Interview: How does a freelancer start a successful E-commerce company?

Many freelancers are self-employed at the beginning of their own business, and all believe that the cause will be thriving, people will be increasing. Some choose to do a comprehensive design agency, some do their own products to sell to customers.

Many freelancers are self-employed at the beginning of their own business, and all believe that the cause will be thriving, people will be increasing. Some choose to do a comprehensive design agency, some do their own products to sell to customers.

A year ago, I contacted the Sumeffect software company, they have a very good product--corecommerce. This is a successful example of making your own products.

Nick McDuffie, the founder of Sumeffect Inc., is said to have worked for a professional design firm before starting a business with Matt DeLong (first row). Later, they started their own company and tried to prosper the company and become one of Nashville's most outstanding businesses.

I know that a lot of freelancers dream of doing a successful career, so I invited--matt DeLong, one of the founders of the Sumeffect software company, to accept our interview. If you're thinking of going from freelancer to entrepreneur, don't go away and Matt will be sharing his experience with us next.

　　Open e-commerce

Here's my interview with Matt:

　　1. Can you give us a brief description of Sumeffect company? How many employees and customers are there in your company?

Our company provides a platform for shop operators. We have about 15,000 customers, the 2010 turnover may be around 1.4 million U.S. dollars, and is expected to reach 2 million U.S. dollars in 2011.

Sumeffect now has 15 employees, including 7 technical support, 3 sales, 3 programmers, and 2 designers.

　　2. What do you do before you create Sumeffect?

I do website design at interaccess/ebiz Company in Nashville. Nich and I are doing sales in the same company.

　　3. How do you think about opening a company?

I have found that many customers need e-commerce services, but no one has been involved in this work for 1999 years.

　　4. What do you need to set up a company? Do you have a loan or are you looking for an investor?

We spent 8000 of dollars on our first few months of entrepreneurial life.

　　5. When do you start to hire employees? What makes you decide to hire an employee?

When I was developing software that didn't keep up with the speed at which Nick was selling the software, we hired a programmer. Because we find that our turnaround time is getting longer, there is a risk of losing business.

　　6. Have you ever hired freelancers or consultants? How do you decide to outsource or hire employees?

There are two ways of doing it. If it is a short-term project, contract out and hire a full-time employee if there is a long-term demand.

　　7. What was the biggest mistake you made when you first started your company? If time goes backwards, what measures will you take to prevent this error from happening?

(LOL) There were too many mistakes. 2002 years or so, after we began to accept credit card payment, many people with stolen credit cards to book or download several digishop, so that our credit card account was canceled, those weeks business almost stalled. Now we still accept credit cards, but we use some fraud prevention tools.

　　8. If Google bids millions of dollars to buy your company, would you agree? If you agree, what will you choose to do after the company is acquired? If you don't agree, can you tell us why?

It depends on the number of bids. If it's only 3 million dollars, don't even think about it! If it's 50 million dollars, then deal! I'm not sure what I'm going to do. I think Google will sign a competition agreement with us to keep us away from the work we know, and that's our experience, all of us ... Therefore, this bid must not be less, otherwise it is not worth me to give up.

　　9. What do you do now every day?

I do not have the same work every day. We look at what our competitors are doing and we check our results every week. This week, we will work out our 2011-Year plan for planning and arranging the activities we may be sponsoring in the coming year.

　　10. What is the first shopping software that your company launches?

Digishop

　　11. What is the difference between the two shopping software below?

• Digishop is a downloadable shopping software, written in Php/mysql, sold for 349 dollars per license;
• Corecommerce is a managed shopping software that is 19.99 dollars a month.

　　12. What is the most proud of your company?

Customer satisfaction with our 93%.

　　13. How do you keep yourself away from competition? At the same time how can you compete in an invincible position?

In addition to our customer satisfaction with our 93%, we released a new version every 3 weeks. Most companies do this once every other year or two years. Google has a lot of tools to help us compete with our opponents.

　　14. What business books have you read, or what business meetings have you attended?

We read a lot of books, but didn't attend too many meetings. Do you know how many books you can buy with the money to attend a conference that costs 2500 dollars? In fact, experience is always the best teacher.

　　15. Can you give some advice to entrepreneurs who want to start a company?

There are a lot of people who quit full-time jobs just to pursue a untested idea, and the end result is just that no one is paying for the idea, which is a mental and material shock to the entrepreneur.

　　16. What changes do you want your company to have?

We have been improving, but we always hope that if Corecommerce software can be developed in the early 5 years.

　　Conclusion

Thanks to Matt for taking the time to interview and let us know how a software company works.