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eHub Interviews gOffice

Thanks to Kevin Warnock, founder and CEO of Silveroffice, the makers of gOFFICE for this email interview posted December 15, 2005.

eHub: What is your web application/service about?

gOffice: gOFFICE.com is a browser-based office suite. Output is in PDF. Currently we offer word processing and desktop publishing (though the latter only offers a taste of what’s to come). Our site lets you print very high quality output directly from the site, without requiring Word. We have a sample text library, and users can print, save, email, and fax from the site. We allow unlimited storage of documents in private user accounts. We also have spreadsheets and presentations (similar to PowerPoint) in the lab. We also plan other offerings such as tools which will enable the user to benefit most from the office modules which are part of gOFFICE. gOFFICE.com is free.

eHub: Why did you start this project?

gOffice: Each web 2.0 offering focuses one or two core competencies. Some of the more apparent focuses are collaboration, program development, etc. gOFFICE starts out with the goals of superior output and facilitation of communication. I wanted the user to have access to unique combinations of background, sample language and output. The underlying engine allows the user to create documents and projects which rival the output of much more expensive document creation software-Adobe InDesign is a good example-which costs hundreds of dollars. I started this project to offer everyone the opportunity to communicate more effectively.

eHub: How much time do you devote to its growth? 

gOffice: Full time and then some!

eHub: How large is your team and what are your backgrounds?

gOffice: I, Kevin Warnock, am founder and CEO of Silveroffice, the makers of gOFFICE. I have 16 years experience in electronic document creation. My first company, Hotpaper.com, was venture backed and later acquired by a public company during what we now call the web 1.0 days. Todd Bruininks is the director of operations. Todd just finished his MBA at the Haas School and has eleven years of operations, strategy and management experience in a variety of professional roles. Ileana da Silva is marketing coordinator. She’s an exceptional writer and budding novelist. Yoko Kawamoto is our web designer and a programmer. Nick Topolos is our graphic designer. We have other people working on this around the world, and the team is growing rapidly. We also have a PR firm (Shotwell PR) and a law firm (Cooley Godward) working with us.

eHub: What is your design philosophy?

gOffice: We are building a site which is simple to use for every level of user while also robust enough to host very serious work. We feel that for the web paradigm to be adopted on a very large scale, web firms need to host activities which are accessible and useful for a mass audience. The guys at Google famously say, “do one thing well.” We want to do communication well.

eHub: What technologies are you currently using?

gOffice: We are using Microsoft’s Dot Net Framework for the html pages and database work. We are using traditional native compiled code (non .net) for the PDF generation, to achieve the highest performance and quickest response time - under a second on average. This is faster than creating a PDF locally, in most cases. As a side note, we’re looking for great VB.NET programmers to join the gOFFICE team.

eHub: If your project is live, what are the most requested features from your users/community?

gOffice: We get requests from users for new features. We want everyone reading this to know we appreciate every suggestion we receive. I think many people would like to see the desktop publishing piece of the site expanded-and we are hard at work making this happen. We added tables and double spacing at the request of our users, for example.

eHub: Does your user base reside in a primary geographic location or is it distributed?

gOffice: While the most concentrated user population is in North America, we have significant user numbers in Western and Eastern Europe, India, South and Central America and Asia.

eHub: Where do you see the project heading in the next 6 months?  The next 2 years?

gOffice: Obviously we are working hard now to push out additional office modules and this is our focus in the near term. During the next two years we would like to see this and other web-based apps become a world-wide mass-adopted phenomenon.

eHub: What is the greatest challenge to your success?

gOffice: Constrained resources-time primarily-are our greatest challenge.

eHub: What is the one thing you need to get to the next phase of the project?

gOffice: We need to stay focused and implement our vision for gOFFICE.com.

eHub: Do you have a business model?  If so, what is it?

gOffice: We have an ad-based model as well as a premium feature-based model. We are experimenting with these and exploring others in order to find a mix which offers the most to the user base while also allowing us to remain viable as a business for years to come.

eHub: If you’re able to disclose this information, how much traffic or usage do you see on an average day?

gOffice: We do not disclose this information. Suffice to say, we are seeing significant traction as I am sure other web 2.0 companies are experiencing given the increased attention being given to the space.

eHub: What is the one thing you’re most proud of about the project?

gOffice: More and more people trust the web with serious work. People are using gOFFICE for their businesses, homework, resumes, and professional/personal communication.

eHub: How would you describe the shift that’s occurring with the web right now to future generations?

gOffice: Hopefully we will look at this moment and say, “that is when the web began to deliver on the hopes people had when the web came out of the academies and institutes and into the mass consciousness.”

eHub: What site(s) do you visit everyday other than your own?

gOffice: I love many of the bloggers and blog sites-Paolo Massa, Renee Blodget, O’Reilly, to name a few. There are many people doing wonderful work on the web right now-I would hate to single anyone out.

eHub: How many hours of sleep do you get a night?

gOffice: Define “sleep”.

Thanks to Kevin Warnock, founder and CEO of Silveroffice, the makers of gOFFICE for this email interview posted December 15, 2005.

Visit gOFFICE
Originally added to eHub on Oct 20, 05

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eHub Interviews is a series with the creators of Web 2.0 applications and services by Emily Chang, author of eHub, designer, and co-founder and principal of Ideacodes, a strategic web consultancy in San Francisco that she co-founded with Max Kiesler.

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