How Urchin Became a Commercial Web Analytics Product
Monte: So you guys made a make versus buy decision. Was there anything out on the market that could really serve your purpose for that kind of application at the time or--
Brett: There--
Monte: --you just decided to make it for your application?
Brett: Right. Well, there was really nothing that was doing what we wanted done, number one. Number two, no one was doing it in a way that we thought it should be done, where it resided on the server. Back then, it was all desktop analysis of log files. You had to move the log files over, and we were like that doesn’t make any sense. Why not [inaudible] right on the server where the logs are being created and serve the reports through the web browser. So that’s what we did, and, you know, so at that point it was still internal. And then the way it became a commercial product is that some of our clients knew that we had this internal thing and--because we’d show our own clients these reports, they were trying to get this through the other things that we were using and had spent lots of money and lots of time trying to do things, and it was taking over 24 hours a day for--actually for Honda, who was one of our earliest clients, because we were working with them and some other ways to process a single day’s log file, right?
Monte: Right, right.
Brett: And they said so go ahead--you know, can we try Urchin. Well, we said, “Send down some logs, we’ll run it.” It took about an hour. And so these guys were six months behind, because it was taking them, you know, more than 24 hours to process one day. They sent us all their log files down, and in two weeks we had them caught up and using Urchin. And that’s when we knew we really had something.
Monte: So that’s kind of the kickoff of the product, probably from that whole experience.
Brett: Exactly.
Monte: And what year was that?
Brett: That was in, you know, like ’97 timeframe.
Monte: Oh, wow.
Brett: And then through ’98 we continued to build a little bit, and then it was like ‘97/’98, around there, and then in ’99 we sold off all the other parts of the business and just focused on Urchin. And, you know, you won’t believe this, but EarthLink was our next major client after that, and the way we got them was I was actually e-mailing through the forum on their website. And I do this like, you know, I did it for like once a week for about six weeks until finally I got a response, and it was from the head guy of their--his name was Rob Moppin [ph], at the time, of their hosting division, and he got back to me and said, you know, send me a white paper and a demo copy. And that’s basically how we got our big start.
Monte: Cool. So EarthLink signed on and are they still a customer today?
Brett: Yes, EarthLink--
Monte: Wow.
Brett: --signed on. They’re still a customer. And since then, we’ve wrapped up most of the domestic hosting market using Urchin, so.
Monte: Oh, fantastic.
Brett: Yeah.
Monte: So it’s a very well-penetrated product and--
Brett: Yeah.
Monte: And so how many customers are on currently?
Brett: It’s really, you know, exact numbers are a little bit difficult to say, because we’ve got all these hosts that provide Urchin to their customer base, but--
Monte: So they provide it as part of their web analytics program, their web counters, you know, the web analytics program that comes together with their packages?
Brett: Exactly.
Monte: The people pay extra to get that upgraded service or they do it as part of the offering to the customers?
Brett: It depends on the host, some do it that--you know, some do it as a value ad, some charge for it. It really depends on the level of service offering. And then if people go into a dedicated environment, then, you know, often times when you’re on a dedicated server, they’ll give you the keys to the product, you can drive yourself and do all you back end filtering and that sort of thing.
Monte: Very, very cool.
Brett: Yeah.
Monte: Well, great. So it’s from humble beginnings, servers out of the basement--
Brett: Right.
Monte: --to landing a first big account with Honda, then EarthLink, now--
Brett: Yeah.
Monte: --supplying to the hundreds or even thousands of--
Brett: You know--
Monte: --local--or I mean of hosting companies--
Brett: --it’s--the--yeah.
Monte: --for their customers?
Brett: Exactly. And, in fact, the number of sites that Urchin is running on is well into the millions, because we know just from Verio, for example, they’re about half a--you know, roughly half a million sites that they host.
Monte: Oh, wow, so Verio, okay.
Brett: So with one client alone, we know we’re half way there and then we’ve got like EarthLink, you know, EDS, SPC, you know, Everyone’s Internet, Affinity, Host Way, you know.
Monte: Oh, wow.
Brett: Name one of these big hosts.
Monte: So it’s [inaudible], so a lot of our customers may actually be--have your--
Brett: Absolutely, absolutely.
Monte: --application. I didn’t realize that. Okay.
Brett: Absolutely.
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