Powered By Geek is a very “new business” sort of firm. We work completely online, advocate open source, believe in collaborative design, would co-work if we could, etc, so forth and then some. It sometimes throws me for a loop when “Old Business” customers contact us. I believe it is relatively evident that we are a “new business” sort of company. You can tell this based on our web site, our blog entries and especially after just talking to us. Our work methods are driven by our personal philosophies concerning community, quality and creativity. We aren’t looking for implementation jobs. We want to create something new and interesting. We want to work with a customer who believes we are “creating” something not “building” something. This isn’t to say that building is a bad thing, it just isn’t our niche. We aren’t the firm you want to come to if you are like “I want to take this old idea and make it”, we excel in “no one has ever done this before and we don’t really know how it will be done”.  We aren’t trying to sell anyone something they don’t want and don’t need, infact we really aren’t salesy at all. All our customer contacts come to us from either cold finds from google, references from other projects or references from other clients. We have a portfolio on the web site, customer quotes and apps in the market to be demoed. We are pretty transparent… there is nothing really hidden.

I recently was sent a request for a bid/proposal from a company that was looking for us to develop a niche social network. We went through the process of a couple of long telephone conferences, writing up a spec and basically getting our ducks in order to begin. At the last minute the company started asking for numerous references, additional portfolio examples, etc and so forth. Now don’t get me wrong, I totally think customers have a legitimate right to ask for such things, but ask me for such things in the beginning, before I do any thought work. Do you want to know what it is like to work with me? Call me up, tell me what you want and if I think it is something I can do for you in a agreed upon rough estimate, I am more then happy to give you references. Waiting until after the project spec and research has been done to jump into “old business” is annoying. Let say you are satisfied with my references, not you wasted my time and yours writing up a technical spec.

I don’t think the business world should operate any differently then the regular world. If we were “dating”, you wouldn’t string me along for years and then tell me the only way we can be married is if I was a different religion. Karma will kick you in the ass for that.

Do unto others, so forth and so on. Don’t waste my time and I won’t waste yours.