Cover It Live
Last week in New York, I had the pleasure of having a great conversation with Keith McSpurren, founder of Cover It Live. CiL is the live blogging tool of choice for bloggers and media outlets all over the world, and gets rave reviews from my friends who use it. Even cooler is that Keith has done this with an extremely lean operation, putting out a fantastic product with only a handful of developers.
Over dinner, Keith was extremely candid about the fact that his product development had been directed very much by users. “I wish I could take credit for all of the applications people are finding for it,” he said, “but our users just ran in the most interesting, unexpected directions.” Now, Keith is open sourcing his business model on Twitter. No, he didn’t issue a press release or email bloggers to let them know he was doing this. All it took was one tweet:
What’s a resonable price for using CoveritLive? Users are asking me this question more and more. I think it depends…open to ideas..
Even if I didn’t already know and like Keith and his product, this sort of approach would still make me want to see CiL thrive. There’s something unbearable about an entrepreneur who thinks he knows it all, or that it’s clever to pretend that he does. There’s something refreshing about one who knows better, and respects his customers enough to ask for their input and direction. Well done, Keith.
Filed under: Life