In today’s Q&A Wednesday we’re talking with Michael Wilson, co-founder and CEO of Small World Labs. Michael has bootstrapped the company for the past two years, accumulating an impressive list of clients along the way.

Q: How did you first get the idea for Small World Labs?

I had heard of MySpace and Facebook and became a member of each (and other sites like them) very early on.  As a member, I immediately saw these sites not as destinations, but as examples of a new form of communication technology that enabled members of fragmented communities to interact and communicate online.  This new form of communication technology eventually became known as “social networking”.

I felt that this new social networking technology could be applied to a wide variety of fragmented markets and communities.  I grew up as a witness to one such community.  I’m a CODA, which means Child Of Deaf Adults, and my parents are members of the deaf community.  Certain communicative things that you and I take for granted were difficult for my parents.  For example, they used to plan their weeks around going to places like Best Buy or the auto repair shop when the person that they could communicate with would be there because they relied on these people for information, recommendations, and advice.  And once they found such a person, boy, were my parents loyal customers.  On top of that, it was difficult for them to stay in touch with old friends and form new relationships.

After the Internet went commercial in 1994 and its adoption became more prevalent, I saw the impact that technology had on my parents.  They could now conduct primary research online with a web browser, communicate with friends asynchronously via email, and do so in real time via web messenger.  My parents’ world was opened dramatically and they were empowered.  I saw social networking as the next step in this empowerment for my parents and for a host of other fragmented communities like the one they were a member of.  These new social networks would enable their participants to benefit from word of mouth recommendations and advice, discuss specific topics and share knowledge relevant to them, and meet people with similar interests- all things that are difficult and time consuming to do in the offline world.

However, being a business realist, I needed to test my hypothesis.  I then put together a few online surveys to test if people would be interested in joining social networks that were smaller, but more targeted in their purpose.  I had these surveys filled out by 75 people, the feedback was overwhelmingly positive, and we were off.

Q: Tell us what the Small World suite of products is all about, and who are some of your customers?

We have three principal product offerings: Small World Platform, Small World Professional, and Small World Enterprise.  All of these utilize the core social networking functions for connecting people and enabling them to interact.  However, we also layer on top of these additional modules that enable more functionality beyond basic social networking, for example a knowledge center, a ratings and reviews section, a WIKI, or a site-wide video gallery, to name just a few.  These enable our customers to tailor the functionality of their social networks to what is relevant to them.  However, we also feel that it is not just the technology that is important to the success of a social network, but also the knowledge of how to run it effectively. Because of that, we bundle in community planning sessions with our software as a service model. In our community planning sessions, we talk to our customers and give them advice about how best to set up and manage an online community.

Some of our customers include Oracle, Scottrade, Special Olympics, American Cancer Society, CMP, and Belo (the holding company of the Dallas Morning News and 25+ other media properties).

Q: You’ve developed the product and landed customers without any venture money. Will it require some outside funding to get where you want to go?

Well, we’ve gotten to where we are without any outside investment so I don’t think it’s required.  However, we do consider from time to time if the addition of outside capital would enable us to grow faster and better achieve our goals.

Q: When did you have that first “a ha” moment and realize that you guys were on to something?

The first “a ha” was when the results from the 75 surveys I mentioned earlier came back.  The second was when we started getting inbound calls from people asking about our services.

Q: What can we expect to see in the future from Small World Labs?

You’ll see us continue to round out our technology from a features and functions perspective and then start to look at how our system interoperates with other prevalent systems that our customers use. You’ll also see us start to form more partnerships with companies as a way for us to expand our footprint in the marketplace.

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