We wrote a CEO page and it works

http://rsync.net/products/ceopage.html

by rsync • 13 years ago

124 57 13 years ago

rsync.net

clarkmoody• 13 years ago

I would like to see a blog post describing how it has worked for the company, with a link to the CEO page.

But this seems like a great idea!

rsync6• 13 years ago

The short answer is that we've made a (philosophical) decision to stay right in our highly technical niche and not gussy up our site, or product, with all of the things you might expect to see.

This resonates very well with the people that find us and will eventually use us, but the people that make decisions and pay us are not impressed with what they see.

So if we're not going to put up the PDF whitepapers and the product tour videos that they want to see ... how do we bridge that gap ?

That's where the CEO page comes in.

hkmurakami2• 13 years ago

So I'm guessing that the technical folks in the company send a link to this page to their CEO in order to convince them of the purchase?

MWil2• 13 years ago

I'm a recent law graduate researching warrant canaries. Is there a contact at your company I can be put in touch with?

thibaut_barrere• 13 years ago

Guess what: this page is the one that made me look at what you do, and realize that I will probably use your services.

laurenstill• 13 years ago

I'm building a tech specs/req for a gov project. It's exhausting to distill the information down into a presentable format.

This makes _my_ job easier, thank you.

Xymak1y2• 13 years ago

The "products" page, however, does not work: http://www.rsync.net/products/index.html

rsync6• 13 years ago

... just tested and works just fine ... just a static HTML page that's been in place since 2006 :)

Xymak1y2• 13 years ago

Now it seems to work for me as well. Thanks for the update!

mrjatx2• 13 years ago

I'm on 100MB line and it's been extremely slow. Several of the images from the /images/ directory are taking 6-7 seconds to load.

http://i.imgur.com/wEmmMfc.png

kaivi• 13 years ago

Yep, extremely slow loading time, and I'm in Norway. Here is my network profiler: http://cl.ly/image/1p0Q2l1e322D/o

henrikm85• 13 years ago

Extremely slow for me, http://rsync.net.nyud.net/products/ceopage.html works.

michaelmior• 13 years ago

Mirror: http://rsync.net.nyud.net/products/ceopage.html

yeldarb• 13 years ago

Maybe I'm completely out of touch but what is a "CEO page"?

mrjatx2• 13 years ago

A page to provide to your CEO (as a technical person) that will get them past overly technical/marketing speak. Basically a "I'm recommending this software, an here is an easy breakdown on why we should use it," page.

mvkel• 13 years ago

We used to do stuff like this. It worked okay.

How do you know the _unique_ goals the CEO is trying to achieve in their strategy matches what's shown on your CEO page? What if your last bullet point is the only one they care about? Showing every CEO the exact same message isn't personalized, and doesn't resonate.

What works better is empowering the "recommender" to sell your company themselves, instead of just having them point their CEO to a page on your website. You can work with this person to determine what the most compelling cases are for _their_ business, and tailor the CEO message to that.

It's much more effective for building a relationship without much additional work, and it raises conversions because it's more genuine.

rsync6• 13 years ago

I think you are correct - a more holistic approach would be more effective.

What we had before, however, was nothing - and this has been better.

thewojo• 13 years ago

Good idea, but think this needs to be more visual. A couple images go a long way in terms of conveying technical concepts to a non-technical audience.

jethro_tell• 13 years ago

Like an action shot of bits being written to the disk.

ultimoo• 13 years ago

Awesome! I like the straightforward nature of this article, it focuses on content rather than style.

A minor nitpick if any of the rsync.net guys are reading this. The front page states "11 Years serving customers worldwide" and the top section states "Enterprise Offsite Backup Since 2001".

BHSPitMonkey2• 13 years ago

Another nitpick, from the linked "CEO page":

"it appeals to technical people that appreciate elegant solutions"

Should arguably read as "people who appreciate". "Who" is preferred over "that" or "which" when referring to people.

daviddoran• 13 years ago

Using the right language for different buyers is a good lesson. First thing I'd A/B test on the page is the section mentioning "Cheap". I think business purchasers rarely want cheap, they want value and cost effectiveness.

koa• 13 years ago

I had the same reaction.. I always tend to use the word "affordable" since I personally interpret "cheap"as low quality.

