SugarSync Launches Small Business Sharing Service

(MoneyWatch)  For many small publishers, gadget (as well as data) overload issues have developed into very serious problems. They've got PCs and Macs to contend with, smart phones and eReaders, iPods and social media apps. A growing percentage of their workdays are devoted to locating the latest version of one document or another and sharing it with the appropriate colleague in a timely manner.

Into this chaos comes a multi-tasker's dream service, SugarSync. Originally positioned as a consumer product, this one-year-old startup studied its user data carefully, and therefore today is launching a version customized especially for small business users.

"Over our first year we were surprised to find out that 75 percent of our users were small business operators," CEO Laura Yecies told me last week.

Which brings me to my Rule No. 1 for any startup company anywhere: Study how users actually use your product or service and adjust your plans accordingly -- regardless what you originally projected as your market, or how you convinced your investors to get behind the effort or any other pre-determined expectations.
Covering this space as closely as I do, I am frankly sickened by the number of startup execs (mostly very young) who do not follow this simple rule. Then, their efforts inevitably go belly up, wasting money and harming others in the process.

Okay, now I have that off of my chest, let's get back to SugarSync, which strikes me as a truly useful service for small business operators of all types, not just in the media business. Perhaps its most impressive feature is how it almost instantaneously "pushes" synchronized versions of documents or files up into the "cloud," where anyone on your team can access your latest changes.

So let's bring this down to earth: You're sitting in your dentist's office, waiting to be seen, after having jumped in that taxi from the office even though you hadn't completed the edit on that preso that the rest of your team is anxiously waiting for, because your damn tooth was aching so badly.

Using SugarSync, you can whip out your Blackberry, complete the edit, and send it back up into the crowd, fully encrypted, so nobody on your team has to skip a beat in order to continue moving that preso towards completion -- while you also get to have your toothache go away.

In other words, this is a tool for the many of us whose work and personal lives have merged to the point that we can no longer can afford to be unconnected for any protracted period of time whilst going about our daily routines.

This company uses a pricing model, variations of which I am increasingly seeing online:

• A free 30-day business plan trial.
• Then, a base plan priced at $29.99/month for 100 GB of storage and 3 user accounts.
• Or, an introductory offer priced at $44.99/month that allows for larger storage and user accounts.
• Otherwise, additional user accounts cost $9.99 each.
• And, additional storage costs $29.99 per 100 GB.
• Without boring you with the math, a typical seven-person operation would end up probably costing you, as a small publisher, around $130 a month.

CEO Yecies and Product Manager Drew Garcia told me that 83 percent of users who try out the free trial are converting into paid accounts, and that 95 percent of those are then renewing their accounts. I've been in the business of trying to attract users to one online service or another in the past and I can tell you that, if accurate, these are extremely impressive metrics.

Okay now, let's look at their logo at the top of this post. Not the first nor the last to derive its look and feel from Twitter, the hottest company on the planet, are they? But I'll admit to liking the bird theme anyway.

(Disclosure to the FTC: I actually accepted a chocolate chip cookie from the PR firm representing SugarSync last week. Did that affect how I wrote this post? I don't know, but I do know that I was very hungry at the time, and I can report that the cookie tasted very good.)