Ever the proud father, Chris MacAskill screens 20-year-old home movies of his sons -- Ben singing about a stegosaurus, Mark getting a mohawk -- on his laptop.
"This is the negative of working with family members," a red-faced Mark, now 26, says before retreating to his cubicle.
Meet the MacAskills, Silicon Valley's version of the Waltons: seven members of a close-knit clan, ranging in age from 23 to 63, who run SmugMug Inc., which helps families share their own Kodak moments online. They are holding their own against photography services on the Internet run by corporate giants even though they have never taken a dime from outside investors.
They started on a shoestring budget in 2002, not moving into real offices in Mountain View, Calif., until April. Before that, the MacAskills and their employees set up shop in the five-bedroom home of Chris and his wife, Toni. Engineers bunked two to a bedroom. Blow dryers and vacuums routinely blew circuit breakers. Barking yellow Labrador retrievers chased tennis balls up and down the stairs.
Toni, the SmugMug matriarch, referees family squabbles. When things get out of hand she sometimes jokes that she'll send everyone to their rooms for a time out.
The MacAskills deftly blend business and family -- a radical concept in the youth-obsessed Internet industry, which admits adults, particularly of the gray-haired variety, only reluctantly.
The company now employs 28 people -- all MacAskills, family friends and SmugMug customers they hired -- in five countries. The MacAskills have signed up more than 100,000 paying subscribers despite mounting competition from free services, in part by emphasizing their family-friendly approach. They post their own family photos and home videos on the website, spend countless hours chatting up their users in the company's online forum and send lively customer service e-mails such as "Who loves you, baby?"
They also reward customer loyalty. Two years ago, when SmugMug raised its prices, it grandfathered in all its current customers. Every year, SmugMug organizes "shootouts" for its customers: roving expeditions to national parks with expert instruction on how to get the perfect shot.
And once, as payment for photo services, the MacAskills accepted livestock.
That personal touch has won over customers, some of whom traveled from as far away as Boston to attend SmugMug's recent fifth-anniversary party, where they dressed up in colorful costumes courtesy of SmugMug and mugged for the camera. Others have been so taken with the company that they quit their jobs to work there.
" Google went to great lengths to create a dorm atmosphere," said Don MacAskill, the 30-year-old chief executive and "chief geek." "We work in earnest to create a family atmosphere."
-- Honolulu Star Advertiser, January 12, 2008 [from Cheryl's stack, yeah, I know it's now 12/30/15]
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