After starting his first business back in 2009 while studying at the University of Bristol, Yoav Farbey decided to share the experiences of running his mobile app marketing agency as a guide for fellow students and fledgling entrepreneurs.
“I learned many things that I heavily documented in my personal blog,” Yoav recalls. “And I noticed that my blog continued to grow in terms of traffic and readers.”
Although he later dissolved that initial venture after earning a Masters of Engineering degree in computer science and going to work for others as a product manager and senior data analyst, the idea that people were interested in how to build a business never left Yoav. It’s what inspired him to launch the digital publication, The Startup Magazine, in 2013. He explains:
“The realization that there’s an audience who want to hear about startup entrepreneurs’ experiences is what led me to found The Startup Magazine, which focuses on giving transparency and bringing clarity to the inside world of beginning businesses — from approaching investors to hiring your first employees.”
Now serving as the London-based magazine’s managing director and editor, the 27-year-old entrepreneur admits that his lifelong ambition to run his own business also provided an inducement for the publishing enterprise.
“I’ve always wanted to create a product that offers value and to build a business around it,” Yoav notes. “This is still one of my greatest aspirations and I think we’re on the path to achieving it with the magazine. We provide an engaging reading experience with practical and thought-provoking content that unravels the complexities of the entrepreneurial eco-system.”
Publish, don’t perish
To accomplish his mission of motivating, stimulating, educating and celebrating the startup community through his online magazine, however, Yoav has to have a reliable web host that can deliver — whether on the computer, mobile or tablet.
And that’s where GoDaddy enters the picture for this small digital publisher with a big vision.
“The reason I moved to GoDaddy was because, after the first six months, I became frustrated with the customer service from my original service provider,” Yoav says. “I’ve been using GoDaddy now for two years and they smash it out of the park when it comes to service and support. If there’s an issue their knowledge is second to none — I really can’t think of a better customer service I’ve ever used.”
The fact that GoDaddy provides 24/7 support is what initially attracted Yoav for web hosting, but now he employs a variety of the company’s other services and products, from domain name registration to Search Engine Visibility.
“I find everything intuitive and easy to use, particularly the Search Engine Visibility tool,” Yoav remarks. “I can tell it works because I get requests from searches. It also manages the submission and webmaster tools, which is especially useful for me.”
The best and worst of entrepreneurship
Yoav says that being able to build your own team with productive members like a reliable IT partner is one of the best things about becoming an entrepreneur. It relieves one of the worst aspects about running your own small business — a lot of stress and very little time to relax.
“As one of four people in my company, getting stressed can have a noticeable impact on the entire operation,” he says. “Relieving the stress of the person managing the website is always a good thing.”
More importantly, it’s a matter of how he values his time.
“For example, something that might take me two hours or more to do, it’s worth the minor annual cost of the Search Engine Visibility tool to have it do the task for me,” Yoav observes.
“It’s a great value because it allows me the time to manage other aspects of my business.”
And that’s why Yoav believes the service is right for his magazine’s audience. “Our readership is naturally made up of startup entrepreneurs and, at the early stages of their businesses, they’re unlikely to have a dedicated webmaster. So GoDaddy provides the perfect solution for this at a competitive price.”
Taking his own advice for business success
Not having to worry about your website frees up the small businessperson to follow a fundamental lesson Yoav has learned:
“Take the extra time to make sure the decisions you make are right for your business. Research your market segment, your competitors and the economic climate. Re-examine your core business because it’s easy to lose track of your vision and mission. And if you didn’t in the first place, expend some of your hours on drafting a business plan. You can always develop and extend it when necessary, but ultimately let it be your business’s guideline to success.”
As for The Startup Magazine, Yoav plans to take his own advice for the challenge of turning what began as a blogging hobby and investing the time into making it an attractive, scalable business.
“In that sense we’ve enjoyed some success — we’re getting our next issue out, we have subscribers and advertisers,” he checks off with some pride. “Of course, it’s too early to say that we’ve made it and there’s always risk, but we’re on a good trajectory. Our next step in terms of content is to include videos on the website and in terms of growth, we’re looking at expanding into other regions to get global coverage. And we honestly couldn’t do it without GoDaddy’s help.”
