Jason Cohen
In this show, Bob and Pat interview serial startup founder Jason Cohen. Jason shares with us and you exactly how he did the market research for his latest startup (and our new WordPress awesome hosting service) WPEngine.com, how to price, the challenges of growing a successful startup, the realities of what people want, how to compete with free, and more.
This is one of our longer shows (about 56 minutes), but it’s absolutely one of the best shows, thanks to Jason’s insight, experience and passion. Jason’s blog, A Smart Bear, is a must-read for aspiring startup founders.
(Note: The Startup Success Podcast is currently in reruns. This was show #52, an interview with the Silicon Valley insider and visionary, Sramana Mitra, originally released December 20, 2010.)
Tired of being stuck in neutral in your startup? Why not do a MicroConsult with Bob Walsh? Instead of hypotheticals and too much information, Bob will work with you for an hour via Skype developing 8 to 10 specific todos that will get your startup in gear. Details at 47hats.com.
Play it now!
Download Show #146 here: Show #146 Or if you prefer, Subscribe to the podcast in Apple iTunes.
Bob Walsh blogs at 47Hats, is on Twitter at http://twitter.com/bobwalsh or you can email him at bob.walsh@47hats.com.
Patrick Foley blogs at PatrickFoley.com, is on Twitter at http://twitter.com/patrickfoley or you can email him at patrick.foley@microsoft.com
URLs mentioned/relevant to this show:
- WPEngine. Highly recommended!
- A Smart Bear Blog site.
- Vetting a startup (or two): The systematic birth of @WPEngine
- Jason on Twitter.
If your website is mission-critical, you simply cannot gamble with WPEngine. WPEngine will regularly make changes to your website:
– without your permission
– without telling you what they are doing in advance
– without telling you what they did after the fact
– without checking their work
– without apologizing for their coding errors that cause crashes and downtime
The 4-5 months my website was with WPEngine were the worst in the company’s five-year history. On no less than three separate occasions, WPEngine managed to crash my site. I had more downtime, more hassles, more frustration and more B.S. than I had experienced with all my previous webhosts combined. It was a constant nightmare — hours and hours spent arguing with them and cleaning up messes they left behind. I estimate that between the crashes and 150+ hours of lost productivity, my overall site traffic for 2012 will be 7.5% less than it should have been. Working with WPEngine was a HUGE distraction and massively disruptive.
WPEngine is autocratic. As a “managed webhost,” they feel they are entitled to do whatever they want to your site, whenever they want — without warning and without empathy. The only thing more stunning than their arrogance is the lack of technical chops they display. Despite being touted as “knowledgeable WP experts,” their technicians can’t get one thing right. They can’t integrate a SSL certificate without completely f-ing up your database. Heck, they couldn’t even make a simple change to 5 lines of code without crashing my site for 18 hours.
If you run a simple website that gets modest traffic, AND you don’t know much about WordPress, AND it doesn’t matter if your website goes down for a few days here or there, then go ahead and take your chances with WPEngine. For my website, WPEngine was the worst mistake I’ve ever made. Don’t buy into all the hype.
I know there are some folks out there who will assume that I am a WP moron with cruddy plugins and a messy theme — not the case. If you are a site admin considering WPEngine and would like to discuss my experience, please feel free to contact me. I’ll do whatever I can to spare others from the pain and suffering WPEngine inflicts.