FMYI | For My Innovation

The idea to tackle workplace collaboration in a whole different way started back in the early days of the blink tag back in the mid 90s. I was an intern at Nike working as an intranet developer and immediately realized that there had to be a better way of collaborating beyond custom developed static intranet sites. Throughout my career at Nike, I worked with and in numerous countries, divisions, and projects which underscored the urgency of better collaborative tools. In my mind, the experience could be more friendly, easy, interactive, and community-oriented. And I had a suspicion that potential customers would feel the same way.

So when I realized it was time to start FMYI, I followed these three rules to grow the business and go after my dreams:

1. Have a point of view.
2. Know your customer.
3. Build your product/service around your point of view and the customer’s needs.

The key is the balance between your point of view of how you’re going to improve things and what the customer is telling you their need. First you need a foundation and launching pad which you can run by potential customers to refine the product/service. And ideally you can initially fund the startup through client revenue and a few credit cards.

From the beginning, based on my observations of workplace collaboration across multiple sectors, FMYI’s point of view has been:

1. “No headcount software” approach to lower the barrier to entry.
2. Design, usability, social media look and feel to drive user adoption.
3. Empower teams to work anywhere with essential workflow functionality.
4. Quality, free support from collaboration specialists for change agents.
5. Platform to inspire innovation and sustainability.

And over the past five years, we’ve constantly refined our service through customer feedback to grow the business, all the while keeping true to our point of view. The POV is what gets people interested, and our adaptability to customers’ needs that help keep things growing. We’ve been growing with the flow…

Coming up next: sustainability and startups.

-Justin