Esther: Welcome back to the BusinessMakers Overtime Show heard here and online at theBusinessMakers.com. I'm Esther Steinfeld and my guest today is Vinny Lingham. He is the Founder and CEO of Yola - Yola.com. Welcome to the show Vinny.

Vinny: Good afternoon.

Esther: It's wonderful to have you. So, first and foremost, why don't you tell us a little bit about Yola.

Vinny: Yola is a web-based application which means you don't have to download it and you can go to websites and create a website for yourself. Typically for a small business or group and there's no technical skills required at all, so it's really for the lay person I think who want to quickly and easily assemble a website for themselves.

Esther: Alright, that's so cool. So how did you come up with this idea?

Vinny: I'd like to say it was a eureka moment, but it was really an evolution of some ideas we had five years ago. We figured it was just - you know, I come from a pretty technical background and I have written code for five years, and I wanted to build a website and I couldn't believe how much difficulty it was and how technical it really because to build a website. And myself and my team just felt there was an easier way of doing it and a way of taking out having to write code to assemble with just something really simple. It's just, you know, it's some pages on the Internet with where it would affix some images some images and information; and we just realized that there was a huge opportunity to empower the mass market of consumers and small businesses out there just to be able to create their own websites.

Esther: How important is it for a small business to have a website right now?

Vinny: Right now it's probably one of the most important things that they can be focusing on. I think that every small business that doesn't have a website, getting a website should probably at the top of their because you know, the customers are on Facebook, on Twitter, and when the customers are looking for them they can't find them, they can't find their phone numbers. And the biggest mistake that small business are making is if when a customer on a search engine like Google can type in whatever neighborhood they're in, you don't want your competitor outranking you, especially if they're looking for a new business. They can't find you online, they might go to a competitor. In fact, they probably will go to a competitor.

Esther: Yep, that's a good point. Have you always been passionate about helping small businesses?

Vinny: Yeah, I come from a family of small business owners. I mean my grandmother's a small business owner, my dad's a small business owner, my mom, you know, and I was too. Earlier in my career I had a small business and so, you know, I've always impassioned my heart in small businesses and in fact, I'm inventing small businesses as well on a personal capacity too. So I really think that it's a very important market. I think small businesses play a phenomenal role in every major economy in the world, especially the U.S. economy. It's critical that they continue to strive and that they're update competing with the big guys, keep the big guys in check.

Esther: So you kind of brushed on this a little bit, but you are incredibly active in the startup world and you actually live right in the heart of San Francisco, is that correct?

Vinny: That's right.

Esther: So how did you develop this passion?

Vinny: I originally come from South Africa. I was born out there.

Esther: Oh we couldn't tell.

Vinny: (Laughter) The accent probably give me away.

Esther: (Laughter) Just a little bit.

Vinny: So you know, I grew up in a country where you see a lot entrepreneurship just out of necessity. People - you know, it is Africa and people to realize that to make it they have to and corporate jobs aren't always readily available. So you've gotta start businesses. So I think, you know, from an early age, I just saw that small businesses are a way of getting out of poverty and many people who took that route and - it just allowed you to be self-supportive and support your family and it's something that just about anyone can do. Anyone who wants to start their own business can and should be successful.

Esther: So what have been some of your biggest challenges so far in starting this business?

Vinny: In starting this business I think my biggest challenge was initially, obviously raising funding. As it tends to start up it's very expensive building this sort of technology and we've raised now over $25 million in funding.

Esther: Wow, that's amazing.

Vinny: So we win. That was the hardest part I would say. I think the second hardest part is getting the product right. One danger of technical people building a product for people who aren't technically good, you know, we've gotta make sure that what we're doing is serving the needs of our audience of our customers out there; and making sure that the usability's good and that it's so easy that people don't have to know how to write the code. It's critical and to a large extent, that's why we gave the product away for free. We have a free version which anyone can use to build a website. It's got more bells and whistles than anything else out there just for a free product. We've acquired over three and a half million users worldwide -

Esther: Wow.

Vinny: - so we have a lot of data. We have, you know, three and half million people using our technology tells us what's wrong and how we can fix it and how we can make it easier to use. So the model of around our business was to just let as many people try it so we can learn from their experiences and make it easier and better. And then we have a small percentage of our customers who are willing to pay for things which makes this business a volatile business.

Esther: That's so cool. I think we have a lot of people in our audience right now who are just on the verge of kind of getting into that mobile world and online world and kind of starting to build their websites. And Mobile M-Commerce has been kind of the buzz word of 2010. Are you doing anything in that space right now with your business?

Vinny: Yeah, I think, you know, it's not right now but we are currently doing some plans and designing some technologies to make the small business owner who uses Yola far more worser than mobile enabled. So right now, the sites load very well on devices like the iPhone and the iPad. And you know, one of the things which small business owner making a mistake with is they build flash websites which started work on iPhones and iPads and actually have poor user experiences in browsers as well, so we don't use flash at all. We use a well coded HTML which is outputted to when you publish the website even though they haven't written any code, at least it's compliant to its NEE. Basically any mobile device out there with a decent size screen; and over time, we're gonna be adding more technology to make it even easier for small businesses to have their sites accessed on a mobile. So when someone's searching on their iPhone they can find this site quite easily.

