01.20.2012 By Kyle York
Fit & Hustle: Making The Final Call On Customer-Facing Positions
All of you potential candidates of Dyn looking to work in client services, biz dev, marketing or sales, let me tell you a little secret.
If you’ve made it through our phenomenal screening / interview process and got to me for a sit down, you’re in damn good shape but don’t drool on yourself when we actually meet up.
I’m literally just looking for two things from those sitting across of me: fit and hustle. Will you match the brand and culture and will you work your a$$ off to achieve big things? (Yes, those dollar signs are on purpose.)
Read More12.30.2011 By Kyle York
8 Reasons Dyn’s 2011 Will Lead To A Better, Faster, Stronger 2012
Thank you.
Two simple words that we say to our customers around the world. Two simple words we say to our partners around the world. Two simple words we say to our friends, colleagues and most importantly, our employees that have helped contribute to the best Internet IaaS company on the planet.
2011 was our biggest year yet for a lot of reasons, but we’ve picked out eight big ones that we’ll look back on as key igniters to why a better, faster & stronger 2012 is ahead.
Read More12.14.2011 By Kyle York
Dyn’s Growth Engine Formula
The following was an address to the entire Dyn sales team at their annual retreat.
“To see the future, you must first see the past.”
This all started for me with a belief: a belief that by being human, accessible, real and transparent in a profession long viewed the opposite, we could achieve big, big things. We could see immense sales, revenue and profitability growth. We could build a growth engine formula for success that others would aspire to mimic and one that we would forever maintain.
Read More11.17.2011 By Kyle York
Redefining The Enterprise: Keep The Fortune 500, We’ll Take The Fortune 501-to-10 Million
Most multi-audience companies first establish themselves with an ‘enterprise’ customer base and work themselves down market to larger segments: SME (small/medium enterprise), SMB (small business) and eventually consumer audiences, not the other way around. The main reason: it’s really hard.
Because of our well-documented history, we aggressively and tactfully had to climb up market from the consumer hobbyist to the enterprise over an inspirational ten-year run. It wasn’t easy and required a ton of planning, self-realization, reinvention and hustle. We’re still climbing. We don’t care about your company head count or your historical revenues. We don’t care what your annual infrastructure budgets are or how many office locations you have. And we surely don’t care about your current stock price.
Those things are irrelevant to our business. Candidly, it’s quite a brutal sales process at the biggest of true enterprises with the hurdles/timelines of legal, sourcing, procurement and purchasing. I mean, some of these companies are larger than established countries.
So what do we care about? The Alexa 500, not the Fortune 500.
Read More11.14.2011 By Kyle York
Velocity Europe Recap: Four Highlights And Lessons Learned
One of our favorite trade shows in the U.S. is Velocity, the annual web performance and operations show put on by O’Reilly in Santa Clara, CA, every June.
We’ve been to three straight years of Velocity and it’s the perfect mix of exhibits, keynotes, breakout sessions, impromptu discussions, lightning talks and networking time with loyal clients and future clients alike. We’ve been able to introduce marketing campaigns like “DNS is Sexy” and “Music Meets Tech” at these shows and they’ve been met with amazing fanfare. There is no more concentrated environment for us to get in front of our core audience.
When we were informed that our most enjoyed and rewarding show was hitting the road and launching Velocity Europe in Berlin, Germany, we knew we had to get involved. Coinciding with the gearing up of our European HQ in London and three new bodies (and counting!) led by Phil Akilade, we grabbed a booth, sponsored the lanyards and sent some of our heaviest hitters. Timing for us was perfect to help ensure the show was a success overseas.
Here’s four highlights and lessons that I came away with from an amazing few days.
Read More11.04.2011 By Kyle York
The Two Types of DynECT Email Delivery Clients
We’ve been asked by many current DynECT Managed DNS clients and partners to define the ideal customer for our booming new service known as DynECT Email Delivery. We support both transactional (automated application triggered) and bulk senders (we power ESPs, large marketing senders) of all sizes and budgets. Not unlike DNS, we charge based on volumes and have premium, affordable and scalable options for every type of sender.
