This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Java Buzz by dion. Original Post: Being Small Enough To Care Feed Title: techno.blog(Dion) Feed URL: http://feeds.feedburner.com/dion Feed Description: blogging about life the universe and everything tech Latest Java Buzz Posts Latest Java Buzz Posts by dion Latest Posts From techno.blog(Dion)

I am having a great time in startup-ville (that's french). One of the reasons that I like it is that I have always found that when you are small you get to do the personal things, and make users think that they care.

We are small enough that we actually do things like:

• Answer emails speedily, and personally
• Listen to each email, normally fix the problem, and reply promptly
• Even watch bounces from our email system and try to work out the problem. If a spam filter got in the way, we send another email saying "Hey, the contents that you asked for got filtered, so here is the URL"

This all really connects you to your users, and then you can *gasp* actually learn from them. Imagine that.

This is kind of strange in a way, since larger companies could afford to have an entire division to help users, but they just do not seem too.

I am not looking forward to getting so big that individuals suddenly migrate from being "core important users" to "just one of a billion, so we can't go with them. You know. 80/20".

Here's to the little guy :)