webmail.com" in his or her Internet browser. I have even watched our employees do this so I know tons of people outside the company did it too. Lucky for Webmail.com people who make a killing by running pay-per-click ads on the Webmail.com landing page. The bottom line for all you Internet entrepreneurs out there: find a .com name—it really makes a difference.

- Finally, we felt that "Webmail" doesn't sound business-class enough and just didn't do a good job of displaying our commitment to business-class email. It sounds consumer-ish, like Gmail, Hotmail, or Fusemail.

The New Name and Its Strengths
Once we decided that we were going to go for it, the quest for the new name began. We put together a small task force to start the process. We locked ourselves in our big conference room for hours at a time, brainstorming, debating, and trying every possible method we could think of to come up with the perfect name. Finally, during one of these sessions in San Antonio, we came up with Mailtrust—and it stuck. Here is why:

- We thought long and hard about why our customers buy from us. The reoccurring theme that kept surfacing was "trust." With email being such a mission critical communication tool for businesses, businesses need to trust their email hosting company. And we felt that is exactly why we've been so successful over the years. Customers trust us.

- We thought long and hard about our competitive threats in the market place. We tried to figure out what truly makes us different and why our customers did buy from "us" instead of "them." Again, the trust component continued to emerge. For two reasons: first, we're a specialist. People tend to trust specialists more than generalists because specialists tend to be experts at what they do. And when it comes to email, businesses want to make sure that their email provider knows what they're doing. Second, our business model is very straightforward: we help businesses by hosting their email. We charge a fee for our services and we don't have any type of ulterior motive. Some of our competitors, on the other hand, host email so they can collect user data, learn as much as they can about their users, and make money from advertising to them.

- We want people to know that we're a specialist. Many people have criticized us for putting "mail" in our name because they believe it limits the markets that we can go into in the future. And they're right. But, we believe that keeping "mail" in the name demonstrates our commitment to email and we want everyone to see that commitment. Again, the fact that we're a specialist is what sets us apart and we want everyone to know that.

So there you have it. This is why we changed our name. Hopefully this name change will be the last one we ever have to do. Hopefully!

Other thoughts on the name change:

Bill Boebel: Update Your Links
Racklabs: New Look for a New Era in IT

Rackspace, One of the Best Places to Work in America

We decided to merge our business with Rackspace last year for many reasons. One of the biggest reasons was the fact that Rackspace was actually a place where we wanted to work (if this wasn't the case, it would have been an instant deal breaker). In fact, one of the questions that Bill, Kevin, and I constantly pondered during our "should we sell the business to them?" meetings we had throughout 2007 was, "do we really want to go work for them?" There are very few companies in this world that I could see myself working for, but Rackspace is different. When you walk into Rackspace headquarters in San Antonio, it feels remarkably similar to when you walk into our offices here in Blacksburg. We share the same vision, the same values, and we hire the same types of people. The end result is that our cultures end up being very similar, i.e. awesome! Although Rackspace is much bigger and a little more "corporate", you can tell it's a unique place to work. So it was no surprise to me when I found out that Rackspace is now ranked # 32 on Fortune's Best 100 Companies to Work for in America.

Now we've been recognized locally as the best technology company to work for in Southwest Virginia and nationally as one of best companies (of any kind) to work for in America. Congratulations to all of us. This is a huge honor and just a little more validation that joining forces was the right choice.

Here is a Rackspace video talking about the award.

Webmail.us + Rackspace: The Most Dominant Force in Business Email?

I think so! But maybe I'm a little biased.

As you may have seen, we announced today that we are merging with Rackspace. I am extremely pumped about joining forces with the Racker crew and continuing to build our business with such a great group of people. This is a really exciting time for our company, all of our people, our community, and our customers.

Inside Webmail, we have been positioning this as Phase II of our company history. We believe that during this phase the market is really going to open up, leaders are going to emerge, and followers are going to fall behind. We thought long and hard about how to make sure we're positioned to be the leader in our space and we feel that aligning with Rackspace is the answer.

One thing I want to be really clear about: this is by no means an exit strategy for any of us. Bill, Kevin, and I are super-driven and so is the rest of our team. We are as bullish as ever about where this industry is headed and the leadership role that's at stake.

The last few months have been an unbelievable time for me personally. I feel extremely privileged to be going through these times as an entrepreneur and I am excited to share my experiences with many of you in the coming months and years. Stay tuned!

If you would like to learn more about our merger with Rackspace, here are some helpful links:

The Webmail Blog: We have merged with Rackspace!

The Roanoke Times: Webmail gets ready to grow

Racklabs: Welcome Webmail!

