Tuesday, March 21st, 2006

Marketing or Technology?

By , co-founder and CEO

It is very interesting to stop and think about which websites on the internet have excellent technology and which have perfect marketing. In many cases, a single company will not have both of these components. The reason for this is generally due to the skill-set or focus of the proprietors, lack of resources, or simply no need for the additional element. To this day, Box.net has always been considered a “marketing play” to people familiar with our technology, business model, and strategies. To offer some reference point, a service like Amazon’s S3 would be considered a technology play. A good friend of mine, Tim (are you reading this?), has always said that a company can only be one or the other: your product can only win because of its technology, or because of its marketing (pricing/features/design), but not both. This is a very interesting way of thinking about your business, and allows you to question where you stand from the very beginning. Because of this framing, we decided it would always be more important to budget heavily for things like PR, Marketing, Design, Customer service, etc. Due to our recent growth, however, we are coming upon a stage where it is important to focus on how our technology can become and remain excellent. I am referring to the less material aspects of our Box.net – nerdy things like fault tolerance and distributed storage. This is the side of our business you (as a user) never need to see. Of course their benefits will be visible in some capacity, whether it be our Sync software, partnerships, or mobile access. Without sounding too philosophical, a company like ours needs to innovate as well as communicate.

Here at BoxHQ, we’re very excited to have reinvented our image, and we hope to continue to surprise the internet with how cool online file storage can be. I am also happy to introduce the newest member of our team, Jeff, to our readers and users. Jeff will be helping to refocus our efforts on both the technology and marketing fronts. Feel free to shoot him a message at jeff@box.net.

Update: Seth Godin briefly explains that good technology gives you a shot at marketing. Thanks for the link, Caine!

Aaron Levie

By ,

co-founder and CEO

See all of Aaron's articles.

  • Shane Jones

    In many ways, I’d have to agree with your friend Tim. It’s not that you can’t be both, it’s just not truly valuable for an emerging technology company to try to be really strong in both areas. I would consider the “nerdy” tasks you mentioned as part of a scalability strategy, not a push toward technology as your strength. The difference might be suttle, but I think it is important.

    Investing in fault tolerance and distributed storage will give you the peace of mind to continue to grow your business. It might also make it easier to land partnerships with larger companies. But it probably, won’t be a part of your core brand or consumer message. And I doubt that any new visitors to Box would really care. In today’s web world, I think it is assumed that companies have a handle on security, scalability, and reliability.

    One of the biggest benefits of Box over the competition is its ease-of-use, and friendly brand. The mass market is never going to be able to use an app like http://www.foldershare.com. And let’s be honest, the real money is with mainstream consumers, not early adopters.

    So do what you have to do behind the scenes to keep the site up and running and our data safe. Just don’t dilute your brand in the process.

    Congratulations Jeff, and welcome aboard!

  • Aaron

    Agreed. That’s the beauty of being a technology company with a marketing focus. The user never has to care about what’s behind the curtain, because it just works- and works well. This is especially the case with the desktop sync software, and partially why we’re waiting for the optimal time to release it.

  • Faraz

    Aaron
    Maybe ive missed something but… you have the sync software download link on this post…
    how come its such a sublime launch? :D
    this is grand stuff… goodbye foldershare…

  • Nick

    I am very fond of the Box.net service. I am also though concerned about the security and company stability of your service. I would disagree with the previous post in the assumption that uses automatically think that the online company has taken proper procautions against disaster recovery, redundancy, scalability, etc.

    I know for a fact that many companies are focused on building a user base at times and then will focus on the other “behind the scence” things later. I would hope that from this point forward Box.net does the opposite. If all your behind the scene efforts are intact, you can use those as roots for success in marketing.

    The one advantage that Google has over Box.net even without the launch of their product is that they appear more secure. It is a public company, people are very familiar with their product and model, and they have proven to be in favor of the user.

    Again, I’m happy with Box.net’s service and applaud this service. But take note that it will be a battle to maintain as larger competitors gobble the little guys. Unless that’s your plan. Which I assume it should be in the business plan somewhere.

  • http://www.frenchpodclass.com Sebastien

    Yeppeeee the sync is here!

    Kinda hidden, but well, the Box blog reader did not have miss that

  • Pingback: Box.net Sync Software - Tech[dot]Blog

  • Tintin

    I love Box.net.
    But I wonder if the free service will become charged forcibly in the future and I also wonder if the free upgrade from inviting users will stop.
    Anyone who can answer my questions?

  • Aaron

    Tintin- we will not need to end the free accounts. Keep in mind that the free upgrade only lasts for 1 year. After that point you will need to upgrade.

  • http://planetstar.stjerne.org Frank Stjerne

    Why all the fuss about the Sync software?

    It is no way working on my PC, and I have not been able to upload a single file to MyBox (pro account).

    “xml parsing errors” all the time.

    Frank

  • Anthony B

    I concur with Frank. I continue to get upload errors, and I have to Cntrl-Alt-Del to end the sync process.

  • http://planetstar.stjerne.org Frank Stjerne

    … and another comment from a Dane in Copenhagen:

    The Internet has been global for quite a while now.

    Every American and British knows what 11 AM is. I don’t. I have to look it up every time I see it. Most people in the world – including half a billion Europeans – use the 24 hour format. Perhaps you could give us a more global choice?

    Frank

  • James

    The Desktop Sync software I was beta testing stopped working over a week ago with these XML Parsing errors. I’m curious why the link to the broken software was posted. If it’s supposed to be a public beta or something, shouldn’t there be instructions on how to provide feedback? When it was working, it was great to have scheduled sync and right-click sharing. Rather take down the link than have people get errors and have a bad first impression of what’s going to be great software.

  • http://NicheMarketingFootprint.com Isobel Jones

    A very interesting blog post. What would you say was the most common problem?

  • http://hubpages.com/hub/A-Good-Business-Plan-Format Toccara Gomoll

    Assessing the money flow is one more important element within the organization technique format, so as to sustain a regular money flow to meet the important capital needs. Probability of monetary crisis and also the ways of crisis management must be pointed out within the structure. The business technique must consist from the marketing plans and strategy leading to the expansion from the organization.