June 2011
Dear Customers,
This letter is about why we built OO.com, the problems we're trying to solve, the people behind the company, and what we're passionate about.
I started Next Jump, the company behind OO.com, back in my college dorm room in 1994. I went through school on financial aid, and building a company wasn't to go from rags to riches, but instead it was to maintain a long distance relationship with my high school sweetheart. We grew through the first dot-com bubble to 150 employees. And more importantly, survived the dot-com bust shrinking down to 4 employees in January 2002. We became profitable that same year, continued investing aggressively when no one else was and we haven't looked back since. We never took a dime from VC's and private equity firms however raised an unusually large amount of money ($45mm) from over 100 angel investors. We are fortunate to have these individuals as incredible mentors, advisors and board members, always helping us build a great company.
We stayed under the radar until very recently, taking advice from advisors with experience beyond our years, telling us to build quietly, not drawing attention until it felt like we were hiding an elephant under a haystack. The New York Times covered us saying, 'Next Jump has quietly emerged as a significant force in the world of online commerce, and a bellwether for the next generation of ecommerce'. According to TechCrunch, Next Jump may well be 'the most intriguing Internet business that you've never heard of', and thanks to Next Jump, consumers 'may never shop the same way again.' See our corporate website for more about us.
Why We Built OO.com
We have a culture of innovation, and the ability to experiment is key in our investments for employee development. OO.com is one of our experiments, our most recent innovation. We challenged a small group of 10 engineers (NxJumpers), with no constraints, to leverage all our technology and the largest offer database in the market (built over 17 years). They built OO.com, a shopping site that helps consumers navigate the overwhelming world of discounts and deals.
We worked fast and furiously to build OO.com in a matter of weeks and we want your feedback (you'll notice a Feedback Button on the left of every page). The team of 10 will read every comment to make the site better and better every day.
What's a Real Deal?
With the explosion of daily deals, flash sales and discounts, the question that has been hardest to answer is what is a real deal? There's fake pricing (Prices marked up in order to seem like a discount) and more restrictions (Dinner reservations only on Monday's, spend over $100, not including drinks... You get the picture). How do you know when it's a real deal? We do the work for you.
OO stands for Overwhelming Offers. A really great offer is what we call an OO.
What's unique (the real differentiator) is that in addition to every discount and deal, you're earning points on top of every transaction (the common measurement of value). We believe shopping any other way is pointless (pun intended).
Points Are So Difficult To Use
Most points programs are built to incent breakage. Existing loyalty programs out there create disloyalty with blackout dates and inflated prices to retail, in effect reducing the value of your points. This has resulted in nearly 100 trillion unredeemed points, simply because they are hard to use.
Yet more and more people join points programs. Five years ago, people belonged to 12 programs, active in 5. Today, the average consumer belongs to 18 programs, active in 12. Consumers sign up for points programs because to a large degree it is free - rewarding you for flying an airline, using a specific credit card, shopping a certain way - a clear benefit for being loyal (loyalty pays).
We saw a real market need and took a different approach to build a points program to incent usage. We want you to earn WOWPoints and we want you to spend them. Through all our research we found the key metric that measures program value is: points burned. In July 2010 although many users had earned points, only 1mm points were burned per month. By November 2010, this number increased 100-fold, to 100mm points burned per month, and this number has been increasing ever since. We made points easier and easier to use.
Our Culture & People Behind Next Jump
In today's environment every company wants to be innovative. However, you cannot legislate or dictate innovation. You have to invest in building the right environment. It starts with hiring the right people.
1. HIRING
Many companies that want to be innovative don't have the human capital capacity to deliver the innovation. Innovative companies experiment. And by definition if you can't afford to have it fail, it isn't an experiment. Through experience, we have learned humility is a precursor to innovation. We are careful about who gets in the door. Currently we hire 1 of every 100 candidates interviewed and aim to raise our standards every year. We invested heavily in the hiring process and hire most employees through a Super Saturday, a 10-hour interview day where hiring decisions are made by 9pm, job offers given by Monday. We look for smart, driven people, who are also humble - a rare combination.
2. ENVIRONMENT
To build the right environment we make continuous investments in human capital engineering from the tangible to intangible.
Tangible investments include: Fitness, Nutrition, On-Site Laundry, NxJ Vacations to name a few. We believe the healthier you are, the more energy, the higher the performance. We have state of the art fitness facilitates built in our offices, and full-time nutritionist to help provide healthy snacks and meals. On average, 80% of NxJumpers workout in our gyms at minimum 2 times per week. By any measure this is a staggering statistic for any company with a few hundred employees. Watch our short fitness video on YouTube.
The intangible investments include: NxJ University, Recognition Programs, Reflections to name a few. However, the number one thing employees care about is career development. The greatest return we saw in building an environment that encourages experimentation (beyond the results of successful experiments) is the experience gained by an employee. Simply put, experiments equals career development.
We invest 50 cents of every dollar of our profits in human capital engineering.
Lastly, happy workers are productive employees, and they're more fun to work with. We work hard and play hard.
What We're Passionate About
1. HUMAN CAPITAL ENGINEERING
Every company talks about their people as their most important asset. The future success of any organization depends upon the ability of its individual members to work intelligently, over a sustained period of time. Our top advisors have had the opportunity to see inside so many companies, they say NxJ is a break-through model for building a great company. They call us counter-culture; we don't believe it's about being different, we believe this is the way it should be done. We are not chasing quick hits, take a long-term view, and are building a sustainable force that cannot be diminished by a few bad bumps. Engagement is off the charts, leading to innovation and creativity - you can feel the energy.
We may not get it perfect and we have a continuous commitment to improve and experiment in human capital engineering. The most precious thing is our human capital.
We believe taking care of your people is taking care of your business.
2. HELPING OTHERS IN NEED
We want to be people of great character and helping others in need is part of our mission in life.
We look to help others in need with our fully engaged time and money. We started with an initiative called Code for a Cause (CFAC) where our goal is to have every engineer donate 2 weeks per year, in teams of 3, to help a charitable cause with their engineering and technology needs. We've done some cool things and want to do many more. We've helped CAMFED build mobile applications as they help girls with AIDS in Africa. We've built e-commerce sites to facilitate individual online donations for AngelWish who helps terminally ill children. In the 2008 downturn we found Shimmy, the CEO of AngelWish in need. Everyone told him to shutdown his 11 year charity, due to lack of funding and the difficult environment. We created NxJ Incubator, offering to incubate AngelWish as long as needed, removing his operational cost and more importantly providing the right environment to re-charge and energize Shimmy. Shortly after we introduced NxJ Cares, a matching program that triples the individual donations of any NxJumper, in a time where most companies were cutting matching programs. We're only beginning our journey to help others.
We are fortunate to have an extraordinary group of people that work with us. We hope you enjoy OO.com. We look forward to your feedback.
Regards,
CK & All the NxJumpers
A Smarter You
Who We Are