News Channel 7 Video: More jobs coming to Blacksburg company

Rackspace: Webmail.us Joins the Rackspace Family

Read/Write/Web: Webmail.us Acquired by Rackspace

GigaOM: Rackspace Enters Small Biz Email Race

I will continue to update this post with more links to further coverage.

Inc. Magazine: Webmail.us is the 217th Fastest Growing Private Company in America

According to Inc. Magazine, we are the 217th fastest growing private company in America. This also makes us the fastest growing email specialist on the Inc. 500 list and the fastest growing business overall in Southwest Virginia.

We believe that email is the most critical business communication tool in the world and luckily, a growing number of businesses don't want to manage it themselves. They turn to us because we're a specialist—we're 100% focused on providing email services to businesses.

I can't express how proud I am of our team for this accomplishment. And we are obviously growing, so, if you want to join the fastest growing email specialist on the Inc. 500, the fastest growing company in Southwest Virginia, and one of the best places to work in this region, check us out.

Blacksburg: Low Cost, Lots of Jobs

According to this article on MSN, Blacksburg is one of the top 10 "places where the cost of living and unemployment are low and the number of jobs is growing steadily." Blacksburg is #8 on the list.

Here is an excerpt on Blacksburg and the surrounding areas:

Blacksburg, Christiansburg and Radford, Va.
This tri-city area, located in a cluster of small towns, is best known as the home of Virginia Polytechnic Institute (better known as Virginia Tech).

Blacksburg is the largest of the three communities and combines a small-town feel and college amenities with a beautiful setting in the Appalachian and Blue Ridge mountains. A pleasant climate and proximity to nearby Roanoke, with its excellent arts, commerce and health care, are perks. The wooded area lacks some big-city hustle and amenities, and is isolated from air service. But it has a low cost of living, with a median home price of only $197,800 and great outdoor recreation opportunities to boot.

This is great to see.

We are surely doing our best to contribute to the increase in jobs.

Spam... Outside of Your Inbox

Spam sucks. Everyone hates it. And unfortunately, when people think of spam, they think of email. I can't tell you the number of articles I've read in the last few years proclaiming that because of spam, email is useless and will soon be replaced by chat, text and instant messaging, wikis, blogs, RSS, social networking, and the list goes on. Now don't get me wrong... I believe in these other forms of communication. I have a blog, I use IM all day, I'm a text messaging freak, we now use Campfire for group chats, I read stuff on Wikipedia all the time, and I've got a LinkedIn profile and a MySpace page. But I'm noticing something... while my email spam continues to decline, spam from all of these other forms of new-age communication tools are on the rise. I get tons of trackback spam, comment spam, and more than anything, MySpace spam. And not only are they on the rise, but in many cases, they are trickier and more deceptive than the spams that do make it to my inbox. Check out this spam email I just got on my MySpace profile:

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Subject: Hey Pat

Body: How's it goin? I'm Kristy, I just moved to the Blacksburg area and I wanna meet a nice guy around here :-). I moved here to Virginia a couple of weeks ago for work and now that I'm here I have nobody to hang out with! I read your profile... You're cute and I liked what you had to say :-).

I'm 24/F/single and I'm lookin for a guy who is a little bit older or more mature than me. You say you're 30 and you're cute so I guess you're qualified :-)

My friend Jen from back home suggested I tried using myspace to meet people in my area. I just signed up and my profile sux hehe. I do have a blog/profile page at xxxxxxxxxxxxxx ... I have alot of photos and stuff up if you wanna see me.

I left you a personal msg on my homepage and I took a new pic for you today. Come check me out when you have a chance, k?

Lookin forward to seeyin ya,
Kristy

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This is unbelievable! This spammer (who is probably a guy running a porn shop out of his basement) knows my name, my age, the fact that I live in Blacksburg, the fact that I'm 30, the fact that I'm single... and that I'm cute (although I'm not sure that is a fact). Thanks MySpace!

Maybe email isn't so bad after all.

We Host Email for More Than 60,000 Businesses

We surpassed a huge milestone last month... we now host email for more than 60,000 businesses and more than a half million email users. All of these numbers represent paying customers as we focus specifically on business-class email and do not provide free email accounts to consumers like many of our competitors.

To put this in perspective, we hosted email for 10,000 businesses at the end of 2005 and 20,000 in June of 2006.

We Are One of the Best Places to work in Southwest Virginia

For the second year in a row, the Blue Ridge Business Journal named us one of the best places to work in Southwest Virginia. We work really hard to build an awesome culture at Webmail and we take a lot of pride in this type of recognition.

A business leader who I respect a lot asked me, "What's the secret sauce?"

Here was my response:

I think the key is to genuinely care about your people and the culture you build around them. I don't really believe there is a secret sauce though. I just think that most businesses don't genuinely care... and don't understand the value that gets created when you do build that culture.

