Three years, lots of learning and getting ready to launch - transcript

Three years, lots of learning and getting ready to launch – transcript

By Fiona Boyd |

This post is a transcript of an interview between David Broughton, founder of www.mypet247.c0m and Fiona Boyd – 3 years and lots of learning.

Fiona Boyd: Today I’m going to talk to a client David and I have been consulting with in recent times, and we’re catching up with him at a really interesting time for him – that is, just before he launches his first online business. David Broughton has run several offline businesses, in the beauty and the tourism space, and soon he’ll be launching a new online social network for pets and pet lovers, called mypet247.com. Welcome today, David.

David Broughton: Hello Fiona, thank you.

Fiona: Firstly, you’ve got several offline businesses under your belt, what is it that’s got you motivated to try an online business, and then how come an online social network?

David: Okay, with the offline business, as everyone knows, it’s extremely hard to reach a mass audience obviously unless you’re dealing with budgets and a big new idea. And I just saw the idea of being able to reach a large audience and something that I could possibly scale, if it was to happen, it’d be something I’d be interested in.

Fiona: Tell me about the journey so far. What have been the ups and downs for you?

David: Okay… having never ventured into the IT world before, other than a basic website for the business, it’s been very interesting. Offline, I know what I’m touching and feeling. In the virtual world, it’s very hard for me to get a grasp of what’s real and not real, and to know exactly where we’re heading.

Fiona: What is the business that you run now? And what are some of the things you do in the management and decision-making that transfer across to an online model?

David: Okay… at the moment, I’m in the tourist sector, so it’s very bricks and mortar, that’s why the venture into IT is a little bit different for me. In terms of management, I guess it’s still reasonably the same, in the sense that the business always has to make money, or its end goal is to make profit. So in that sense, you can transfer some ideas across. But I’m dealing with a whole new world for me, a whole new concept, so it’s very interesting and exciting.

Fiona: Could you tell me one thing that is new for you – that’s a new skill?

David: Trying to translate the jargon, for a start. Dealing with a lot of people and they’re speaking in a language, technical terms that they assume that I understand. So that’s been good. And just the whole process from start to finish, particularly with a social or community networking website, it’s a lot bigger than a standard two or three page brochure.

Fiona: When you started mypet247, it would have been a side project to your tourism business and I’m just wondering, because you had a main business at the time, what were your expectations for it back then?

David: We started three years ago, and back then, I just hoped that we’d get it finished, and get it up in a short space of time, and that the community would accept it. I didn’t, and I still don’t, have any grand visions, or anything like that. It’s just a day by day… I just wanted to put out a good product that would benefit the people in the pet community.

Fiona: So, if that’s the case, have those expectations changed at all across the three years? Because you’re really deep into it now, launch is imminent, and you’re three years in – have those expectations changed?

David: Yes, I equate – it’s a bit like, back to the bricks and mortar model. I started off building a one-bedroom unit. As it’s turned out, we’re now building a 30-storey apartment building. So the expectations of what I can offer, or what the community website can offer, have obviously grown exponentially. At the start, it was just going to be a place where people come and feel comfortable, on a very basic level, because that was my thinking, then, of what I could do in the development. But, three years on, the idea is still there to provide a nice community feeling, but the services and space is going to be a lot larger for people. So hopefully they accept that.

Fiona: Just tell me about you yourself. Are you a pet lover, or is this just a cynical gap in the market that you’ve identified and you think that you’re going to make a zillion out of it?

David: I have two small dogs who are more part of the family – children, you might even say. So it’s certainly not just a money-making exercise or something like that. The ideas spawned from my dogs, Penny and Mate, so that’s where it really grew and came from. I couldn’t find a space that provided me everything that I would like to access as a pet owner, and therefore I started looking into developing it myself.

Fiona: Lots of people say the best businesses come out of your own need that you’ve identified. Are you hoping that this gets big because a lot of other people have that need?

David: Yeah I do. I think the industry as a whole, the pet industry, and pet ownership is something that’s growing at quite a steady rate, and I feel that I’ve built the space to provide features and facilities that I would want, and also asking and doing research on what other people would like, without the focus or the drive being to put it out there to make money. You’re not going to see heaps of ads, or all this type of thing, all the time in your face. You’re going to see content and features, and any feedback we’re getting from the members, we’ll try our hardest to implement as quickly as possible.

Fiona: So you’re saying it’ll be more content heavy than ad heavy on the mypet site?

David: Correct. Obviously, as with any business, there’ll have to be a certain amount of advertising, but it’s not going to be in your face, it’s not going to be the driver of the site. We feel the success will come from the joy and the repeat business we get from the community, and the sense of logging on, and actually creating activity and a bit of buzz on the site.

Fiona: You’ve run other businesses so I would think that you’ve scoped your competition relatively comprehensively. What differences will, let’s say a member who’s joining mypet247 have compared to say one of your competitors, Dogster, which has been around for quite some time?

David: Sure. The difference that I found that we may be able to provide that some of our competitors don’t, is that our site caters for all pet types. That in itself isn’t unique, there are other sites out there that do that, however, being a dog owner, if we have a member who specifically wants to view only one type of pet type, we have a feature called Pet Choice which we invented, you might say, that allows you to customise the site. So you could select that maybe you just want to view dog and cat content, and essentially the site then just becomes a cat or dog site from your viewpoint. So that was one feature I couldn’t really find a site that allowed me to do that.

Fiona: Can you have all the pet choices? Is that an option?

David: Correct. To start with, just because of, from a programming point of view, we have four main categories; dogs, cats, fish and birds. If you have a pet that falls not in one of those categories, we have other pet types, and once we have a significant amount of members, we will also add those types in as well.

Fiona: Several hundred crocodiles means that crocodiles will get a category…

David: Well let’s hope it may happen, who knows.

Fiona: And, David, I was just wondering, because you did mention that technology is not your background, that you’ve had to manage, basically a really big technology project. Mypet247 is a full social networking website. Tell me a bit about that – that’s a really new skill set, isn’t it? The project management of a big technology project.

David: It certainly is, because you’re starting off at zero base, you might say. I was actually thinking maybe less than zero, if that’s possible. In the sense that it wasn’t my background in terms of study, it’s not a business myself or any of my friends had been in before, I had zero contacts to start with. So, with that, you’re going to run into a few issues and headaches along the way. But I’ve found that even whilst even at the time, some of the brick walls I ran into seemed unclimbable, overall they’ve probably actually helped the process and my learning of the industry. So, would I take back some of those mistakes I may have made? I probably wouldn’t, actually. Because they’ve got me where I am today.

Fiona: All learning has a cost, doesn’t it, to get there?

David: It does.

Fiona: Well, look, your launch is imminent, congratulations on sticking with it for three years and good luck going forward beyond that, David. Thanks for your time today.

David: Thanks, Fiona.

Fiona: And I’ve been speaking to David Broughton, who’s soon to launch his first online venture after doing several offline ventures, and it’s called mypet247, it’s an online social network for pets and pet lovers. Stay tuned, because it’ll launch soon.

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