I can’t remember when I had such lengthy discussions with the VP of any company, as I have been having with RingCube’s VP of Business Development, Katya Falakshahi in the last few days. They must be working around the clock there (the same work ethos I remember from my time at Lost Boys) to redeem themselves and make their product a success. And as I mentioned many times now: I do like their product. It is easy to use – when they don’t screw up with a bad update – and it actually is a brand new approach to portability. In fact I have tested and tried the product from that other startup I mentioned: Moka5 LivePc, and it’s nice, but you don’t get Windows (it’s basically VMware beefed up with preinstalled Linux environments) and performance is really bad. I’m sure there is a market for those virtual environments, but I suspect performance will always be worse then what MojoPac has to offer because MojoPac seems to be a native solution and does not carry the overhead of a full virtual environment that emulates a complete PC like VMware does.
But back to the subject: I as I mentioned in my post yesterday, I wrote another email to RingCube asking them to go more into detail about their timing for closing down the forum, update policies and their support. And as it turns out they definately *are* listening to their users – such a myself.
Here is the nitty gritty in short:
- As it seems RingCube has no control over their own website but they depend on (a 3rd?) party to make the updates they want. I can see where a start-up would like to focus on their product and have their website outsourced, but it seems that this has now backfired on RingCube. Not to mention that I would not find it acceptable that another party decides to have their own time scheme for updating – especially when a major glitch occurs. In fact their website still mentions the forums as a way of support even now it has been taken down.
- The good news is that their new support approach will be both a FAQ *and* a forum (which I think is good for building a community!) – and email off course.
- In the future updates *will* show a changelog prior to installing an update *and* people will be able to opt out of updating
- The next update will have two major issues fixed: first the serial number issue and a “RS1 fix (this is an error that people were getting when connecting to some PCs in corporate domains.)”
- The MojoPac demo version will have a 100 boots before it stops working: so people can try out MojoPac more frequently before they make a decision to purchase.
- The special introductory price of $29.99, with up to three additional licenses available for just $14.99 each will extended with the new update. After that the price changes to a one time fee of $49.99, with up to three additional licenses available for $24.99 each.
As before you can read the whole conversation below and I included my response as well. Now let’s see if MojoPac can keep their promises.
Dear Henk,
I appreciate your feedback on the forums. What we are offering is free email
support to everyone while the forums are out, and again, I want to emphasize
that our support team have gotten out of their way to respond to the emails
same day. And I do believe you will find our new forums (which we are
working on) much more useful and to your liking than the old ones.The timing of the forums had something to do with the availability of the
person who is in charge of redesigning the forums. He gave us a date on his
availability, and we had to take it. Same with our website — I have asked
for changes to be implemented on the devices for mojopac page to help the
users understand the USB 2.0 compliance — it is in the queue to be updates.
I can’t wait for the day where we control our website internally so that we
can have same day turn-around on changes.The forums will be a combination of FAQ and standard discussions (as we had
before). The reasoning is that most people who go to forums are there to get
one of their 20-30 questions answered, and they want the answers fast. They
don’t have time to browse under various categories and search for the
company’s official response. So we created the list of these questions based
on the threads in the forum, as well as the top questions sent to us via
support or feedback, and have compiled answers to all of them. So right in
the beginning of the forum we will have a list of these questions, with
official answers from the company (this includes the USB 2.0 question, the
Vista question, among others). Also, we will be very proactive in adding to
the this FAQ. Right after this we will have the rest of the forum, with
hopefully a better structure and easier to navigate topics. The old forums
had tons of redundancy — the topic of Vista support for exapmle was
repeated in several threads under several categories, so it was very
confusing.On your question about product update: Actually, the new update will include
a dialog box that mentions what will be the reason for the update. So right
after the update becomes available, when you start MojoPac, the update will
download, and after that the new dialog box shows you what the update
provides. This will be the last forced update — since anyone who purchases
the product can opt out of updating. Of course this update will include two
major fixes — support for hard drives who were previously not supported due
to the case issue (we have been working directly with hard drive
manufacturers on this), as well as RS1 fix (this is an error that people
were getting when connecting to some PCs in corporate domains.)More importantly, we are adding 100 boots to the updated MojoPac. So people
can try out MojoPac more frequently before they make a decision to purchase.As for your complaint about our support — they really did not know that you
can go back to Beta-4. Our support people are really nice and hard working.