Esther: Wow. That sounds like it's gonna be an exciting time coming up in the next few years. What is on the horizon for you guys?

Vinny: I think a lot of the features we focus on is the social networking features really have the ability to post to Facebook and Twitter from your Yola account, so when you make changes to your site. But bringing more of that internally you know, creating the Yola brand around. Totally powering a small business or group or consumer to be able to use the other two. At least keep their customers aware of what they're doing. So a one-stop shop for small businesses.

Esther: Awesome. And I wanna talk a little bit more about the competitive nature of kind of vying for capital right now because capital is like you said, really hard to come by. So what do entrepreneurs need to know when they're getting involved in this space. Like what's the one thing you can tell them they really need to know about approaching the angel investors and the venture capitalists?

Vinny: Yes, I mean I can only speak from experience in the tech space, but I think when you're approaching investors typically before you go to venture capitalists you wanna give some angel investments on board just to help you build a prototype of what you're trying to do and proof of concept that what you have is interesting to them. Typically yeah VCUs they're tired of using their imagination, they wanna see it. I've heard too many stories that have gone untold. So getting angel investments is probably the first step to getting funding and once you have angel investors, most of the time those angels can turn to venture capitalists. So it's only a progression where you start off with angels then move on to venture capitalists.

Esther: So what about the business plan. How important is that?

Vinny: Well the business plan that I use to raise $5 million dollars was literally two-pages long and about eight paragraphs. It was just a high level, summary of what we're trying to achieve. But what I did have was a live piece of subsidy that was working and I had 10,000 users using our product.

Esther: Wow.

Vinny: Yeah, I think actions speak louder than words. I've seen too many people spend too time writing business plans. It's all good to have a business plan you know, when you wanna go, but if it's more than two pages long, no one's gonna read it and those who do read it probably won't invest.

Esther: Ah, got it!

Vinny: And that's my experience. I mean it might be different for other people, but typically the types of investors that you want are the visionary investors. They're investing in the entrepreneur and his vision, and you can ever capture that on a piece of paper.

Esther: Well it sounds like you've been very luck in that capacity and you've had the actual product to back it up which clearly makes a difference.

Vinny: Thank you. It's been - that was important I think putting the two together.

Esther: So if you can give our listening audience one bit of advice, just general, high level entrepreneurship advice, what would it be?

Vinny: I think in all parties I've ever been involved in, it's always darkest before the dawn. (Laughter) So you know, don't be afraid of failure and just keep going. And thought as she failed it hasn't yet, so keep trying and to be optimistic. I'm talking in excerpts about, "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again approach." And I've had a number of failures in my past and a lot of successes and I can tell you before I had my first success, my philosophy was that I will have at least tried building a business ten times because even if I just succeed ten percent of the time, I'll have a business at that point.

Esther: Absolutely.

Vinny: And it's just a numbers game. You've gotta keep trying until you get it right.

Esther: That's wonderful advice. Thank you so much for being here Vinny. This has been very eye opening and enlightening for us.

Vinny: Thanks Esther. Thanks for having me.

Esther: Absolutely. You've been listening to the BusinessMakers Overtime Show heard here and online at theBusinessMakers.com. Now stay tuned for another business survival tip with with Carl Kleimann of Odyssey One Source.

Carl: Hello business owners this is Carl Kleimann from Odyssey One Source with another Business Survival Tip. On March 18th, President Obama signed the new JOBS bill into law with hopes of reducing unemployment. Also known as the Hiring Incentives to Restore Employment Act, this new law includes $17.5 billion in tax cuts, business credits and government subsidies. The tax cuts are of particular interest to business owners so let me address those.

To promote the hiring of unemployed workers, the new law exempts any private-sector employer that hires a worker who has been unemployed for at least 60 days, from having to pay the employer's 6.2% share of Social Security tax on that employee. This exemption is valid for the remainder of 2010. A company could save as much as $6,621 if it hired a qualifying worker and paid that worker at least $106,800 - the maximum amount of wages subject to Social Security tax - by the end of this year.

As an additional incentive, up to a $1,000 income tax credit is available for each qualified worker hired under this initiative that the employer keeps on payroll for a continuous 52 weeks. This credit can be used on the employer's 2011 tax return. In order to be eligible for this tax credit, the employee's pay in the second 26-week period must be at least 80% of the pay in the first 26-week period.

This program is available to private sector employers, including non-profit organizations. There is no minimum weekly hours that the new employee must work in order to be eligible. You must obtain a signed affidavit from the employee stating that he or she has not been employed for more than 40 hours during the 60-day period ending on the date that employment begins. The savings are immediate.

I am Carl Kleimann and this has been another Business Survival Tip by Odyssey One Source, ranked as the number one Professional Employer Organization three years running by the Black Book of Outsourcing. For more information on this and other issues affecting employers, please visit odysseyonesource.com.

Esther: This is the BusinessMakers Overtime Show heard here and online at thebusinessmakers.com.