A reflection on the last few years…
Wow, have the last couple of years been incredible. It has had its ups and downs, but I thought I’d take a minute to reflect on some things from the past, and talk about moving forward, as we approach 2012, I want to make everything clear.
First off, I’d like to make myself accesible to anyone who wants to reach out, if you have a question or just want to say Hi, the best way to reach me is by email, here. I’d just like to say, I love reading the emails I do get, however, I get a lot, so give me time if it takes a while to respond.
I started in on this incredible journey, in about 2007 and what an awesome journey it’s been so far, I’ve met people I never thought I would meet, I’ve solved problems I never thought I would solve and I’ve accomplished more personally, than I ever thought I would. — Of course this isn’t a fairy tale, it hasn’t been without its problems. I made some mistakes in the past, and I’ll go into that right now.
When this all started, I was young, hell, I still am young. I still have a lot of learning and a lot of growing to do. Over the last few years, I’ve on occasion, been poor at communicating with the people who have attributed most to my success — independant software developers. If you don’t know what an independant software developer is, grab your iPhone, iPad, Android, Mac, PC or Windows Phone, check out all those incredible apps. The majority of those are made by these indie devs. I know, those guys are awesome.
On a large promotion in the past (called Vote Bundle) we had some serious issues with PayPal, we had an incredibly successful sale, and sold a lot of software in partnership with these developers. It was awesome. However, we had a problem, PayPal decided to limit our account, and hold the funds, we negotiated and negotiated with PayPal, yet nothing no budge no sympathy we were stuck. For the most part, the involved developers were understanding but after repeated attempts (and months passed) at trying to get PayPal to pay the money that was ours, all we were hit with were more delays. Understandably, the developers started to get angry.
This lead to a few of them blaming me entirely, I’m not saying I wasn’t partly to blame, we should have done more pre-planning with PayPal to ensure this wouldn’t happen. Although in my defence, I didn’t even know this could happen, let alone it actually happening to me. — Some of these developers were pretty vocal about what happened, and I completely understood their frustration, I was as frustrated as they were, but there was nothing that could have been done.
Fast forward a few weeks, and after repeated phone calls and several attempts to get higher up the PayPal food chain, we managed to get most of the money released. We were finally able to pay the developers everything they were owed, and the situation was resolved. Although, some of those post still remain online, I’m glad, regardless of what the developers said at the time, that this was resolved.
After that came the mistakes that were my fault. I do try my very hardest at what I do, to keep everyone happy and to still have great deals for everyone involved. Myself, the developers and the consumers. Unfortunately, during one promotion earlier this year, I let personal issues get in the way of business, and this caused me to neglect my corporate duties and we were 2 weeks late paying some developers for a promotion we’d ran. That one, is completely my fault, all I can do is apologize for that, and assure you all that it’ll never happen again.
We’ve made mistakes before, but we’re trying not to again, here’s what we’ve implemented to make sure everything is clear, and everyone is paid on time.
- Standard deal agreements for everyone we run deals with. Indicating clearly and concisely the terms of the agreement and the payout schedule.
- An industry standard 70/30 payout split, where the developer payment is split into two parts, 70% paid within 30 days of the end of the promotion, the remaining 30% paid within another 30 days. This allows us to protect everyone involved. The developers get the bulk of their payment quickly, the company is protected from any customer chargebacks, and the customer is protected by allowing us to always have the funds available to process refunds in a timely mannar.
- Automated tracking and management systems for payments in and accounts payable. — We never had this before, and the majority of the issues for us were caused by organizational issues, with the masses of data that we go through.
I’ve also had the following things implemented to protect our customers, and to make sure they’re completely happy with everything our daily deals services are offering.
- Secure payments by PayPal. — Although we mentioned that this was an issue in the past, we’ve upgraded our accounts and we’ve paid PayPal reserve funds to ensure our PayPal account is always open. PayPal is the safest method of payment for consumers, which is why we want to use it. One of the most important things, is that the people who use our services are protected.
- We’re always approachable. — In the transition from Mac Bundle Box to Get Dealy, we decided we needed to put customer support at the forefront of our company. We’re always reachable by email (support@getdealy.com) and you can send a reply to any email sent by Get Dealy (including automated ones) and get a reply from a real human. We get a lot of email, but we’re working on getting our response time right down.
- The “Purchases” page. When we moved from Mac Bundle Box to Get Dealy, we realised everything was segmented, no one had access to their previous purchases and it meant more email and slower responses from us. So with Get Dealy, we automatically store purchases in your account, and you can access them at future dates if you need to.
So thats my mistakes and how we’re trying to fix them, but we’ve done a lot of great things over the past few years too.
Mac Bundle Box donated 10% of its profit to various charities on most of the promotions it ran, and we’re working with a top charity now to get this implemented for all purchases on Get Dealy.
We transitioned Mac Bundle Box into Get Dealy and started offering not only incredible deals on Mac software but deals on Creative resources and now deals on materials for Learning and Education. We grew it from about 8,000 to over 65,000 active users in just 6 months.
Every day I learn how to do my job better, and I thank everyone for their feedback along the journey. I’ve made mistakes, everyone does, but I’ve rectified every mistake I’ve made, and continues to try and build something incredible, and it could never have been done without the support of our amazing team, Andrew, Harrison, Matt, Mike and Rachel. Thanks for your support over the last few years (or months, depending on how long you’ve been working with us) and for your dedication to not only Get Dealy, but to the enterprise as a whole.
I’m going to continue doing what I’m doing, I’ll probably make more mistakes, but I’ll learn from them, and grow as a person, becoming better at what I do with everything I do. Each mistake, error or correction I have to make means this organization becomes stronger as a whole.
I hope anyone who decides to read this will support it in growing. Remember, don’t always believe what you read, because there’s always more to every story. If you read something about me, it could be true or it could be false. I’m going to make the rest of 2011, and the rest of my life, about being the best me I can be. Got a question, want me to clarify something, email me, or grab me in person. I’ll be attending a bunch more events over 2012, so I’ll be in various cities around the world. Drop me an email, and send me a tweet, if you want to grab coffee.
Sidenote: It’s late, and this is a one-draft post, so please excuse any spelling errors and/or gramatical mistakes.
