Learn to Duck

Not sure if you caught the latest news, but my company Graphic.ly, raised some money and will launch soon (*cough* like Tuesday night at CES. *cough*)

I agonized over the launch, because the product is just not ready. There are parts it that I would love to have better developed. It would be great to have more content. It’d be amazing to have a group of users ready to go.

But, in the middle of all the agonizing, I realized something. And it came in this question:

“Who are we building this company for?”

After all, none of us has 20 years in the comic industry. None of us are heavy collectors. None of us (at least so far) are women, or young, or any of the thousands of other characteristics that make up the comic community.

But, what we have in common with the comic community is we all love comic books and the art of visual storytelling. We love talking about the stories and characters.

The next question I posed myself was “Why do I think we know what comic book publishers, creators and readers want?”

I have spent a lot (i mean A LOT) of time talking to publishers, creators and readers. In many ways, what they want from a company like Graphic.ly is the same, but in truth, they all want very different things. Since I am not a publisher or creator, I referred myself to question number one.

Finally, after a fair amount of pondering, it finally hit me.

We need to give the company to the community.

Graphic.ly is not built to be a store. Will it have digital comics and associated merchandise to sell? Of course. Graphic.ly is not built to just be a comic book reader. Is ours best in class? Id be lying if I didnt think it was.

But more than anything, Graphic.ly is a place. Its a place where you go to do something you love. You read comic books and graphic novels. You talk to your friends, and on occasion, you talk to your friends about comics.

Its the people. Its the people that will make Graphic.ly great.

Then why not give the company to the people? Why not give people the ability to not only suggest features and books and all the various things that will make Graphic.ly just such a place?

So thats just what we did. We gave the company to the community.

We are launching a bare bones version of the application. Much of it will work, but there will be lots of broken parts. The store will suck. The selection of comic books will be bleak.

I know this.

But, if we are truly going to get the community involved, we need them involved early and often. We need them now.

We are going to build collaboration tools. In talking with my friends at Napkin Labs, who are focused on helping large companies be more innovative, we are going to work with them to bring those tools to our community. We are going to build feedback tools that offer a clear feedback loop. Initially, we will use tools like Google Moderator, GetStatisfaction and ZenDesk, but Im guessing we will build some ourselves, once we learn how best to serve the community.

People who submit feature ideas or innovations, if those features or innovations are selected by the community for potential inclusion, will probably be asked to join our product meetings to make sure we are developing it correctly.

Yup, the community will physically be part of the development process.

We will provide complete transparency where features are, when they are going to be released, and will recognize the original community member who came up with the idea in the first place.

We are giving our company to the community.

Its more than just the engineering effort.

Because we will, in essence, work for our community, we are instituting a few ideas that, frankly, I stole from some friends. We will host office hours like Etsy does, and I will host office hours, like my friend Jason Fried does at 37signals. Here is my phone number 720-231-7120. If I can, I will answer it. If I dont, leave a message. Ill get right back to you. Or, you can tweet me @micah. I do travel a lot, so I will be the first to apologize if it takes a bit for me to get back to you, boss. We will have town halls and other meetups. Whatever the community needs to keep in touch with us.

Its more than just my phone number.

We have hired Jon Stump as our Community Collaborator. His job is not to “manage” the community, but to be part of it. We already have him wandering around Boulder in a cape. Perhaps the community can make up other fun ways to keep Jon busy.

I have also changed my title. Rather than just be CEO, my title is Chief Community Caretaker and CEO. Why caretaker? Well, my job is two fold. First, my job is to be caretaker of our community (not to drive it, change it, mold it, manage it, but to care for it) and I am responsible for the health and growth of the business. Every decision I make, I will ask myself this question: “Is it good for the community and good for the business?” If its not for either, then I will truly question the decision. (Does that mean everyone will like every decision I make? I sure hope to hell not. :) )

We are giving our company to our community completely.

While not all decisions on features and product roadmap will be made by the community, but the majority will. Will we do it right? Probably not. Will we make silly mistakes? Most definitely. But, thats the beauty of community. If we do it together, we cant but win.

Here’s the keys. They are pretty shiny since we just got them. Fire ‘er up, and lets go.