TalentCulture caught up with Matthew Mamet, one of the founders of EditMe at Mass Innovation Night 13. EditMe is a ” small start-up company focused on creating easy-to-use software supported by fast, friendly customer service.”
TC: What is EditMe?
MM: EditMe is the easiest way to create collaborative websites online. It is a SAAS-based wiki engine that also has a Javascript API that allows you to create work flow on top of it.
TC: What sets EditMe apart from some of the other project management tools and website collaboration tools already out there?
MM: A lot of other online tools have collaborative aspects to them, but they are a little bit more focused, and they stop at a certain point. WordPress is a blog, and all blogging engines are really designed to enable you to communicate your thoughts by broadcasting them out to the world. People can interact and collaborate by commenting on your blog, but that’s where it mostly ends. A Wiki lets everyone get into the content of a site and change it. So if you’re creating an idea, and you want people to contribute to that idea, and evolve it over time, you can use a Wiki. Most of the project management tools let you collaborate by keeping everyone on track with tasks and milestones, but don’t actually let you create ideas.
So we don’t focus on milestones or tasks, to-do lists and time tracking. We’re more focused on getting people to collaborate on an idea, share their thoughts, upload documents and build something.
TC: What is a lean start-up?
MM: Lean start-ups have become popular in the last nine months to a year. Eric Reis is really a champion of that term. He’s been at many different start-ups over the years. He’s pioneered this way of not doing anything until you’re sure of the outcome: testing something, getting data back, minimizing the waste that it takes to arrive at a conclusion, and then moving forward.
In the past, people have thrown a lot of money into big dot-coms in the hopes that some problem works out. That’s what we call a fat start-up. A lean start-up–what EditMe is–is two guys who have an idea, build a product, put it out into the wild, test how many people were interested in it, and evolve the product based on customer needs
TC: Can you tell us about what you are doing to give back to the entrepreneur community?
MM: We give loans to the Kiva Organization. Kiva allows people and organizations to make interest-free loans to entrepreneurs in under-developed countries. Many of these entrepreneurs are working on ideas that are really community focused. For example, creating a baby sitting group in a small town or village, or creating a retail store to sell homemade pots or clothes. Very small, community-focused companies that need very little capital to start. Sometimes it’s only $15 or $200. We’ve made over 350 interest-free loans through the Kiva program. It’s our way of giving back to the entrepreneur community.
TC: Is there anything else you’d like to add?
MM: Everyone should use EditMe to create a website. It’s the easiest way to collaborate online. Check us out at EditMe.com for a free trial.
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