{"id":3845,"date":"2015-11-03T11:10:03","date_gmt":"2015-11-03T19:10:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.onehub.com\/blog\/?p=3845"},"modified":"2015-11-03T15:51:09","modified_gmt":"2015-11-03T23:51:09","slug":"eight-years-one-mission-build-a-business","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.onehub.com\/blog\/2015\/11\/03\/eight-years-one-mission-build-a-business\/","title":{"rendered":"Eight years, one mission: build a business"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.onehub.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/8_year_timeline.png\" alt=\"8_year_timeline\" width=\"660\" height=\"300\" \/><\/p>\n<p>My company, Onehub, recently celebrated its eight year anniversary. It\u2019s crazy to think about how different the startup world was just eight years ago. In 2007, the iPhone had just launched, unicorns were still rare, and file sharing was just crossing over into the mainstream. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Over the course of those eight years, the enterprise file sync and share (EFSS) space has spawned and attracted the attention of giants:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Dropbox took more than $1 billion in funding<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Box went public<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Both Microsoft and Google are making aggressive moves into the space<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Faced with daunting competition like that, it would be easy to throw our hands up and throw in the towel. But we don\u2019t, because we are too busy building a lasting business. <\/span><!--more--><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Om Malik wrote a piece about how <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/om.co\/2015\/11\/02\/value-not-valuations-is-good-business\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Value, Not Valuations is Good Business<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. In it, he posits three broad reasons people start companies. From that post: <\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You personally need a product or a service and don\u2019t see it on the market, so you decide to do something about it. Some people call it \u201cscratching an itch.\u201d<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You believe in the mission so much that you don\u2019t have a choice but to start something to make it a reality.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You see a market opportunity and decide to go after it, even though the reasons aren\u2019t personal.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When we started Onehub in 2007, there were consumer file sharing and sync tools available, but there was a need for enterprise grade collaboration tools. We knew we could provide a better solution, and were compelled to make a product that suited our business needs. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The other part to Malik\u2019s piece discusses the madness over valuations in the tech world. How X funding gives a startup Y valuation is constantly scrutinized in the Valley. He argues there\u2019s too much focus from founders on valuations and not enough on creating value and building a business. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Building a business is what we\u2019ve done at Onehub for the past eight years. We\u2019ve only taken $3 million in funding <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">total<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, so chasing paper valuations has never been a distraction for us. Instead, we focus on building a better product and experience for our customers every day. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This focus on building a business is paying off as we head into year nine: <\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We have more than 1.2 million users sharing their business data through Onehub<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We ended 2014 with a net profit for the year<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Last month was one of our best sales months ever<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">All of this <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">despite<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> the fact that we face bigger competition on more fronts than ever before. Eight years is a long time for any startup. Thankfully for Onehub, our business is just beginning. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My company, Onehub, recently celebrated its eight year anniversary. It\u2019s crazy to think about how different the startup world was just eight years ago. In 2007, the iPhone had just launched, unicorns were still rare, and file sharing was just [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":3849,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_themeisle_gutenberg_block_has_review":false},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onehub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3845"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onehub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onehub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onehub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onehub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3845"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.onehub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3845\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onehub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3849"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onehub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3845"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onehub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3845"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onehub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3845"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}