• Omniture CEO Speaks on Running a Successful Online Business
• Former Logoworks CEO Shares Insights About Starting Online Businesses
• Omniture to Increase Prizes for this Semester’s Web Analytics Competition

• Register for the FREE newsletter
• Submit ideas for future articles
• Become a partner with the eBusiness Center

• Newsletter Archives

• Contact the editor of the eBusiness Center Newsletter:

Rachel Finley
574 TNRB
Brigham Young University
Provo, UT 84602
(801) 422-3598
prspecialist@byu.edu

Omniture CEO Speaks on Running a Successful Online Business

In December, Josh James, CEO of Omniture, one of the largest public software companies in the nation that specializes in web analytics, spoke at the last center lecture for the fall semester. James, a former BYU student, encouraged students to filter the advice they get from others, to run a business their own way, and to primarily focus on sales.

James discussed many examples from his experience in business and how it led to his recent success with Omniture. He started out as a musical theater major and switched to business after attending the Entrepreneurship Lecture Series.

It was at one lecture with speaker Kent Dericott, a successful business owner from Japan, where James received the inspiration to run his own company. He regularly attended the lecture series afterward.

“It was encouraging to me, especially those men who were younger, and presenting at the lecture series, that if those men could do it, I could too,” James says.

James then started managing his own small companies and learned many lessons about how to run a business. He took out student loans, maxed credit cards, and at one point was making only twenty-five cents an hour.

James continued exercising faith in the business of his dreams. But it did not come easy. James says there were at least twenty decisions that he made in the last eleven years that at first no one else agreed with. He took criticism from board members and executives into consideration and now tells business owners and students what he learned from the process.

“The most important piece of advice I could ever give anyone is to take every piece of advice you get and decide what to do with it,” James says. “Reject it, filter it, or accept it. It is your business, it’s your personality, it’s your way of doing things, and there is no right way to do it. You have to do it in a way that makes sense for you.”

James also encouraged students to find a couple of customers who are willing to do anything. He says that after acquiring these customers, it is important to practice with several ideas and then prove that the company can work efficiently.

James also stressed that every business must have a focus. He says that Omniture went through various stages and because of this many investors did not think Omniture had a centered focus. Omniture started out as an agency, transitioned to advertising support, and then to a company providing software as a service to small businesses.

After acquiring many large companies, James says that Omniture made the decision to focus on these businesses as the core of their company. Ever since, the company has soared in total revenue from $1 million in 2001 to now more than 140 million a year.

James finished by explaining that success can be achieved without comprising your standards. He explained that Omniture refuses to work with companies that sell or promote pornographic material.

“We have opportunities out there in the business world to do some good,” James says. “Hopefully when all is said and done, the net of it all will be more positive than negative.”