Dogster, Inc. attended Gnomedex, a Seattle-based gathering of future-focused web geeks and those that work with them.

Slides by Chris Messina & Tara Hunt.
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Many aspects of Dogster’ Inc’s development strategy was succinctly stated in Chris Messina’s and Tara Hunt’s conversation starting panel “Think Small.” I was honored when they asked me to reflect for the attendees about how thinking small has made all the difference for Dogster Inc. The two of them have already both worked on many projects and we wish them the best of luck in their new endeavor Citizen Agency.

We’ve turned Dogster and Catster from a night and weekend side-project into a well growing company of 9. We’ve made lots of mistakes and uncovered amazing benefits. In fact ‘Thinking Small’ has served us so well we are now able to realistically ‘Think Big.’ At this point not only do we know there is so much more we can offer (we’ve felt that since day one ;) but we now have the proper foundation to support significant growth, and we have the experience and deep relationships such that we know we can do it sustainably. The best part about not shooting-the-moon and going from zero-to-huge in one step is that if at any point we determine we’ve maxed out certain growth we can down-trend that growth and still have the vibrant business and community that we built to that point.

Chris and Tara made a PDF and Keynote version of the presentation available yet thanks to their Creative Commons share and share alike licenses I converted it into a animated gif for easy web viewing. To watch the image again, just click on it.

Now that I’ve had some time to think about it, the points I’d like to reiterate and add are:

• Success is what you define it to be
• Don’t raise your expectation of success without recognizing you’re achievements
• Keep your success definition personal, avoid making it a comparison to others.
• Spend as little money as possible ;>
• Don’t go into debt unless you can live without the money forever.
• Let your users/customers be your marketing research team
• Let your users/customers be your beta testers
• Let your users/customers determine your feature road map
• Release quickly, fail quickly
• Make sure you have a business before you spend like it’s a business
• Hype it down while you build it up
• Build relationships from bottom up
• Serve your users/customers from the top down
• Share responsibility as widely as possible amongst team members
• Focus on what your customers say not what experts say
• Barter for services
• Learn what you don’t already know

Think Small! Go Big!