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My new company just created its first post for our new blog. Its an odd choice. There are no deep explanations of our service, no hard sell. Instead the first thing we decided to do was to talk about a the purchase of a competitor Here is the first part of the post:

First blueleaf Post

So why would a perfectly sensible person choose this as the topic of the company’s first post. Sometimes a subject chooses you. Let me explain.

Our plan

We are practitioners of the leanstartup and customer development methodologies. That is to say, focus on building your product as quickly as possible with the minimum feature set you think is required to satisfy the customer problem you’ve identified. Launch, test and iterate. Conversations with potential customers=great, PR before product/market fit=missed opportunity.

Blogging

Blogging can fall on anywhere on the conversation<===>PR spectrum. And the left-hand side of the blogging equation certainly fit into our plans. But being deeply focused on speaking with customers (one on one) in combination with building a product and the billions of other details associated with building a business on limited resources leaves little time for anything else. Obviously blogging can be a brilliant way to create a dialogue with like minded people around the world. It can also be a giant sinkhole for time and productivity and frankly I remain concerned about living up to the commitment to blog regularly. Entrepreneurship is all about making hard trade-off decisions and up until now blogging was too far down the list.

Changing Needs Meets Timely Opportunity

Up to this point we’ve had perhaps 60 anecdotal customer conversations and are up to about 15 formal recorded interviews. We’ve just begun to open the aperture to increase the volume of interactions. We’ll still regularly talk with customers and potential customers one on one but as a consumer oriented business we need to broaden the conversation meaningfully in order to really learn what we need to know.

The opportunity hit us when Cake Financial was acquired by E*TRADE a few days ago and decided to shut down – straight away, no warning, leaving customers out in the cold. Compared to Cake, our service has some similarities and what we think are big improvements and radical new features. What better group of qualified potential customers than Cake customers who are now without a service they liked and enjoyed?

So the first post for blueleaf talks about a competitor and we think that is right on strategy. What do you think? Love to hear you opinion.

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If you’re a Cake Financial user you went to the site a couple of days ago and saw this.

So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish.

Cease operations

Your data will remain encrypted and destroyed

Our team is great but we’re going to E*TRADE

Peace!

Its a not exactly the way most people would choose to thank their early customers. And in fairness, I bet Stan didn’t have a lot of flexibility. However, this would lead you to believe that if you used and liked Cake’s online services, you are out of luck. Well you may not get your data back but there is an alternative on the way.

blueleaf.com - Connected Investing Platform

Consolidate Your Accounts

Collaborate with Family, Friends or Advisors

Plan, Analyze and Understand Your Investments

Take Action and Stay On Track for Your Goals

We think that there were some good things about the Cake service that E*TRADE customers will soon be benefiting from. With your help we (blueleaf) can do better.

Let us know what you liked about Cake and what you didn’t. Tell us about the challenges your having managing investments whether they’re yours, family’s, friend’s or clients. We think we’ll be able to help.

If you’d like to be a beta tester or just would like to stay plugged-in tell us in the comments, join our Linkedin group the blueleaf A-team at:  http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=2631858

Our team is thrilled to be bringing to market innovative new products to help people manage their financial lives. I’m personally looking forward to getting to know many of you as we work to serve you.

Best regards,

John Prendergast

CEO & Co-founder

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