Jeremy Gin – CEO of SiteJabber

I try to wake up early and ask myself, “What is the most important thing I can do today?” and then do my best to make it happen.

Jeremy Gin is the CEO of SiteJabber, a leading community of online business reviewers. SiteJabber was named as a Top 100 Website by PC Magazine and a Top 100 Money Move by CNN, was funded in part by the National Science Foundation, and has a 700,000+ member community that has reviewed over 55,000 businesses. SiteJabber also offers the only completely free reputation management platform for online businesses, disrupting the practice of charging businesses to manage their reputation. (biz.sitejabber.com)

Where did the idea for SiteJabber come from?

My co-founders and I saw that reputation management has traditionally been unfair to both businesses and consumers: businesses are forced to pay up to $100,000 per year to review platforms while consumers cannot tell whether a business is good or simply has paid a lot of money to manage its reputation. We built SiteJabber for Business as a direct response to businesses that want to manage their brands but, rightly, do not feel they should have to pay for it, and to consumers who rightly feel that they deserve the best possible information.

What does your typical day look like and how do you make it productive?

I try to wake up early and ask myself, “What is the most important thing I can do today?” and then do my best to make it happen.

How do you bring ideas to life?

By finding the best possible people for the tasks at hand (with whom I also enjoy working) and rallying them to get involved.

What’s one trend that really excites you?

Technology enabling consumers from around the world to transparently and safely connect with honest businesses on the other side of the planet.

What is one habit of yours that makes you more productive as an entrepreneur?

I try to focus on the 1 or 2 things that matter most.

What was the worst job you ever had and what did you learn from it?

Furniture warehouse laborer: Broke down cardboard boxes, swept sawdust, carried furniture. Learned to appreciate the challenges of running a small business from the ground up.

If you were to start again, what would you do differently?

Been more focused early on. Tried to do too many things at once. Should have just chosen to focus on one consumer challenge.

As an entrepreneur, what is the one thing you do over and over and recommend everyone else do?

Focus.

What is one strategy that has helped you grow your business? Please explain how.

Our intense and continual emphasis on improving our product for consumers and businesses. This we believe has allowed us to have the best product on the market.

What is one failure you had as an entrepreneur, and how did you overcome it?

At a prior company we built an innovative product without first having a deep understanding of market structure. This time around we started with understanding the customer and worked backward.

What is one business idea that you’re willing to give away to our readers?

Perhaps this already exists, but I’d love to see a platform where businesses can reward their customers for coming up with business-improving innovations.

What is the best $100 you recently spent? What and why?

My new Kindle. Thousands of classic books off copyright are completely free.

What software and web services do you use? What do you love about them?

AWS, Twilio, Sendgrid—all flexible, reasonably priced, reliable.

What is the one book that you recommend our community should read and why?

War and Peace. Best book to better understand a broad range of people. I’ve found it to be of great use for business and life.

What people have influenced your thinking and might be of interest to others?

The Effective Executive by Peter Drucker.

Connect:

SiteJabber for Business: biz.sitejabber.com
SiteJabber for Consumers: www.sitejabber.com
SiteJabber on LinkedIn:
SiteJabber on Twitter: @sitejabber
SiteJabber on Facebook: www.facebook.com/sitejabber