UNDER THE RADAR - Statcounter.com: Crucially for business customers, the service provides real-time statistics rather than what happened on the website the day before.
While remaining firmly under the radar, an Irish company has become one of the top 30 most-visited websites in the US, has signed up 1.4 million members and has generated revenues of €1.6 million this year.
Not bad when you consider that husband and wife team Aodhán (24) and Jenni Cullen (25) have never even advertised their Statcounter.com service and have relied on recommendations from existing customers to promote the service.
Statcounter provides detailed information to website-owners on visitors to their site. Unlike competing offerings, Statcounter does not require customers to display a logo, counter or any other information on their own website. "It's very easy to sell, because it's free," says Jenni. "We fund the service through advertisements on Statcounter."
That means the company has to walk a tight financial tightrope, ensuring that advertising is covering the costs of the non-paying customers. They will not say how many customers have upgraded to the paid service, but do say revenues are split evenly between advertising and subscriptions.
Currently, 1,500 new customers are being signed up daily but, despite the massive numbers with which they are now dealing, the couple go to great lengths to remain in contact with them.
If a customer requests a new feature, they will think nothing of pulling an all-nighter writing code in order to implement it.
"We are not an anonymous corporation," says Jenni. "We keep an eye on things and will personally respond if people have a problem with something."
In keeping with their philosophy, they do not overly limit what the free service offers. It includes a lifetime summary of activity on the site and more detailed analysis of the last 100 page loads. Crucially for business customers, the service provides real-time statistics rather than what happened on the website the day before. Even the smallest business can get information on how people found the site, what pages they looked at, where they are geographically located - right down to the service provider they are using.
"My own opinion is that a website is the only part of a business that companies throw money into like a black hole with no idea what the return on that investment is," says Jenni.
At the age of 24, Aodhán could be considered one of the much- hyped "serial entrepreneurs". He started in business when he was 12, typing up CVs on his PC. From there he moved into website design and he developed Statcounter in response to requests from clients who wanted to know if anyone was actually visiting the sites he had created for them. "I loved computers and I loved making money, so those two things went together very well," he says. He kept the service running while a student in DCU but it was really in 2003 that it began to attract the kind of traffic which would support a full-time business.
Perhaps most impressive, given the lack of marketing, is the fact that Statcounter has managed to sign up some household names as customers - in Ireland alone Eircom subsidiary Meteor, the Labour Party, online portal entertainment.ie and CorkNow magazine use the service.
An inherent advantage of the service is that, as more customers use it, they generate more links back to Statcounter. This increases their standing with search engines - Statcounter currently has an impressive PageRank of 9/10 with Google, which ensures that it is displayed in the first couple of results for any search relating to website visitor tracking or analysis.
The company is profitable and, to date, has been funded out of cashflow. Although they do not rule out external investment - US venture capitalists are in touch regularly, the couple say - they do not see any need for this at present.
They plan to open a Dublin office as they have now outgrown their home office. They will also recruit more staff to support the three contractors working for them in the US, India and Israel.
Statcounter may be a runaway success, but the pay-off is that you will find the couple at their computers late on a Saturday night rather than in the pub. Fortunately for them, they admit to loving what they do and are in no rush to cash in their chips.
"We have no desire to sell," says Jenni. "We have a hugely loyal client community and we would not like to jeopardise that. Also, we enjoy too much what we are doing. We haven't yet reached our mid-20s, so we're far too young to retire."
ON THE RECORD
Name: Aodhán Cullen
Age: 24
Family: Married to Jenni
Background: Dublin born, he is a graduate of computer applications in DCU and has been working on Statcounter since he was 16.
Vision for the business: To become the number one de-facto standard for web tracking.
Most admired person: Richard Branson and, in particular, his mantra "screw it, let's just do it".
Other interests: Cinema, walking on the beach, weekly game of football.
Name: Jenni Cullen
Age: 25
Family: Married to Aodhán
Background: Dublin native, she studied actuarial and financial studies in UCD and has been working with Aodhán on Statcounter since "they met in a pub".
Vision for the business: "We want to be synonymous with web analysis - we want to become a Hoover."
Most admired person: JP McManus.
Other interests: Cinema and walking but admits "not keeping regular hours" makes it hard to have a social life.
