Working away at our head office in Orem, Utah and something interesting just happened:
To me, there’s little more important than eating your own cooking. The point is this: If your cooking is so bad that you won’t eat it, how do you expect others to?
In Curve’s case, it’s web technology. Why are we telling dentists they have to move to the web? Because it’s what we’re using!
We believe so much in the benefits of the web that our whole business relies on it, and I’m not just referring to the products we offer. To us the web is like a religion, it’s a way of life, it’s a lifestyle. All of our business systems and software is based off web technology: accounting, implementations, development, support, sales, etc. all rely on web-based technology. Our calendaring, email, documents, wiki, etc. are all delivered online through Google Docs Enterprise. We use tripit.com to manage our hectic travel schedules and even our entire phone system is based on a voice over IP network.
We have offices in Utah, Canada, New Zealand and these tools are what allow us to stay connected. I feel as the founder of Curve, it’s my duty to make sure our team members are all leveraging web-based technology so we can better understand what we’re providing to our customers.
Now never send me a word document again!
I spent the last few days at the spring meeting in California with our VP of Marketing, Andy Jensen. Andy knows how to pack a schedule; for three days we had meetings from the early morning to the late evening, mostly talking about what’s new with Curve and the big things that we have on the horizon.
There were really three key messages we tried to impart to the thought leaders on this particular journey:
1) Later this year, we’ll be be announcing a new free product. Not Eaglesoft free, “Really Free!”. We think it’s going to be have a big impact in the marketplace and will make dentists smile. Dentists need love too.
2) We’re currently in the early stages of the FDA approval process for our proprietary digital imaging system. This is an important part of Curve’s offering and is going to fundamentally change how digital imaging “happens” right now in the dental industry. Think of never having a server again, never having to worry about storing and backing up images, being able to access your images from any web-enabled device… way cool, I know.
3) Lastly, over the past year we’ve build the first truly customizable reporting engine for practice management in dentistry. Our engine gives users significant power over the data that resides within Curve and allows our users to search, filter and organize data in a really awesome way. Later this year we’ll be opening this platform so consultants, thought leaders and other experts working with dental practices can customize and provide tools that give dentists better insights for how to manage their practice.
These are just a few of the small things we’re working on, but we’re excited. We’ll keep you posted as these changes begin to unfold.
Left to Right [Ties Carter, Editor of Dental Products Report, Roger and Lorie Streeter from the American Association of Dental Office Managers and Dr. Marty Jablow]
- Matty in LA
Fish tacos, listening to Lil Wayne, mac laptop, working away, in San Francisco, long delay en route to the California Dental Meeting in Anaheim to meet with a bunch of awesome thought leaders.
Thank you cloud for allowing me to work anywhere.
Dr. Ali Attaie, the founder of HelloSmile contacted Curve to see if we could help them with expanding their practice base. HelloSmile is a group pediatric organization dedicated to reducing caries in children, especially in under-served communities like Queens and The Bronx where caries much more prevalent. To give you an idea of how serious this is, carries is found in 51.17 percent of children between 6 and 11, all of which is completely preventable.
I was immediately blown away with their passion, organization and commitment to make a big change in New York and beyond.
Last week they flew out to our technology office in Calgary and we began looking at the details of switching them over to Curve. With Curve, we’ll give them the ability to completely centralize their operations, provide a higher level of patient care and drastically reduce IT expenditures.
I’m excited to be a part of their mission. I guess ones and zeroes can make a difference :).
I spent the day in San Francisco today at a conference called Starup Lessons Learned. It was an amazing conference and the first of its kind. Check it out here.
Anyways, what was interesting about the trip is that I couldn’t go anywhere without seeing an iPad. No joke. Nearly everyone at the conference either had a Mac or an iPad and it just struck me how Apple products are continuing to take over the world. Every single bus stop, bill board, etc. had an iPad ad. Even the doorman at a bar we went to had an iPad and was checking people in.
