Early in his career, Craig Donato worked for Excite, a pioneering search engine. When I asked him, “Why do you think Excite didn’t beat Yahoo?” his answer was, “Because we didn’t dare to play a different game….We were just trying to out-Yahoo, Yahoo and that just doesn’t work.”
Now Craig is the CEO and Co-Founder of Oodle, the ambitious underdog that’s building an online classifieds business is a world dominated by Craig’s List. As you’ll hear in this interview, he’s doing it by playing a different game. I invited him on Mixergy to talk about some of the game-changing ideas Oodle took on, like giving users analytics, partnering up with companies like Facebook and making classifieds social.
We also talked about the worries that entrepreneurs have to battle, the importance of culture and the heady days at Excite.
The transcript for minute 0 till minute 5 is BELOW this line.
Andrew: Before we get started, I want to introduce you to Haystack. Haystack is where you can find the right webdesigner for you next project. So let’s get take a look at it here! If we scroll through it, we can find lots of different portfolios. If there’s a company we’re interested in, we can quickly scroll through a bunch of their work and see if we like them or not. If we’re interested in them even more, we can click over and see their page, find out a little bit more about them, see each portfolio image in big so we can really decide if this is the right company for us, and if we want to follow up with them, there’s their email address and their website right on the bottom so we can contact directly. We can also go to the top; we can hit ‘save to favorites’, save it for later, and then keep clicking around. If you want to narrow your search down a little bit further, you can click on the city...
Text excerpts
On why Excite didn’t beat Yahoo!
Andrew: Why do you think Excite didn’t beat Yahoo?
Craig: Because we didn’t dare to play a different game
Andrew: How do you mean?
Craig: The big lesson there is you know we were always one quarter behind Yahoo. We were just trying to out-Yahoo, Yahoo and that just doesn’t work. It never works. And you know, we didn’t dare to try to do something different from them and you know, it was inevitably
Andrew: What do you mean? How would you out-Yahoo, Yahoo? Can you give me and example just so I get a clear understanding?
Craig: Out-Yahooing, Yahoo is we were trying to beat them feature by feature. So we would come out with a new community product called Excite Clubs and they would come out with Yahoo Groups, three months later. And we would come out with Mail or they would come out with it. And we were going back and forth, tit for tat on features. It was all very incremental. To try to change the game would be to try be something different. We had talked about it but we just didn’t do things like, how would you, instead of just trying to go tit for tat on search revolutionize community or the community experience? Really double down and try to play a different game. I think if you are the challenger, you have to play a different game. You cannot beat the contender at their own game. Especially in the internet which is a scale business. You have to play a different game.
On how Oodle is differentiating itself
Craig: So we’re really tipping and starting to achieve critical mass. I’d say as we move forward, it’s all about differentiation and being something different. I was at Excite for many years and one of the big lessons I learned was that you never take out a category leader by beating them at their own game. You need to create your own game.
You need to figure out what you are and why that’s different. And we’re not trying to beat Craig’s List. We’re trying to create a very different experience. One where, when I’m selling something I want to know who’s on the other side. I want to know something about them. I don’t want to invite some person I have no idea who they are over to my house to test drive my car.
If I’m looking for a job. We hired someone recently. I was very reluctant (it was a marketing job) to put it on Craig’s List. I love Craig’s List, and I think it’s great. But I didn’t want to put it on because I’d get a thousand resumes and it would ruin my weekend because I’d have to sort through them all. I want to be conscientious and reply to everybody.
So to put it up, of course I’d use Oodle. One of the things that happened with Oodle is it went out on my Facebook feed and my Twitter feed. And I started getting recommendations from friends, all referral-based. And it was wonderful, but it was different. And ultimately we’re trying to build a very different experience around trust and reputation. And I think increasingly that’s going to become relevant, and word of mouth will help it. Your product is your best marketing tool.