Two-day-old blog TechFold appears to be focusing on technology, but it’s (anonymous) author knows a thing or two about marketing, too: write a good quality post about a company headed by a well-read A-list blogger, expect him to respond, sit back and wait for the readers. 
So far it worked, I’m sure hundreds of readers follow Jeff Nolan’s response and his link to TechFold’s inaugural post, 5 Suggestions to make Teqlo a Survivor. Hats off to Jeff for the transparency in his response – he basically admits early strategic mistakes and outlines the course of correction:
“I’ll be very candid in saying I think we made a strategic error in trying to make the Builder an “everyman” platform that doesn’t have enough meat on the bone to appeal to the more technical audience who actually does care about it. In other words, we built the Builder for an audience that is largely not interested in using it, per the previous point, so now we’re in a position where we need to add more complex feature sets in order to make the Builder more appealing to the techie crowd, but in reality what this comes down to is exposing more of the complexity that we tried hard to cover up.”
It’s a good conversation, and if the inaugural post is any indication of the quality of the blog, it may very well be one worth subscribing to. Except … I really, really don’t understand the anonymity. I’ve previously stated that Respect Must be Earned Even in the Blogosphere – but that was about a cowardly attack-blog. TechFold appears to be decent, critical, but positively so. Please, please, dear TechFold author, whoever you are, “come out” and continue writing your blog with your “shields up”. Your About section is a decent mission statement. It just needs a name. ( a photo, perhaps?
)
Zoli,
I was actually surprised by the insightful comments in this post, and also a little taken aback because they reflect a level of detail that makes me think this might be written by an investor we pitched to…but the header says that it’s “outside the Valley”. The guy who runs it did email in the post to our support address, which was nice of him to do.
See you in Atlanta in a couple of weeks?
Domain registration points to Canada, but of course that means very little nowadays. Your comment and Jacoby’s comment on Techfold suggest you know who the mysterious blogger is.
We’ll see if it was a one-off effort or he/she keeps on posting – if the latter, I still believe he should “uncloak” and have more credibility that way.
Yeah, see you in Atlanta, although I’d rather head to Vienna 🙂
BWHAHAHAHA!
It is I, TechFOLD!
🙂
In all seriousness, I am the TechFold guy. My name is Rod Edwards, I’m in Winnipeg, Canada. I’m not an investor, a VC, or a startup guy. That’s what I mean by far out – I’m as out as you can get and still have broadband access.
I’m a serial web dabbler with a number of goofy one off projects out there that have never amounted to anything. I have a great day job at a major financial institution which exposes me to a lot of strategic thinking and analytical methodologies.
I’m a longtime lurker on various tech sites, a blogger at WorldChanging/Canada, and I decided to bring together my love of tech and the community, the analytical bent I get from my job, and what proficiency I have in writing and take a stab at tech commentary.
As I explained to Jeff and Jacoby in an email today, I find writing site reviews to be very different than just commenting on issues – its intimidating because I know there’s someone on the other end of the post I’m writing who’s put their heart and soul into whatever I’m critique-ing. So I kept anonymous so that I could beat a quick retreat if things weren’t going well – but the Teqlo team’s great, open response has helped to put those fears at ease.
Anyway, there you go. Unmasked! Thank’s very much for your kind comments – I hope I can live up to your expectations!
I think I’ll post the text of this comment over at techfold too…
Best regards,
–R
Hi Rod,
Thanks for “outing yourself” here, and I couldn’t agree more: post this at TechFold, be yourself:-) It’s fun and you build your personal brand in the process 🙂