Almost every company has a website. Spending time and money to build your brand online is a no-brainer for any marketing professional. Corporate websites are a great way to communicate your message to an audience, generate leads, and educate customers about your products and services.
However, few companies have the expertise required to build a secure website to share files and information on a one-to-one basis with clients. Instead, we rely on email attachments, burning DVDs or managing ftp servers to send files.
Onehub makes secure websites fast and easy.
How it works
Onehub is an extranet collaboration service that enables you to create a secure extension to your existing web site in a matter of minutes. With Onehub, you can setup secure workspaces, called Hubs, with easy-to-use customization tools and drag-and-drop widgets. You can easily control user permissions by inviting users via their email address and assigning the users a role. We have also made it easy to upload and download files and folders (including their contents) from your computer or corporate network.
Setting up your extranet
The first step is to create a Onehub account so you can create multiple hubs and setup a customized login screen. You can create your first hub for free so play around with the service first to make sure it meets your needs. For a client extranet, we will create one hub for each client we want to share files with and setup a branded login screen that we will link to from our existing website.
Customizing your login screen
Each account has a unique URL in the form of yourcompany.onehub.com. You can change your url by clicking on Account > Account Profile. In the account section you can also change your default account theme and account logo to customize the look of your login screen.
NOTE: If you are on the free version, you url is hubs.onehub.com/username.
Creating a Hub
To create a hub, click the Create a New Hub button on the user home page. If you are already in a hub, you can return to the user home page with the My Home button in the top right of the page. The new Hub wizard will ask you for a hub name and hub description. You can change the template to determine what widgets are in the hub by default and you can always add or remove pages and widgets after you create the hub. The second step enables you to change the theme of the hub.
Inviting your clients
Sharing and user permissions for each hub are accessed through the Share button in the top left of the page. Only Administrators and Authors will see the option to share a hub. To share, simply enter the name and email of each person and select a role. The default role is contributor and allows users to upload and download files, modify tasks and calenders.
What your clients see
Your clients receive an email from Onehub with a link to your login screen. When a client clicks the link, they are asked to setup a password and then taken directly into the hub you invited them to.
Integrating with your existing site
It is important to make it easy for your clients to find your secure extranet now that you have created one. One easy way to do this, is to create a Client Login button that links to your account url. When a client logs in, we check to see if they have access to any hubs that are part of your account. If they do, we take them directly to that hub.
One of the key features of Onehub is the ability to easily upload and download folders and files. We recently completed a short screencast on how to use the Files Widget.
With the files widget you can:
select and upload multiple files at once
select and upload entire folder structures and their contents
email files to your widget as an attachement
download archives of the entire library or selected files and folders
copy or move files to another folder, another files widget or to another Hub
delete one more folder and files and also restore them from the recycle bin
view and restore file version with built in version control
leave comments on individual file items
This screencast provides a great overview of the basic functionality, you can also learn more in the advanced features screencast.
We have been working hard over the last month to finish up beta 4 and are happy to announce that it is now available. The major changes in this release are all driven by customer feedback.
The key changes are:
Discussion Widget - allows you to add comment style discussions to any page. This can be used to chat with other project members, leave notes, or to ask questions.
Comments on File Items - allows you to leave comments on any file. This is a great way to ask customers to approve, reject, or leave feedback.
Improved Customization Tools - we overhauled "design mode" after many usability tests to make things easier to find. It is now much easier to change a page layout, update a logo, or change the theme for a hub.
In addition, we’ve added a new Hub theme and color palettes, the ability to upload your personal profile photo, and enhanced the calendar widget functionality to show more details in the calendar view.
You’ll also notice some changes to your account. We are now limiting new Beta users to 1 Hub and 1 GB of storage. However, you can upgrade to a paid account at anytime. If you are already Beta user and have an account with us, don’t worry you will still be able to use your additional Hubs. We will contact you to upgrade your Beta plan to a real plan.
As usual, we love your feedback so please let us know what you think!
Today we launched a new corporate website and for the first time are talking publicly about what we are building.
Onehub is a new web service that lets companies build secure, custom extranets in a matter of minutes.
