Nader Alaghband and David Reid have a pretty solid relationship for their startup; they've known each other since they were four years old.
They now lead a team of nine staff working on Earthtone, an search service that scans and compares quotes from printers. Alaghband and Reid self funded the company when it started in 2006 and have since raised some money through angel investors. They explain how Earthtone works and why they spend their time between the UK and US.
Earthtone founders Nader Alaghband and David Reid
• Explain your business to my Mum.
"In the same way that you'd use Expedia to find flights from many airlines, you'd use our service to buy exactly the prints you need from any print provider on the network."
• How do you make money?
"We charge 10 per cent commission on volume from print centres and a small cover charge from print buyers."
• What's your background?
"We're part of the internet generation. We've grown up with the internet and we rely on it in so many facets of our lives. There's no reason why buying print online should be so much more difficult than buying books or CDs, or flights online; and we decided to make it happen."
• How many users do you have now, and what's your target within 12 months?
"So far, we've only launched to print sellers - and the response has been phenomenal. In terms of targets, there's no precedent for what we're doing, so we're working as hard as we can, for as long as it takes - and see where that takes us."
• What's your biggest challenge?
"Well, our biggest challenge today is raising awareness of our service amongst print sellers. Looking to the future, we've challenged ourselves to stay at the cutting edge, to continue to innovate and deliver a world-class service to our customers and partners alike."
• Name your closest competitors.
"Our platform-based model is unique in the printing space: we don't print anything ourselves, we simply connect people that need prints to a choice of local print providers. Having said that, we have a lot of respect for what Mimeo, a leading web-enabled print provider has achieved. Their model of print and post suits some consumers well - we of course deliver print where you need it, when you need it."
• Do you think we are in the middle of a new dot com bubble?
"Do you mean have we built our business on hot air?! No, I don't think we have. Obviously there are a lot of start-ups that won't make it, but we're confident that our service meets a need and that we have a clear monetisation strategy. And every chance of succeeding."
• Which tech businesses or web thinkers do you think are the ones to watch?
"In terms of trends, we're excited about improvements to search that make it easier for people to find what they want using the internet, either by focusing on specific categories - like Nestoria with property and Woonz with audio files; or by aggregating and organising information from many sources - like Powerset, and GalaxyIT."
• Where do you want the company to be in five years?
"Five years is a long time in any industry, and especially in the internet sector. We want Earthtone to become an internet printing standard - in the same way that PayPal is the industry standard for payments. We're staying focused on achieving our short and medium term objectives - responding to our customers' and our partners' evolving needs by delivering industry-leading solutions that people want."
• Is Earthtone fulfilling a need?
• Can this kind of aggregation work with such a potentially complex product?
• And is this a service that would work better for the mainstream, rather than the design community?
