How Visual.ly Set Their Big Idea in Motion

I really love the Visual.ly story because they have a huge, audacious goal – to visualize the world’s data – and they move toward their goal with achievable steps. The $2m investment they just received was likely not in response to a great idea they drew on a napkin and showed to a bunch of VCs, but to clear forward motion over time on the part of the Visua.ly team.

Here are five steps I see on their road to success.

1. See Trends

Visual.ly’s stellar demo video clearly explains the trend they are capitalizing on. Simply put, there is more data to be consumed than ever before and Infographics are an increasingly popular medium for communicating large amounts of information.

I love how their demo video shows the number of Infographics featured on Digg across several years. It’s the type of information that is easily accessible and clearly validates a concept.

2. Provide Services

Visualizing the world’s information is a massively ambitious goal – a goal that could not simply be achieved by cranking out infographics one at a time. And yet, cranking out infographics one at a time is exactly what the Visual.ly team did. They helped companies like Mint create stunning infographics and in the process they gained invaluable experience and understanding of how infographics are made, their impact, and marketability.

They also made money by doing client work. Doing custom work for clients will never become truly scalable – at least not scalable enough to visualize the world’s information. However, the experience, customer knowledge, and revenue Visual.ly amassed by doing client work has, I’m sure, provided an invaluable stepping stone in the path towards their goal.

3. Grow Following

To carry out their goal, Visual.ly knew that it wasn’t enough just to create awesome infographics – they needed to create a movement. They built the Visual.ly website to be a community where infographics could be explored, shared, created, and promoted.

Take a look at the Compete.com traffic stats for the Visual.ly website.

4. Productize

Visual.ly has slowly made their offerings more streamlined and scalable – clearly trying to be a hub for all things infographic-related. They created a partners program where people with lots of data could feed it to Visual.ly and have it turned into effective infographics. These moves helped them begin to transition form a services-based business to a scalable business – the kind of business that can visualize the world’s information.

5. Create a Flagship Offering

Visual.ly is working on building the tools for creating data visualizations and infographics. If they succeed they will be well-positioned to keep moving towards their goal.

I’m sure the idea for building the killer data visualization tool-set was born long ago, yet look at all the steps they have taken to reach the point where they are actually making it.

Good news for rest of us

I am encouraged by the Visual.ly story because they have a huge, ambitious, world-changing goal and yet they have taken steps that any of us could take on our own ideas.