When your business is caught in the crossfire

Sometimes, change or progress can catch your business in the crossfire.

If your business is providing web-based email solutions, what do you think about a major article that says email is bad as a tool for collaboration, and needs to be replaced? The blog Small Town, Big Ideas comes from a company that produces webmail, called Webmail.us. Pat Matthews, the CEO, is musing over this in a post called Email is Still Good. The whole article is worth reading, just to hear him think out loud about how to handle changes in technology that affect your business.

An example of a tough question that many technology startups face is: “at what point do we build something new and better and risk the learning curve and resistance to change that’s involved, versus building something and making it work like a Microsoft product since most of the world knows how to use a Microsoft product?”

It’s a tough question and one that most technology startups have to deal with. I don’t know the right answer but at Webmail, we do a little bit of both. We take risks where we think the potential payoff is big but we leverage the fact that “everyone” knows how to use email (and Microsoft Outlook in particular) as we build new features into our service. And that is something we will continue to do.

Matthews has the kind of attitude that will help keep his business healthy through change. No technology stands still. Matthews and Webmail.us are moving ahead. Make sure your business does the same.

small biz rural entrepreneurship webmail change

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About Becky McCray

Becky started Small Biz Survival in 2006 to share rural business and community building stories and ideas with other small town business people. She and her husband have a small cattle ranch and are lifelong entrepreneurs. Becky is an international speaker on small business and rural topics.