The story of SmugMug
To their friends it seemed they were following our hearts into the jaws of death. It was 2002, when Internet companies were collapsing. their competitors would be Microsoft, Sony, Canon, and Kodak.
They were hopelessly in love with the Internet and digital photography.
What’s better than priceless photos of life’s best moments, summoned with a click? Everyone has a shoe box in the closet where irreplaceable photos decay, alone and unseen. They believed in their souls that a photo online is worth ten in the closet.
It was a moment of truth for their belief that passion is the most important thing in business. We all know passion explains why Apple, Harley-Davidson and Starbucks thrive but we swallowed hard when we considered the odds against them.
If you really care about your photos, do you want ads alongside them? You don’t put ads in your photo albums at home. The big brands can’t resist inserting ads in your albums, and requiring your visitors to register so they can market to them. Their hearts led us to design ad- and spam-free albums. One point for passion.
They won’t let you hide their logos and decorate your albums like you can at home. They love to see it. Two points for passion.
They won’t let your mom in Atlanta download high-resolution versions of your photos to print at home. Three points. No full-screen slide shows. Four. There are many more.
Three years after starting, they became the trustees for the priceless photos of 50,000 families, the equivalent of a medium-sized city. Gone are the sharing sites of many trusted brands.
They did it without taking debt because they felt a great sense of responsibility for the photos they store. Their pay in the beginning was huge: the joy of working with each other doing what we love, and the bonds that form when you struggle for a great cause. Delayed gratification was worth the reward.
SmugMug was started by CEO Don who hired his father.
Along the way the contagion spread to the rest of the family. They left their promising careers and two SmugMug MacAskills became seven, solving the Silicon Valley problem of not enough time for family. Their favorite activity is to work long hours together on exciting new features. And the rest of the SmugMug team has become family too.
Even their customers consider themselves part of the family. They revel in seeing their photos of weddings, newborns, Peace Corps assignments, athletic triumphs…
Chris’s jaw dropped when I heard that his former employer, Steve Jobs, would give the commencement speech at his alma mater, Stanford University. Had he ever been to a college graduation?
But he said something powerful there that Chris knew he believed: “The only way to do great work is to love what you do.”
It’s how their family’s dreams came true.
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