I wished you could meet them in person.I wanted to add one more thought — one of the reasons I personally joined
RingCube is how nice, hardworking, and completely committed the team is. I
don’t recall the last time anyone took the weekend off, or went home before
10pm (and I am talking the entire summer and september). They really care
about the user’s experience, and everyone means the best. So next time you
find fault in anything, I hope you will assume we made an honest mistake —
there is no one here who is trying to hide things or be deceitful.
Especially not our support team. I wish I could email you the 100’s of love
emails they get from happy people who really appreciate the super fast
response to their support emails. Unfortunately the people who get great
support do not go to forums to say positive things, they just email us back
to see when the e-commerce site becomes available!!!If you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to contact me. I
do appreciate your feedback, since I know if you did not care about our
product, you would not spend the time to provide us with your feedback.All the best,
Katya
And a little follow up:
Dear Henk,
Following up to my previous note I just sent — needless to say the 30-day
special price will be extended — the clock will begin when the new update
goes live.Regards,
Katya
And my repsonse:
Dear Katya,
First off, I’d like to let you know that I very much appreciate the fact that you are going out of your way to answer my question – even in the weekends. I don’t recall having these kind of lengthy discussion by email with any VP’s in the past (they usually are unreachable). I think it shows it that RingCube does take it users serious and shows the kind of dedication that probably is key in making a start-up a success.
I’m surprised to learn that RingCube apparently does not manage and maintain their own website, although I can understand that a start-up would like to focus on their product and that any time invested in such a thing as a website might be considered a side-issue. But I think that after going through this particular problem your company probably fully realizes how important a website is and is taking the appropriate actions to make sure that this will not happen in the future.
Still, (and this is the last time I will mention this) I don’t see that as an excuse to take down the forum without having an alternative ready. Who ever is maintaining RingCube’s website, obviously *did* have the time to take the forum down *and* put a message there: so I wonder why they didn’t have the time to put a message up on the USB compliance you mention, and change the outdated Buy webpage that *still* mentions the forums as a way of support – even though they are gone.
So I guess we will have to agree to disagree on both the decision and the timing to pull the plug out of the forum before the new one is in place 🙂
And quite frankly: putting up a Website with a CMS in this day and age should not be that much of a deal: if you look at all the open source solutions out there there is really a vast choice. Apart from design they take maybe a couple of hours to set up. At the company I work for (and the ones I have worked for) we never set up a website where the customer did not have full control over the content: in fact not doing that is so… 90’s ?
I am very pleased to learn that RingCube is taking all feedback serious. I do have to mention I never doubted that your people are hardworking, dedicated and nice. As far as support goes: I was just surprised that it seemed like I knew the product better than support.
In regards to the mistake with the serial-issue: I would never accuse your company of making such a mistake on purpose (that would really be something). I just question the actions following that mistake and the timing in regards to taking the forum down: that *really* left everyone with the impression that RingCube wanted to put a gag on negative posts there. Also the fact that there was no effective communication about why the serial check was implemented left people under the impression it was solely done to protect the companies own interest and not because of users security.
As to the matter of redundancy in forums goes: you will find out soon that this is an issue that all forums have: it is something you will not be able to change either: people tend to overlook posts and will just go ahead. In that sense I agree it is a downside of having this kind of tool. Trying to do something about that may prove an impossible task as it would take a full dedicated person to move and sort out posts. Believe me: I’ve been there.
One thing about the new forum: I guess this means that all the people who signed up previously will have register all over again? That would really be a pain in the neck.
Bottomline: I like the product and I see it as a really good portable solution, provided there will be a version that works both on Vista and XP (that will be a real challenge I guess). And I probably will buy it as soon as the new fixed version comes out.
Last but not least: I would also like to take this opportunity to tell you that I would like to extend my appreciation to whole MojoPac team for their efforts to make this product a success – including yourself off course.
On that note I’d like to thank you again: I am looking forward to the moment the new version of MojoPac is released and the new and improved website hits the web and I will be following all progress closely.
Kind regards,
Henk