It just surprised me how quickly people are adopting something new like the iPad when it’s really not a revolutionary device. Come on, it’s basically a big iPhone (I already have an iPhone) that doesn’t have a camera, doesn’t use flash, can’t multi-task and doesn’t have a ton of applications. It’s really not a computer, can’t store files the way I want, I can’t customize it the way I want, there’s just soo much it DOESN’T DO.
So how the hell did they sell over one million units in just 73 days, about 2 and a half times as fast as the first iPhone did?
It’s obviously a whole bunch of things, but if someone other than Apple or Steve Jobs had of pitched this product to a venture capitalist I’m sure they would have laughed. What’s your value proposition? What’s your competitive differentiators? What features or benefits does the iPad provide that competitive products currently aren’t getting?
In my opinion, the iPad doesn’t really allow anyone to do anything new. And, the last time I checked there wasn’t millions of people rallying about how difficult it is to surf the web with a laptop on your couch.
I think Apple understands a few things really well:
Oh yeah, and they obivously understand marketing.
What’s the moral of the story? I went and bought an iPad, even though I didn’t want one and so did a couple million other people.
Damnit. I guess we’ll just have to build some awesome Curve applications on it :).
Matty in SF
Cool! http://www.towniecentral.com/Dentaltown/Article.aspx?aid=2623
Started boxing the other day at Gleason’s gym in Brooklyn, NY.
Earl is my trainer from the Bronx and is all business. This place is one of the oldest Gym’s in the country and is authentic as they come. Guys lifting chains and steel, old guys playing cards in the back, you name it. All the great ones were here, Tyson, Ali, Foreman, etc.
Watch out dentrix. We’re coming for you.
Even this cat knows it’s about customers.
One thing I’m really passionate about right now is spending an inordinate amount of time at customer sites. I’m literally spending weeks on end locked up in sites all over the US trying to figure out any way we can become better. How can we make customers lives easier? How can we do things faster? How can we make things simpler? How can we provide better service? Essentially, how can we make our customers experience one of legitimate “awesomeness”?
The biggest set backs our company’s had in the past are when we’ve made assumptions regarding what customers want without actually having hands on experience to back it up. Even when those decisions have been deep rooted in logic and vetted by intelligent people, in many cases they’ve come out wrong and we’ve had to go back to the drawing board after getting customer feedback.
It boggles my mind how few start-ups and large companies actually have a pulse on what customers are experiencing with their products or services (Phone companies, Airlines, etc.). The world is getting smaller everyday. To me, business in today’s age is simple, being successful is about building products that actually make peoples lives better, it’s about delivering products and services that are awesome, provide tangible value and don’t suck.
It’s no secret that some of the most successful companies today were started by people who were trying to solve their own problems. It’s a lot easier to understand the customer when it’s you. At Google Larry and Sergey wanted a better search engine, the guys who created Hotmail wanted a way to send personal email at work without using their work mail client, Steve Jobs uses and tests Apple products relentlessly way before they’re commercial, and Howard Scultz used to visit Starbucks five times a day.
So until I become a dentist in another life, I will have to vicariously live through them, constantly obsessing about what can make our products better.
Enough said. Flight to catch in 4 hours, must sleep.
- Matty @ Chicago Mid-Winter Show
What’s so cool about being web-based is how your personal office can really be anywhere your computer is. I’m sitting in the Detroit airport right now between connecting flights and feel like I haven’t missed a beat with what’s going on. I’ve been working with different divisions of our company in our Calgary, Utah and New Zealand offices all through web-based applications. I even just helped a Curve customer in Toronto by very quickly logging into their instance of our web-based software.
Besides Photoshop and iTunes, all of my applications are completely in the cloud. I have no question that this is how everything will be in the not so distant future.
- Matty @ airport in Detroit.
P.S. Just missed my connecting flight. Thank you Delta for being awesome and not charging me extra $$. The war against/client server can cause you to lose sight of even the most basic things.
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