Markus Olausson and Ola Johnasson, the co-founders of a Swedish Startup – AlternativeTo.net, have been providing some incredible alternatives to software, applications, and web based services with their crowd-powered directory. Although AlternativeTo was launched just around 18 months ago, it has come a really long way; they have been featured in several high-profile technology blogs, magazines and TV channels (including BBC) across Europe, North America and South America.
Today, AlternativeTo has become a hot favorite for it’s users and is still growing with an even rapid pace – thanks to the amazing team work delivered by the co-founders and to their strategies. Together, they make an incredible pair – both as friends and as a successful startup team. Markus and Ola, in this interview, share their startup story, journey so far and their learning, with us on Foundora. Read On….
Interview Overview:
Can you briefly walk us through each of your background and your entrepreneurial journey so far?
Markus: AlternativeTo is founded, built and run by us, Markus Olausson and Ola Johansson from Sweden. We have both been working with creating websites for other companies for a long time and at the same time we have been running a few web projects together. I am into design, business and Ola is the developer and overall tech guy. About two years ago we were running a successful music community in Sweden and some smaller websites. At the same time we had just came up with the idea of AlternativeTo. We decided that we really wanted to shape our own future so we both quit our day jobs and started working full time on our current websites and started to figure out how we wanted AlternativeTo to work and look.
Please tell us what exactly AlternativeTo is?
Markus: To keep it short and simple we usually say that AlternativeTo is “a website dedicated to help you find great alternatives to the applications you want to replace”. Instead of listing a million applications in broad categories AlternativeTo makes every application into its own category and let the users of the site decide what alternatives are the best. There are also many ways to filter the alternatives so you can find exactly the type of alternatives you’re looking for. Examples: cross-platform alternatives, only free alternatives, open source only etc.
How did you come up with the idea? What made you think that there was a need of something like AlternativeTo?
Markus: Ola was the one who came up with the idea first. It happened when he was browsing the web looking for an application to replace WinRAR. He thought there should be a website that listed alternatives to applications and when he didn’t find a good one he wanted to build one. A few months later Ola and I started our company and we planned, designed and built AlternativeTo together. We thought it had great potential to help a lot of people out their who search for better software and it turned out quite well.
From what we know, you both seem to share an amazing rapport with each other? How did you guys meet? What do you think is the key to successful co-founder relationship? And, what aspects shall people look for while choosing their co-founders?
Markus: We met when Ola moved to study in the town where I grew up. We became friends, did some work together and when Ola moved to Gothenburg and I moved to Stockholm at the same time, we stayed in contact. In 2001 we built the music community I mentioned before and have been running it together ever since. We formed a small company alongside our day jobs and this way, without thinking much about it, we got to try out how well we worked together both when developing and running websites, but also when money gets thrown into the mix. That was key when deciding to step things up and start working full time together.
This is a luxury not too many will have when choosing business partners but our advise is to not rush things. Get to know each other as well as possible and be honest, always. You will not agree on everything but it’s better to take the discussion right away and work it out. There’s always a solution to things if you’re not too unreasonable. Another important aspect is to have the same goal. Do you want to be rich? Famous? Feel free and plan your life the way you like it? Just want to follow your dreams and build great websites? All of the above? no matter what you’re looking for when starting a business, make sure you all want the same thing.
AlternativeTo is site based on User Generated Content; How do you maintain the quality of the content that’s being generated by the users?
Markus: Everything that is added, edited or deleted on AlternativeTo is passing through an admin system where we decide if it is correct or not. In the beginning we managed it all on our own but as the site has grown bigger we have for and great people to help out with administration and suggestions on how to improve the concept and functionality.
UGC helps in bringing unique visitors; However, how are you engaging the users on the site and what do you think makes the website sticky?
Ola: We try to encourage our most active users as much as possible. We list every user action in the sidebar, we have a list of top contributors and we try to thank people personally when they add some good content etc. Community building is really important and we work continuously to make our top users feel as appreciated as possible, because they really are appreciated.
AlternativeTo also has a software recommendation API. Can you tell us some interesting use-cases of the API you have seen so far?
Ola: The API was a feature we built just to try it out and we haven’t seen that much usage of it. There is an Android application that a guy called Rhoit Ghatol just built. We also use our API for our own WordPress plugin and widgets. But people, please build more awesome stuff and if the API doesn’t have the functionality that you need then just let us know and we will be happy to improve it.
Usually, the majority of the traffic on content sites come from search engines, However, it takes time for organic traffic to get onto the site, so from where & how did you bring initial traffic to AlternativeTo?
Ola: On launch we emailed about 20 blogs from Europe and South America. We intentionally did not do any promotion to sites written in English just to get a slow start. Some of those blogs picked it up and after a month or so blogs written in English started to write about us. Then Lifehacker wrote an article about AlternativeTo and their visitors showed us a lot of love. We got more than 40.000 visitors in about 24 hours and after that we have got great coverage from all over the world. BBC News, PC Magazine, The TWiT Network (We love Leo so that was special!), Revision 3, Swedish National TV and lots and lots more.
Apart from the ad revenues, do you plan to have featured applications in the relevant pages? Or what other revenue model are you considering for AlternativeTo?
Markus: At the moment we’re working to monetize the websites through ads but that might change as we expand and new opportunities appear. No matter what happens, we believe strongly in staying true to the concept of helping people find the best alternatives to the applications they want to replace. Software developers are very welcome to promote their products on AlternativeTo but it’s important to separate content and ads.
How has the journey been since it’s launch? What are some of your biggest learning so far? What advice do you have for founders of upcoming crowd powered/content sites?
Markus: It’s been great, just great. We knew that the concept we came up with had great potential to be successful but it’s hard to know what to expect. The beauty of building websites these days is that if you have something interesting going on then people will link to you, blog about you, talk about you and show you love. But it will take a lot of work and the administration takes much more time that you can ever expect.
If you’re looking to rely on your users to help you out by voting or contributing with data then it’s essential to communicate as much as possible and let them help you make the right decisions. You probably know a whole lot about how to make your website great but the collective opinion of your users probably know it just a little bit better 😉