Today, companies are using their corporate websites as the primary way to share information with the world - which is a great tool for one-to-many communication. However, most corporate sites do not provide secure areas to share files and information with customers and partners. Building a secure extranet for each customer and partner is hard, time consuming and requires the development of role based security and collaboration features.
Our goal is to make secure extranets easy for everyone through hosted collaborative workspaces, called Hubs, that can be deployed in minutes and customized to the exact needs of our customers.
The new website says it all, so take a few minutes to check out the following areas:
Onehub will remain in private beta for a little while longer while we continue refining the service with the help of our beta customers. If you are interested in participating in our beta, please sign up on our home page or send us an email at info@onehub.com.
Today we released beta 2 of the Onehub service to our production servers.
If you are an existing user, you can access the new version here. If you would like to join the beta, please send us an email at support at onehub.com.
This is a major milestone in our march towards the version 1 release. All the major features are now in the product and we will start adding more users to the service over the next few weeks.
We are still operating in stealth mode but plan to change this in June. Stay tuned!
We are still operating in stealth mode but have been very busy building the product and hiring additional members of the product team.
The product is really starting to come together and the feedback from our early beta users is very encouraging. We are finishing our second beta release in a few weeks and will be opening the service to more users. Our plan is to keep the beta private while we continue to add features and ensure that we can provide a reliable, secure platform for sharing information.
Stay tuned, we will be launching the company in the next few months and telling the world what we have been working on.
Working at a startup is not for everyone. In fact, its not for most people.
Startups require hard work, dedication, the ability to deal with an emotional roller coaster and a willingness to jump in and get things done. You can't say "that's not my job" at a startup. Nothing happens at a startup unless you make it happen.
So who is right for a startup?
People who are passionate about what they do, passionate about winning, and willing to do whatever it takes to make it happen. If that means working 60 hours a week to ship on time, answering the phone at 3 am to troubleshoot a problem on a production server, or driving down to Costco to buy more energy drinks - you make it happen.
The fact that it's a startup is important, but certainly not the only factor. Be sure you believe in the mission of the company, agree with the company values, and most importantly like the people you are working with.
Interested in working at a startup? Check out our jobs page to see what we're looking for.
We are looking for a smart, passionate Web/Interactive Designer to help us change the way businesses share information on the web. If you are looking for an opportunity to work with an experienced team, design beautiful web services, and have a lot of fun in the process then come talk to us.
What we are looking for in the right candidates:
An awesome portfolio of work demonstrating excellent visual design
Previous experience designing for large scale web applications is a plus
The ability to work at the speed of a startup, but with attention to detail
Demonstrated mastery of Photoshop to create pixel-perfect mockups
Solid understanding of additional Adobe CS3 applications
Solid understanding of design pitfalls, especially with regards to web standards and browser compatibility issues
Ability to learn and apply new concepts and techniques
Demonstrated expertise in hand-coding XHTML/CSS to create semantic, standards compliant versions of your designs is a huge plus
One of my favorite parts of building a new company is the initial brand work. This starts with the company name and then moves into the visual elements of the brand. The foundation of this is the logo. We are working on the brand with a great local design firm called Turnstyle.
The Onehub Logo
For the Onehub logo we wanted to accomplish the following:
Make the brand fun and approachable
Target the brand at business customers
Visualize sharing information and bringing things together
Create a mark that works well in small and large scale in both color and black and white uses
Create a mark and type treatment that could stand on their own
After a few rounds of design, we are very happy with our new logo.
After generating hundreds of choices for company names and spending many hours negotiating with domain name owners, we decided on a name for the new venture currently known as Venti Software.
The company will be named Onehub. We have acquired the domain names onehub.com and 1hub.com.
The idea of the hub of a wheel, what holds all the moving parts together, struck us as a perfect description of the web services Onehub will offer. Also as a hub connects a network, our company is creating a place on the web for companies and businesses to connect and share information. We feel the name is catchy, easy to remember and totally appropriate for what we are doing. Our blog will be moving soon to onehub.com and will be part of a larger, but still "stealth mode" website.
Hiring great people is one of the biggest challenges for a startup.