Before I dive in and fully define these customer types, let me expound on our strategy behind moving into this new and exciting space.
One question that is extremely important for a business offering a new service to their enterprise client base to answer: “Is it the same buyer?” When we decided to bring our Standard SMTP service (basic, self sign-up, low volume senders) up market to the enterprise (premium reporting and monitoring features, full API, throttling, ISP relations, high volume senders), we asked and answered that important question to ensure we were putting a complimentary product in front of our treasured core DNS clients.
Before we made this deliberate move, we asked our most loyal and trusted clients what they thought…and they loved the idea. Some contemporaries have bet on DDoS, some on CDN, a few on IPAM and others on web application monitoring. We’re betting hard on email delivery and inbox monitoring.
Read More10.24.2011 By Kyle York
Are You In A Groove With Your Work?
One of my favorite blog posts I’ve written at Dyn was “Find Your Hooks in Your Work” where the simple premise is outlined in its first paragraph:
“Everyone needs to find his or her hooks in their work. When I first came to Dyn to help grow market share, revenue, profitability, brand recognition and credibility, I didn’t know a thing about DNS. Even the acronym was cloudy at best. Although I now believe “DNS is Sexy“, DNS was never the hook for me. Read on to learn what gets me going and keeps me operating at full speed.”
I encourage you to go back and check out that post if you haven’t yet. Like it, share it, leave a comment and tell us what gets you out of bed each day.
As a follow-up, something else has become apparent to me: everyone needs to find his or her groove in their work. I’ve been talking a lot about this lately with our sales guys and gals, but it truly is meaningful for anyone grinding away professionally.
Read More10.08.2011 By Kyle York
Email Delivery and Inbox Success: Why Dyn Is A Unique Option
The following is not an Earth-shattering statement: the Email Service Provider (ESP) space is cluttered. For this reason, we decided to stick to the back-end email delivery infrastructure piece and not become an ESP — following our common theme of blazing our own trail.
You see, the ESP world is far too feature-driven and far too bells-and-whistles focused, packed with those that battle daily to stand out by means of introducing the most snazzy front-end feature within their already too feature-rich applications.
Yes, I said it. “Too feature rich.” Better template building, easier list segmentation, social sharing plug-ins and redundant analytics lead as the way to win that next account. “Features, features, features” have become the name of the game for growth. Whatever happened to “ease-of use” as a feature?
It’s funny though. What I see is that the company with the better marketing and sales engine itself is actually the company that is ahead (see MailChimp and Constant Contact). But that’s a story for a different day.
Our simple observation back in the fall of 2010 was that no ESP truly is focusing enough on delivery and scalability. Both of those are features too, right?!
Read More09.25.2011 By Kyle York
Moneyball: Changing The Game With DNS and Email
The movie Moneyball came out this weekend after much buzz and anticipation with the real-life story of Billy Beane and baseball’s Oakland A’s of the early 2000s chronicled in the Brad Pitt flick.
Based on the best-selling book by Michael Lewis (Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game), the key theme revolves around a team that succeeded despite a perceived lack of advantage towards its competition – especially financially. (Think bootstrappin’ it versus VC-backed!)
Read More09.01.2011 By Kyle York
Sales Lesson: Perspective And The Three Buckets of Control
We do all we can to be inclusive and transparent at Dyn, but objects in the rear view mirror are certainly greater than they appear.
A crew of us were recently in the car cruising home. I was sitting shotgun, CTO Tom Daly was behind the wheel and one of our hard-working sales reps John D’Amato sat in the back. We were on our way back up to New Hampshire from another one of those game-altering sales pitches with an Internet giant in Massachusetts, so we were all geared up.
The car ride conversation turned to our vast company growth and rapid sales team scaling. Dyn has hired 30 new employees so far in 2011 — a 50% increase from the close of 2010 and 100% jump from one year ago. The sales team has grown from only four reps at this time last year to 20+ today.
While I was away this week in Utah for client and prospect meetings, seven new people started, mostly in our new Manchester-based headquarters. (We’re also in the open stages of establishing our San Francisco office as you read this.)
The growth is fun and scary and intense and real – all at the same time. (Yes, we’re still hiring!)
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