Tech Entrepreneur Spotlight: David Morgan, Peerfocus
What was your inspiration for starting Peerfocus?
David: I was working at a not-for-profit running a big annual national survey. When the Web came along, it looked like it could be used to collect data online much more efficiently. That idea was quickly confirmed. Then I started offering online reporting so organizations could benchmark on survey results and run their own customized reports. That was a big success too. Then some associations expressed an interest in this new technology I was exploiting. I saw an opportunity to redo the original Web program at a higher level of abstraction so as to support multiple clients running multiple different survey programs. The original two associations put up some seed money to help get the development process going. From being someone running a survey I was going to become a person running an operation helping other people run their surveys. I was creating the next rung on my career ladder. I needed one. That was my inspiration.
What were some of your biggest challenges in getting Peerfocus up and running? How did you overcome them?
The not-for-profit wasn’t the right environment in which to build a new business. It was a lengthy negotiation process to leave with the application and the two clients, but I managed somehow to do it. Throughout that period I continued to deliver the service and attract interest from some other associations, which gave me some extra confidence. With any piece of intellectual property, once it has some perceived value, it is tricky to work through ownership in the product as it then exists and as what it might become. We (being me and the people at Comvision) all had to be flexible, and we were. So working out relative interest in the intellectual property was one issue.
The other big issue was money. We were fortunate in being able to add clients at a rate that didn’t overly stress us to the point we started failing in service delivery, but at a rate that did actually keep us more or less solvent.
I spent a lot of time with one potential investor, but in the end he wanted more control than we were willing to relinquish. One of the biggest challenges is that you will have some cash flow moments where it looks like everything is going to be lost. You have to be prepared to accept that, to want to succeed enough to take that risk.
What kinds of services does Peerfocus provide and what kinds of clients use it?
Peerfocus offers a technology and protocol to associations that enables them to conduct surveys of their members and then enable their members to exploit the survey results to maximum advantage – while at the same time protecting critical confidentiality. The whole idea is that associations are made up of organizations or individuals who share a common environment and who can learn from each other about the best ways to do various things and thrive in the shared environment.
Have you added or are you in the process of adding or changing the software to improve upon the original model?
Always have, always will! Most good ideas come from the clients. The trick is not to be defensive about complaints and queries, but to take the information as feedback and run with it.
How is Peerfocus different from simple online survey tools such as Survey Monkey?
The biggest way we differ is on the reporting side. It is relatively easy to create an online survey. A service like Survey Monkey excels at collecting a small amount of uncomplicated information easily for all involved. We don’t want to compete with them and I have often sent potential clients to them instead. Our niche is complicated surveys, collecting a lot of both confidential and non-confidential data, and then letting the respondents make use of the data to maximum effect. All of our clients have many surveys they run each year. We enable them to build reports and relationships that cut across surveys. Each survey is long and complicated, with lots of internal consistency issues that can only be addressed through a sophisticated validation process. Our goal is to create surveys that give respondents lots of feedback while they are filling the survey out online, so that once it is marked DONE, neither the respondent nor the survey manager is going to have to communicate about problems in the survey data.
In closing, do you have any advice for budding tech. entrepreneurs?
If you think you have identified an unmet need, you have a great opportunity to step up and take advantage of your experience that allowed you to see the need and a way to meet it in the first place. Stock up on Tums and go for it!
