As Co-founder of PagePlay, I worked with Harry Bailey to create one of the first Software as a Service (SaaS) platforms for website design and management. We identified a gap in the market for easy-to-use web content management and built a solution that anticipated many of the approaches that are now standard in the industry.
The need we identified
After collaborating on various website projects, Harry and I started to notice a pattern. Each client wanted the same three things:
- A distinctive branded design
- The ability to easily update content themselves
- Hand-holding support with technical aspects like domains and emails
This sounds obvious now, but such services for managing websites and email didn't really exist en-masse in 2007.
The challenge
At that point, most sites were being set up as individual codebases. This created ongoing problems for both us and our customers:
- For clients: They wouldn't want to pay for ongoing updates they couldn't see value in
- For us: We had to constantly revisit and upgrade each site to keep it secure and operational as web browsers evolved
- For the industry: The prospect of constantly performing repetitive updates wasn't very exciting or purposeful
A SaaS CMS with friendly service
Instead of paying thousands to create a site and then hundreds per day for ongoing development, clients would pay a small monthly subscription and we would handle all the boring and complicated bits.
Our vision was to create an online shared CMS tool which would support many different websites, each with their own design and domain name but running on web software we could keep improving and maintaining centrally.
Existing tools didn't cut it
There were already some CMS tools like WordPress on the market, but their user interfaces were still much too complex for the clients we were working with. People focused on running their businesses didn't have time to learn these often complicated tools. We thought our clients represented the mainstream and that there would be a good market for easy-to-use web content management.
An innovative business model
Our approach was novel for its time:
- Build once, scale infinitely: Start adding clients and act on user feedback to keep refining and improving indefinitely
- Time vs revenue decoupling: The revenue and profit wouldn't only depend on the hours we put in
- Economies of scale: High upfront development costs shared amongst hundreds of customers
- Minimal Viable Product: Launch quickly and gather feedback from early usage to drive ongoing development
What I Learned
PagePlay taught me fundamental lessons about:
- Product-market fit: Understanding real customer needs beyond what they explicitly request
- Scalable business models: How technology can decouple time from revenue
- Lean development: Building minimal viable products and iterating based on feedback
- User experience design: Making complex technology accessible to mainstream users
- Business model innovation: Creating sustainable approaches to ongoing software maintenance
- The importance of excellent collaborators: Harry built a rock-solid foundation on a shoestring which underpinned everything we did and remains an incredible achievement
Legacy and impact
The insights gained from PagePlay directly influenced my later work in software development and digital transformation. The focus on user-friendly interfaces, scalable systems, and sustainable business models became core principles that guided both the founding of Human and my current work at One+All.