Case Studies
- Webmetrics (2007 - 09)
- Midentity (2002 - 05)
Webmetrics (2007 - 09)
Arthur joined Webmetrics in April 2007 as Product Manager, having relocating to San Diego, California. Webmetrics provides a range of services for performance monitoring and load testing of web applications and web ecosystems, delivered as a Software as a Service (SaaS). At that point, Webmetrics was a privately-held, profitable, 8 year old company with about 20 employees and hundreds of paying customers.
The product management role had been vacant for some six months and the PM function had lapsed onto CEO, the Engineering Director and the Head of Sales, Marketing and Strategy. As a result of this vacancy and (to a lesser extent) competitive behaviour, the product road mapping had become very short term and focussed on the retention of current customers. Product management had become a matter of providing the functionality demanded by the last (or loudest) customer that sales or customer support had spoken to.
Arthur quickly grasped that the most significant requirement (on top of learning how the product works) was to improve the product marketing of the existing product set: product collaterals, corporate and product presentations, product positioning and competitive intelligence etc. Improving all these areas helped many functional groups within the company, but most particularly, the sales team, as it shortened the sales cycle and accelerated new sales guys up the learning curve. It solidified proper customer expectations (and internal expectations too!).
Interspersed with product marketing was the more practical requirements of a major new product release: management of a beta program and associated competitive positioning and outbound communication. This new product became a new and very compelling differentiator in Webmetrics marketplace. At a higher level, product strategy and product roadmapping became increasingly important, as company was no longer in 'latest crisis' mode and could realistically execute on a longer term strategy. Additionally, Arthur jumped in and powered the marketing function too: website redesign, PR releases, media and analyst calls.
In January 2008, Webmetrics was acquired by Neustar, a New York Stock Exchange listed company (NYSE: NSR). Neustar has a diverse portfolio of internet and mobile technologies, but was originally founded to provide the technical directory for telephone calls in the US. Webmetrics, as a provider of performance management services, was most closely aligned to a previous acquisition of UltraDNS, a high performance DNS management service.
Post-acquisition, Arthur quickly became responsible for injecting the Webmetrics product line into the Neustar sales channel. This proved to be more significant task than initially presumed, as the Neustar sales team was considerably more inexperienced with internet technology (and web performance in particular) and value-based selling.
Arthur relocated back to Ireland, and back to Cambridge, UK in June 2008 and continued his role. Additionally, he spent one day a week in the London office, training the European Sales office on the product set and its market and Webmetrics' positioning. Increasingly, Arthur felt the strain of telecommuting across the 8 hour time difference between UK and West Coast USA, working from midday to midnight (and beyond). With some regret, he left to join VentureNavigator, a 10 minute pedal from one side of Cambridge to the other.
Midentity (2002 - 05)
In February 2002, Arthur helped to found Midentity, a personal digital identity provider, based near Cambridge, UK.
Whilst working in partnership with Cambridge University's Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning, Arthur met Simon Grice, its CEO: Arthur liked Simon's ideas and Simon liked the way Arthur thought. Together, they took the ideas and created a new business in the exciting, new sector of personal digital identity.
They significantly refined the fledging concept so advanced and innovative that it was unrealistic in the near term as a practical (and investable) business strategy. A multi-year product road map was laid out with achievable, market-orientated, revenue-generating services.
Following a Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) award for product innovation, Midentity successfully trialled its concept and raised seed investment from angel investors and well-known internet and mobile luminaries, Esther Dyson and Ray Anderson, in Q4 2002. This was a period when raising money for internet and mobile business was 'challenging' to say the least. Arthur took on the responsibility of Product Manager.
Midentity went from strength to strength: employees were recruited, services were launched, distribution agreements were signed with BT (British Telecommunications) and a number of other service providers. Further funding rounds were completed whilst the user base continued to grow.
With the company having raised another £1m investment (with revenues of the same magnitude), and with the business and product strategy largely determined, Arthur believed his job was done. He decided to leave Midentity at Christmas 2005 to seek new challenges.