Relaying from IRC Chat... 8:40pm CT July 8th, 2002
(@CEO-Shawn) I started Cyberwings as a very small, very personal web hosting company in June 2001. As word of mouth spread, our company grew... and grew... and grew. Since June 2001 we have grown to having over 4,000+ individual clients and currently having over 16,000 websites hosted on our services.
- During this time we were able to maintain a VERY low level of pricing and STILL providing quality hosting services as well as open our own data center in Maine. Cyberwings would like to take the next step in hosting services by creating a Premier Cyberwings Data Center (PCDC) in Virginia, USA. Some people would say that we should have started out by creating this PCDC which can house hundreds of servers, have 10-14 redundant carriers in the same building, etc., however, when Cyberwings was first started, it was not known as to whether we would be this successful in our goal to create the World's largest and friendliest hosting community.
The costs of building such a Data Center are significant enough to ward off any small business from doing it initially, but as we have grown, it is becoming a necessity. Obviously, our success has surpassed even my wildest goals in the first year. No company founder can predict that kind of growth, especially in a market where "Dot Coms" were supposed to be "Dot Bombs" and "old news."
The people that have been with us from the beginning know that I have always been a very active part of our company. I have made myself available, night and day, for the past year, to help customers, assist with issues, etc. With the enormous growth we have experienced, there just was not enough of me to go around. We brought on 7 additional staff to assist, but still, people really wanted to deal more with me since I had been the person they dealt with for the longest time directly.
While I still try to spend a good amount of time answering people's questions, interacting with our customer base, I cannot spend as much time as I used to. The staff we have on board are very well qualified to assist, however, and I hope everyone out there will rely on them for a lot of the basic questions that most anyone in our company should be able to answer. Everyone has been asking me what my goals are for the future for Cyberwings. In the past, I will admit, I have not been very good at documenting my thoughts, my goals and my dreams when it comes to Cyberwings, but I wanted to do that now, so that people can see just how much thought & consideration I have put into this company and how much dedication I have to seeing it succeed.
Here is my list of goals I have put together, and would like to get everyone's support on:
1) Develop the PCDC in Virginia to house dedicated, colocated & web hosting servers. The PCDC will have 1 primary data carrier and 3 redundant "On-A-Usage-Basis" data carriers.
2) Increase our pricing slightly (yet enough) to generating enough profit (instead of breaking even) to expand our PCDC even further in the future. Implement yearly & monthly hosting options with the appropriate price breaks in place for annual pricing, yet offering the flexibility of monthly hosting for those who choose that option - still at a very reasonable cost.
3) Add 3 additional staff within the first month of the PCDC in such roles as: 2 Reseller Liaison personnel and 1 additional support staff. I will continue to not draw an income from the company, and only act as the President & CEO directing the company towards future goals. My reward from this business is building the community, watching it grow and flourish. That, to me, is far greater a reward than any financial gain I could possibly achieve.
4) Continue to offer three levels of web hosting - Individual, AYW & Reseller.
5) Expand into Colocation & Dedicated Servers (Rackmountable, Towers, etc.) within the first month of the PCDC being operational.
6) Introduce ModernBill w/ Authorize.net (or possibly directly with our Merchant Accounts) Integration to our web hosting community so that all billing functions can be automated within a simple control panel. This would provide a simple, trackable customer management solution for our personnel and also for each customer to be able to login to view their invoices, upcoming billing dates, contact billing personnel, etc.
7) Introduce Toll-Free Premium & Toll-Number Premium Support packages so that resellers & customers alike can obtain telephone support from our staff. While we do not wish to provide 24/7 Toll-Free Telephone Support as a free service (it would be a cost-per-call or per minute basis or just a regular TOLL number you would dial), offering some would be a cost-per-call or per minute basis or just a regular TOLL number you would dial), offering some type of telephone support in the future is a goal.
8) Within 3 months of the PCDC being operational, formulate a migration plan to move the servers from RackShack to the PCDC in order to provide faster support, more direct control over the servers and more expansion capabilities for these customers.
These are just a sample list of the goals I have in mind for Cyberwings over the next year as things really start to take off. As we have grown, and piece-mealed our growth together by adding space, developing our first data center, etc. we have noticed two things:
The first thing that we have noticed is that we cannot seem to expand fast enough to keep up with our most recent volume of sales. Instead of adding space and data centers as we go, let's build the Premier Cyberwings Data Center with enough capacity to expand into it for at least 3-4 years.
The second thing that we have noticed is that we have a very, very loyal customer base who very much wants to see Cyberwings succeed. Your support in the past has been critical to allowing us to expand as much as we have.
In the future, as we embark on this new project, your support, both in faith in the company and financially, will be critical to our success. I have no intention on turning my back on a project, the World's largest & friendliest hosting community, that has come so far in a very short 12 months. We appreciate you, and we hope you appreciate us and our services as well. With your support and my committment to this company, Cyberwings can become what no other hosting company has ever achieved - a true community, not just a "commercial power house." Being a commerical power house has definite advantages - but being a corporate commercial power house with a huge level of community involvement is taking it to a whole new level. We want this. You want this. Let's do it.
How else can you assist? Very simple. Just support us in our goals. Please realize that with such a major, drastic transition in our business, we will all be a little on edge while we make these changes. I will gladly grand 2CheckOut or PayPal refunds to anyone who wishes to leave our services, however, I fully intend to give ALL Resellers, AYW & Individual accounts some FREE services after we get settled into the PCDC in order to give you time to get your businesses & sites back to a functional mode. Patience with me and with our staff will greatly assist us.
Consider this a blessing in disguise in many ways - CW being given the opportunity to take a major step back, revamp our business processes, put the proper resources in the right places, and take another bold, bigger shot at this community.
We are not exactly a small community at this point, so this will effect a lot of people. I'm right here in the trenches with the rest of our crew working on the issues.
As for the naysayers out there, I'm ignoring you. If I had listened to every naysayer and negative comment out there on the Internet about Cyberwings and our processes, our business plans, etc. in the past then we never would have made it this far. Feel free to talk amongst yourselves, but my focus is on transition, expansion & the future. Not on wallowing in negativity and "naysayer" heaven. I am going to UNMODERATE the channel, and let you talk amongst yourselves. Please take what I have said here and know that I'm still working on issues at hand. Hopefully this information will help you understand that I am putting in MAJOR thought & effort and ACTION into this situation.