However, I usually interpret "affordable" as a good value for whatever price (even if it is actually expensive)

BHSPitMonkey2• 13 years ago

"Inexpensive" strikes me as a good alternative.

sinak• 13 years ago

dovel• 13 years ago

I think the date of copyright is supposed to be the date at which content you are copyrighting was first created and anything after that date is covered. Not certain though

hornbaker• 13 years ago

There are no rules here, only conventions. In my opinion, a copyright year in the past makes it look like you don't know what you're doing. If you feel the need to tout your long history, then put the start and current year, like 2011-2013. Otherwise, follow convention and make sure it always reads the current year.

eitally2• 13 years ago

Imho, you should call it the CIO page instead, but perhaps that varies depending what kinds of businesses you're targeting. In most medium and large enterprises, the CIO will have budget authority to make these kinds of decisions independently and the CEO will never be involved at all, unless the topic of backups & DR arise in a board or audit meeting.

rsync6• 13 years ago

Better that a CIO gets a "CEO page" than a CEO gets a "CIO page" :)

Ironically, I'm the CEO here and I wouldn't want to see any of these ...

mbesto• 13 years ago

Exactly this. Even it's a VP in a big corp, in their mind they can be seen a "CEO". This is one of those things good CEOs do for their subordinates - they empower them.

beachstartup• 13 years ago

this is usually just called an 'executive summary'

Accredified• 13 years ago

Nothing gets more techy than servers. Why I would hire a tech company that uses pre 2000 design and static pages from 2006 to sell me on their modern tech solution is beyond me.

drharris• 13 years ago

Presumably because they're spending time on their actual technology rather than fiddling in Photoshop and keeping up with patching the latest Node.js vulnerabilities on a web-appified version?

Tehnix2• 13 years ago

Because web design and what they do are entirely different areas of expertise. Their design skills tells nothing about their capabilities as sys admins (and the other areas concerning backup)

fareesh• 13 years ago

It would be sort of nice if VPS providers did this. I sometimes find it difficult talking to non-technical people about Heroku or Linode and they look at me like "I've never heard of those, can't we use GoDaddy?"

deGravity• 13 years ago

Thanks for sharing!

Small grammar nitpick: In the last sentence of the "Cheap and risk free" section you use the word "years" twice where "year's" would be the appropriate usage.

RKearney• 13 years ago

So the concept of this is to create a misleading page such that the CEO of a company would be tricked into signing off on an otherwise overpriced service?

Towards the bottom it reads:

Depending on the size, this could be as low as 7 cents per GB, per month - which is cheaper than Amazon S3.

However, after looking at both the pricing and signup page, it appears as though the lowest you can get is $0.08 per GB, and that's only if you buy 10TB of space. That's also for a SINGLE off-site location. This is the equivalent of "Reduced Redundancy Storage" at Amazon, which starts at $0.076 per GB. However, if you want to compare apples to apples, you would compare it to the 10TB pricing.

10TB Single off-site @ rsync - $9,500/yr

10TB Single off-site @ AWSs3 - $8,011/yr

10TB Multiple off-site @ rsync - $16,625/yr

10TB Multiple off-site @ AWSs3 - $10,009/yr

Every time rsync posts something on HN or Reddit, its always filled with FUD.

dreamdu5t• 13 years ago

Tricked? You mean marketed?

asperous• 13 years ago

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't offline backups be more like Glacier, which is 0.01GB/Month?

http://aws.amazon.com/glacier/pricing/

rsync6• 13 years ago

A few comments ...

First, our pricing almost exactly matching S3 is not a secret - it's well understood, and by design.

Second, you'll note that the following features of a 10TB account with us are not included with S3:

- Free integration engineering (as in, a unix engineer on the phone with you)

- 24/7 hotline support - as in, xmas morning phonecalls

- two physical media shipments of any size per year

- We will sign a BAA with you

Ask your contact at Amazon what those would cost next time you talk to them. Oh wait, you've never ever talked to anyone at Amazon and you never will[1]

So you're right - it's not apples to apples.

[1] Except, of course, at AWS summit and so on, where they are very available and helpful.

jvoorhis2• 13 years ago

You lost me at "Oh wait." I've had positive experiences with AWS support at both paid and free tiers of support, including phone calls with engineering to resolve issues. (Knowing your account manager certainly helps.)

StavrosK• 13 years ago

Okay, but you say it's cheaper than S3. Which tier is that?

the_real_bender• 13 years ago

HIPAA compliance is attractive, as is the support.

(physician's husband and IT support guy)

We wrote a CEO page and it works

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