A couple of months ago we were in a very difficult place. Earlier in the year we had finished building Phuser, got it into a fit state for a Beta launch and got a great crowd of innovators trying it out and liking it. Then, besides a few new sign-ups, the whole thing stopped moving. We had stalled and something was badly wrong.
The whole Facebook/Twiter/Pownce/Jaiku storm kicked off and we were going nowhere. Here we had a service which offered more privacy and control over your network than these sites, as well as easy ways to discuss and plan with any group.
Looking for inspiration I contacted Stowe Boyd who by coincidence was going to be in London the next week. He was happy to meet up and chat over dinner before we went to the Library House after party at the IMAX. I hadn’t met Stowe before and found it a pleasure to talk with such an affable veteran of the industry.
I explained how Phuser is this great private social website with practical tools to save you time, frustration and money when planning with a team but that we were struggling to get any traction in the market. Stowe hit the nail on the head: our best strength, privacy and control was also our greatest weakness. There was no public side to Phuser and it was killing us. Without a public side there was no way for the good word of Phuser to spread virally.
Stowe also had another good point. Entrepreneurs don’t like to backtrack and reassess the fundamentals of their ideas. But, as they say, when you find you are in a hole, stop digging.
In a further bid to help Stowe kindly offered to buy as much equity as he could afford with the contents of his wallet:
Thanks again Stowe! It took a while to sink in but when it did it set me on a mission.
