Doing the Cramba

Before I talk about cramba.com first let me provide some background information. Looking forward – if I’m to be open honest discussing my hopes and dreams, then first I need to look back and explain my motivations.

Background

I’m a technologist, a geek, I love coding and all things Internet. I eat breath and sleep the Internet (its not a healthy diet). Probably too much, it interferers with my family life, my social life and other soul enriching community activities; but its my passion and its pays the mortgage, what’s a man to do? I’ve been building web sites/applications since 1995 (where did my 32′ waste-line and the last 15 years go).

Early on on my career I set-up a web design business (who hasn’t). We developed all kinds of fun (and not so fun) projects: ‘U-Update’ a e-commerce CMS, a web version of ‘Young Musician of the Year’, and ‘Monitor’ a Risk Management Information System, to name a few. While sometimes frustrating, I learnt many important lessons. The biggest lesson was understanding the customer. When I say customer I don’t necessarily mean the person with chequebook, but rather the end user of the website. As Obi-Wan might say: Courtenay ‘be the end user’ – this is where eating and breathing the Internet comes in handy. Now, I know that all business say they put the customer first (the mechanical voice tells you so when you’re on hold ;- ), but truly understanding the customer is hard. This is probably why so many businesses do a poor job of it.

In 2004 I got involved with an internet start-up. When I joined the company they were a bunch of health professionals/educationalists with rag tag IT systems. Working as part of a tight core team, we moved mountains. For my part, I overhauled their IT systems gave them a fresh lease of life. Soon after we launched the new website the company was purchased. Under the control of our new owners (they called themselves this – made me feel like a dog ;- ), I was quickly promoted, I got to spread my wings and manage other departments. I loved working in Marketing (2008), when your efforts make a visible difference to the bottom line it is very gratifying; but I could see a worrying trend. When I left in 2010 the company was no longer run by doctors for doctors but ran by marketeers with one part time Doctor on staff. The result was a glossy website chocked full of smiling models and corporate mumbo jumbo telling users what they need. The hypocrisy of this corporate double speak (and the bureaucracy) was one of the biggest motivating factors for me to leave my well paid management position and start my own company.

Phase One: iPassExam

My wife and I set-up iPassExam.com an on-line revision service for PPC experts looking to get qualified as a Google professional. We write questions in the style and format of the exam and host them on our platform so exam candidates can come and test themselves as a formative learning experience. Our system categorises all questions by the exam syllabus so our customers can see what their areas of strength and weakness are and adjust their reading accordingly. The questions are interactive: select your preferred answer and hit the mark button and you’ll get instant feedback so you can see what the correct/incorrect options are as well an an explanation that outlines what options are distracters, etc. Good explanations also provide links for further reading on the topic. We also graph which options other members selected (like ask the audience in reverse). These graphs allow the user to gauge whether their thinking is out of line with their peers.

I can often be found answering support requests at 1am (being obsessive isn’t conducive to sleep). I love the challenge of a demanding customer. Sometimes I waiver, get annoyed and want to lash out at them. Its hard not to when you’ve put your heart and sole into something, when you eat, breath and nurture your baby only to be told by someone that your pride and joy is dog ugly. I think people either forget or don’t realise that at the end of a little text box on a website there’s often a real human being. What balances this frustration is – when I get a response to my reply most people are very apologetic. When they realise that their midnight rant fuelled by a last minute panic before their exam was actually read they feel embarrassed and generally follow that up with: “I had no idea until I done the exam just how much your site prepared me, thank you”. Then I’ll be on a high again all the more determined to make a go of it. There are always those who don’t prepare and are looking for short-cuts or are just out for you. That’s why we offer a money back guarantee, no quibbles – we don’t want you money if you begrudge giving it to us.

Growth has been good, fuelled by our growing product range, every month we brought on a new exam revision resource until we covered all the google exams. Now we are left with the question, what next?