Making Millions in Alabama: SlimWare Utilities CEO Chris Cope (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: You clearly entered this business with a tremendous amount of knowledge of affiliate marketing. Can you talk about how you have used that skill set for customer acquisition for SlimWare Utilities?

Chris Cope: We had an affiliate program, but we are looking now for channel partners. Our overall strategy is brand equity. We would rather have a good brand and as different form factors come out we would rather people associate us with all their needs. We are looking for long term partners. We look for channel partners like ISPs, other software vendors,

Sramana Mitra: Is BestBuy or Geek Squad a potential channel partner?

Chris Cope: That is something we would love to do. There is potential there, and that is a good example of what we are looking for.

Sramana Mitra: There are companies that remotely take control of your PC and clean it for you. What is your take on that? Is that a service you would want to offer? I think you have a powerful opportunity there.

Chris Cope: We do that for users sometimes, and I agree that it represents a powerful opportunity. We end up doing a lot of work like that today. For example, we may have a user who has a slow computer, and they don’t know why it is running so slow. It could be that they have two antiviruses installed or any number of other issues.

Sramana Mitra: If I were you, I would follow that strategy. This is a trend in the software as a service area and athenahealth is an example of this. They help physician offices collect payment from insurance providers, and athenahealth has the technology necessary to do the work but they don’t sell it. They have call centers with employees who do that work for the physicians. I think that strategy makes a lot of sense for you.

Chris Cope: I have heard of that company. I will follow up on that model because I find it really interesting. We must take the right strategic approach. We see that being a solution to a lot of people’s problems.

Sramana Mitra: I think if you go that direction, you will build a $500 million company.

Chris Cope: I know Support.com is a similar company. They are big but they don’t have the same margins. We have partnerships and we are working on some things.

Sramana Mitra: If you want to stay highly profitable and highly manageable, another option is to use these other companies as channel customers.

Chris Cope: We are in those decision making steps right now. That is one of the reasons I am here. We have been meeting with PC World, MaximumPC, CNET, and a few others to bring them up to speed on what we are doing and showing off what we are doing. We have been doing a lot of product demos and I think that this exposure will help us find the right channel partners.

Sramana Mitra: Fantastic. This is a great story, and I look forward to following your companies growth.

This segment is part 7 in the series : Making Millions in Alabama: SlimWare Utilities CEO Chris Cope
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