In all reality, we work really hard on culture building. We don't always get it right and we're not doing close to what we want to be doing... but I definitely think we've built one of the best places to work in our region... and beyond. But don't take my word for it. Read some of our employee testimonials.

And by the way... we're hiring like crazy.

Netscape Founder on How to Hire Great People

Marc Andreessen, the guy who founded Netscape and several other really successful companies, has a great blog post on "how to hire the best people you've ever worked with". I agree with everything he says and I think that no matter how good you are at hiring, there are several things you can learn from this article. I like to think that we do most everything he writes about, but the reality is, we do not (but we need to). It's a long read, but worth it.

Does Google Care About their Customers?

Lew Moorman from Rackspace wrote a great article today about Google. He asks an interesting question: can Google continue to snub their customers? I think it's a great question and one I've been thinking about for a long time.

As a disclaimer, I try really hard not to be one of those people that hates on companies because they're big and successful. I might envy them, but I rarely have a true dislike. For example, I like Microsoft. I use their products every day and I don't see that ending, probably ever.

Google might be an exception to that rule, but I’m not sure yet. I admire (and envy) them in so many ways. I use Google search all the time and as a company, we spend a ton of advertising money with them every month. I love the culture they've built and I try to learn as much about how they do things as I can (and I'm not ashamed to try to emulate a lot of their successful initiatives). But there is one thing I just can't get over: they don't seem to care about their customers (some, like Lew, don't even think they consider advertisers customers).

Many people still don't realize how Google makes so much money. But shockingly, it's pretty simple. It goes like this: people use Google to search for stuff every day. It's become second nature to "google" for something you want to find on the web. And while more people search for more stuff, Google sells advertisements to companies that want to capture that search traffic. For example, we advertise when people are searching for anything having to do with email hosting. Rackspace wants to capture anyone searching for managed hosting. And eBay wants to capture as much traffic as they can since they sell just about everything under the sun.

With this brilliant model, Google has truly changed the business world. Literally millions of companies now leverage Google's advertising platform to attract new customers and grow their businesses. Millions of users search Google to find stuff everyday. This means that Google is growing like a weed. I'm not sure where they rank, but I know they're still one of the fastest growing companies in the world and their stock price is incredibly high.

But now that Google is so big and has so much money, they are going far beyond search. It seems like they are getting into just about everything. And they have every right to do whatever they want... right? But what happens when they start competing with their advertisers? Because its exactly what they're doing. Will their customers ultimately revolt?

Take eBay, for example. eBay spends hundreds of millions of dollars every year on Google ads. And what does Google do? They build competing products such as Google Base and Google Checkout (Checkout is really a competitor to PayPal which is owned by eBay).

But here is what I really have a tough time swallowing—Google has the ability to use its own advertising and distribution system to market the competing products and services (sounds like the same thing that used to get Microsoft in trouble with the government and probably still does). This creates more competition for companies that advertise with Google which does two really important things:

1. Additional competition means lower conversion rates for the advertisers (as long as some people buy from Google, they're taking conversions away from their advertisers).

2. Additional competition drives up the price of the ads (the Google ad system is based partly on how much companies are willing to pay for ads. The more you pay, the higher your ad comes up. It's a little more complicated than that, but the amount you pay definitely matters).

Google wins no matter what! Even if their products and services don't sell, they at least make everyone else pay them more to win customers. Unbelievable!

How long will they be able to pull this off and how many markets will they be able to do this to? I have no idea, but it's pretty scary to think about. It keeps me up at night, that's for sure. And I like seeing that a company as big as eBay got pissed off and did something about it—for now at least, they have stopped advertising with Google. Will Google get the message and do anything about it? Time will tell.

What do you think?

More on Recruiting

After my blog post yesterday in reference to the recruiting article in the Roanoke Times, an employee sent me the following email:

This confuses me a little bit. It almost seems like this "check everything you have out there and judge you by it" stuff doesn't really match our actual attitude. If you take 50% of the people that work here now and are great employees, and look at what they have on the Internet, they probably wouldn't get hired by the standard mentioned in that article.

I think it's a great point. In fact, I love it. Here was my response:

You bring up a good point.

But... I think it all depends on the judge. The reality is, most recruiters are going to look around to find out as much about you as they can. It's what they do with the info that [hopefully] sets us apart.

If I were giving advice to someone looking for a job, I would urge them to make sure their online profiles (websites, myspace pages, etc.) are professional (or at least aren't extremely unprofessional). Just like I would urge them to dress professionally for an interview (even though most people at our company wear t-shirts, jeans, and sandals). First impressions do matter. People will judge you even if its not company policy. And while we may not care about a lot of things that don't matter, most companies unfortunately do.

Note to employees: please make sure your online reflection doesn't represent you in a negative way. The last thing we need is another HR policy to follow. ;-)