Web Democracy

Naples needs more people like Farhan Yasin.

Yasin, 39, led the international expansion efforts of Internet sensations Groupon and CareerBuilder, growing those companies' presence in Europe and Asia.

But after enduring winters and traffic jams in Chicago, Yasin decided he'd had enough and moved to Naples with his wife, Rhonda Lipsey, because they enjoy the outdoors and warm weather.

Fact is, entrepreneurs like Yasin can live and work anywhere, and it turns out that Southwest Florida is becoming more than a place to spend a vacation. “We fell in love with Naples,” says Yasin.

With co-founder Matt Ferguson, the CEO of employment website CareerBuilder, Yasin created a company based in Naples called Snehta.

Snehta provides small businesses with website development and related tools at a more reasonable cost than many competitors. For example, for $34.99 a month, Snehta will design, build and maintain a five-page website for a small business.

The name of the company is Athens spelled backwards. As the birthplace of democracy, Athens' small-business community was the backbone of its economic strength. “The business has been up and running since May,” says Yasin, who left Groupon to start Snehta in July 2011.

To launch Snehta, Yasin says he and Ferguson raised an undisclosed amount of capital over a six-month period from private investors to be able to run the business for two to three years.

Yasin estimates there are 4 million small businesses with fewer than 100 employees. As many as half of those companies don't have corporate websites, he estimates.

To build the company, Snehta has a team of 15 full-time employees in Atlanta in sales and customer service. “We found some very strong tech talent in Atlanta and our chairman lives there,” he says.

There are plans to create sales centers in the Fort Myers-Naples area as well as locations with high concentrations of small businesses such as St. Louis and Kansas City. Yasin acknowledges it may be harder to find technology employees in the Fort Myers-Naples area, but he says the lower cost of living and weather could offset that.

Yasin declines to forecast sales or say when Snehta might become profitable. He says that depends on many factors, including how fast the company signs up new customers and how many sales people it adds.

In addition to designing and maintaining affordable websites for small businesses, Snehta can set up social-media pages such as Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest, index your site for Internet search engines, and track your company's online reputation. For $39.99 to $59.99, you can buy these services as bundles rather than a la carte.

Yasin says what makes Snehta relatively affordable is that its use of cloud-based storage means the firm doesn't have to maintain its own servers. In addition, the monthly subscription service means a steady stream of recurring revenue from small-business owners.

The key now, Yasin says, is to make sure that the customer's experience is excellent. That's because Snehta's sales team will sell the service based on reputation and word-of-mouth.

Fact is, Yasin says some small-business owners are reluctant to invest in a website because they may have had a bad experience in the past from entrepreneurs who charged them excessive fees to start one and were unresponsive. They're also busy and have little time for developing a web strategy. “The challenge is getting these guys on the phone,” Yasin says.

But among the services Snehta will include is a search portal so consumers can find a small business in their neighborhood, such as an auto-repair shop, a hair salon or a pizza restaurant.