Without a great team you will most likely fail, no matter how great your business plan or how accurate your original business assumptions are. Even with a great team, many startups fail. But with one, your chances of making the right adjustments over time, and therefore building a great business, are much greater.
The people you want on your team aren't usually looking for a new job.
So how do you find them? For us, the majority of our initial hires have come from our personal or professional networks. This requires a lot of work to spread the word about your company and the team you are building. Make a list of the people you have worked with before that you would love to work with again. Take them to lunch or coffee and see what they are up to. Ask them for referrals to people they would love to work with again. Dedicate time every week to networking and be sure to tell an exciting story about your company. When you find people you like, you will be asking them to leave a good job at a larger more stable company. This is never an easy sell.
The second greatest tool is Craigslist. Why pay recruiters 20-30% of the first years salary when you can get a great pipeline of candidates through postings on Craigslist that cost $25. We try to post every week 1-2 of the jobs openings we are trying to fill.
The many happenings at Venti (raising money, hiring a great team, and building the product) have kept me from blogging as much as I would like.
As I mentioned in the first post, keeping blogs fresh and up to date is hard to do. It seems like blogging always get prioritized low on the list.
Hiring
We are busy hiring the core product team and have started posting jobs on Craigslist (Rails Developer) and other jobs boards (Rails posting on 37Signals job board). We are looking for smart Rails developers, MySQL experts, Javascript experts and great web designers. If you are interested in learning more, send us an email at jobs@projectventi.com.
New Office
After looking at a dozen offices we finally found a great space. We are subleasing an office in Issaquah from a large real estate company. The space is bigger than we need with the current team (4800 sq ft) but we got a great price and the team is growing quickly.
Our new address is:
Venti Software
22500 SE 64th Place, Suite 120
Issaquah, WA 98027
Naming a company is always a lot of work. It often involves countless hours of brainstorming, brand consultants, creative agencies, and finding a domain name owner willing to sell for a reasonable price. Fortunately, you don't need a great name to start a company and can always change the name later.
We decided to pick a code name (Project Venti) for the company to give ourselves more time to decide on the official name and potentially acquire one or more domain names. This is the third startup I have founded and every time naming the company gets harder as more and more domain names are registered and the resale price for names continues to increase.
We originally decided on two great options for company names (workspace.com and team.com), but for both names the .com domain was already registered. Owning the .com domain is an absolute requirement for us.
Note: There are many ways to check ownership of a domain, but I prefer the whois tools at http://www.domaintools.com.
Neither of our original names had a developed website but this doesn't matter much, someone else had already purchased rights to the name. We tried contacting the owner for workspace.com multiple times, but the whois information was out of date. After some digging, it looks like the domain was owned by a company that was acquired multiple times. I would bet that someone owns the rights to workspace.com and doesn't even realize they own the name. So, on to plan B.
For team.com, it was listed for sale at Sedo so we thought our chances were better.
There are many site that create marketplaces to resell names, some of the major ones are:
So how much is a domain name worth? We tried to purchase team.com through Sedo. We were apparently bidding against Citrix, although we did not know this at the time. In the end, they purchased the name for $330,000. Not bad for the owner who has been sitting on the name for 10 years and probably paid $50 for the original rights to the name.
So, back to the drawing board. We now have a list of about 30 candidates for names that we are working from. For most of these, the .com domain is already registered and we will need to try and acquire the domain name. More on the name game later as we make more progress.
We are looking for smart, passionate Ruby on Rails developers to help us change the way businesses share information on the web. If you are looking for an opportunity to work with an experienced team, build great web services that millions of people will use, and have a lot of fun in the process then send your resume to jobs@onehub.com.
What we are looking for in the right candidates:
Previous experience building large scale RoR applications
Experience with databases and the latest web technologies
Experience with standards-based web development
Great attitude and strong work ethic
This is a great opportunity to be one of the first employees in an early stage startup aiming at a huge market opportunity.
Venti Software is an early stage software startup building a new platform to change the way businesses communicate and share information. We are currently camped out in a shed in Preston, WA working day and night to build a simpler way to create secure workspaces on the web. As with most company blogs, keeping them fresh is the biggest challenge so we promise to do our best to post an update at least once a week.
