Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Interview with Dan Shen, Zoji
Seattle-based Zoji (www.zoji.com) recently launched a Web 2.0, invitations website, and just announced $1.5M in friends and family funding. To get a perspective on the company, we spoke with Dan Shen, co-founder of the company, about how the company intends to take on the online invitations service and the story behind the company.
What is Zoji?
Dan Shen: I would describe our site as an online invitation service, with a Web 2.0 twist. What Zoji enables event planners to do, is to maximize excitement around their events, and build momentum around the event, through rich interaction through the events page itself, and sharing of comments and pictures, before and after the event. You can also chat, and collaborate online in other ways, and you can be socially active around the events.
What's your background, and why did you start the company?
Dan Shen: My background is, I went to Udub (editor's note: The University of Washington), and graduated in Computer Engineering. I worked at different Pacific Northwest companies, including Microsoft and Motorola. I'm kind of a self-professed Internet junkie. I was aware of sites like Evite, Facebook, MySpace, and other social networking web sites, and saw a niche that I didn't think anyone else was addressing. I thought there could be a lot of improvement in a web site, centered around making online invitations--but not like the traditional sense of the sites. Those event invitations are pretty much a throwaway type of item. You get the invitation in email, you respond, and you never go back to the web site. In fact, the system usually deletes the invitation after 30 days. I was thinking, it would be way cooler if, as we go through life, we could plan events with friends, like get togethers and parties and barbecues, and if these things could stick around your scrapbook. You could leave behind a trail of events, and be able to go back, and kind of reminisce, and take a more nostalgic view of the events, talk back and forth, and look at pictures. I thought that kind of combination of features was really compelling, and I didn't really see anything out there that did that, so I decided to quit my job and start Zoji.
How's the startup funded?
Dan Shen: Initially it was just out of my own packet and saving. Recently, we secured a round of $1.5M in a friends and family round. That will definitely take us through 2008, which is a breath of fresh air. We do have some competition, like MyPunchbowl, Socializr, Renkoo, and Evite--we're not the only one who smells blood in this market. We're taking a grassroots approach to building this. Obviously, we're based here in Seattle, and have a very large Seattle crowd on the site. They have been great as far as giving us feedback, and really shaping the way the site has developed so far. We're totally indebted to them for being our beta testers for many, many months. It has been fantastic. I've personally met tons of people her in Seattle, which I think is a side effect of doing this kind of website.
What's the business model behind the site? Are you ad supported or will this cost something to use?
Dan Shen: Right now the site is free. There are no ads yet on the site--we're kind of at the stage of trying to build interest and momentum on the site. We'll definitely have advertising once we believe it's viable.
As you mention yourself, there's a lot of competition in this space. What do you think is the key thing that will enable you to emerge on top?
Dan Shen: We don't have any magic pill. But, our focus is on really classy looking invitations--we have a really great graphic designer for our invitations. People have actually come to our site, because they think the other sites aren't offering a classy enough look and feel. We've also given a lot of attention to detail, as far as being able to work through creating an event and managing guests. Other systems are still buggy, so it doesn't take a whole lot of rocket science to figure out the problems. Once you create an event on Zoji, it's an entry point into a whole host of other things you can do on Zoji, which are completely optional. For example, our events are all directly linked into a database of all the restaurants and bars in the city. People can put in their two cents--reviews on restaurants and bars, and clubs they like. That way, you can figure out what your friends think of venues. That's a unique angle other sites haven't got. We also have pretty advanced photo hosting integration and photo tagging, which makes it really easy for you to find photos of your friends. Also, if you hop onto Zoji, you'll see you're put into the major city you're in. So you'll see, for example if you're in Seattle, we have public event listings in the city, you can easily click there and see the large events going on, and promote your own public event. We're much more deeply integrated than some other sites.
So it sounds like it's much more than just invitations, it's also social networking features?
Dan Shen: Definitely, but we're not emphasizing it as a social network. We're focusing on event invitations; we want to be extremely strong in that as our core feature. By having that at the forefront, people can go to Zoji with immediate relevance in your life. They are there for a reason, such as looking at what you're going to do this weekend. You're not there to interact virtually with people or get in touch with old friends, it's very immediate and relevant. It's a subtle angle, but very important for people's perception of the site.
Thanks!