Deckerton Bringing Word-of-Mouth into 21st Century

Even though advertisers are talented enough at promoting products to earn a livelihood doing so, a slick flash presentation or a clever commercial often cannot quite match a personal endorsement offered by a close friend. It’s that level of trust that Lateef Johnson hopes to nurture between his clients and the individuals to whom they cater. Officially launched at this year’s Big Omaha, Johnson’s startup Deckerton provides a social networking platform for people to recommend their favorite products, services and business to friends.

“If you have a great real estate agent that you really like, and one of your friends wants to buy a house or is looking to sell theirs, then Deckerton makes it really easy to connect the two,” Johnson said. “Deckerton uses a modern social network user interface to accomplish this objective — portals like Facebook and Twitter are great for meeting and communicating with friends, but they’re not designed for business applications.”

Although created with small businesses in mind, Johnson hopes Deckerton will allow both nascent entrepreneurs and startup veterans to more easily traverse the troubled waters of commercial promotion. While it may take as long as half a year for the results of an advertising campaign to be digested in full, Deckerton provides much quicker returns; theoretically, the same day a request is made.

Lateef Johnson - Photo credit Three Pillars Media

“Let’s say you request a referral from a customer, they use the Deckerton system and the referred prospect requests more information about your business from you — that’s something that could happen within minutes versus the 3 to 6 months you’d wait on an advertising campaign,” Johnson said. “Plus, it’s recordable. You can see how many of your customers are using the service, and whether they’re referring you or not. And that’s all free.”

In the future, Johnson hopes to bedeck Deckerton with additional features for a price, but the crux of the service will always remain free of charge. A smart phone application to refer friends on the fly is also in the works.  Meanwhile, Johnson is promoting Deckerton via Deckerton. In essence, his startup is literally selling itself.

“We’ve been able to promote Deckerton with the idea that the software is its own best promotion,” Johnson said. “We think the new methods of communication are making things like advertising somewhat obsolete for a lot of different types of businesses.”

Deckerton’s been entirely self-funded up to this point, according to Johnson, but he remains optimistic the state’s shifting angel investor bedrock could be indicative of a change in the way startups are funded in Nebraska.

Lateef Johnson explaining the advertising industry - Photo credit Three Pillars Media

“Deckerton’s adopted the bootstrapping model to finance, though we’re also looking for investment,” Johnson said. “The angel investment landscape in Nebraska is really starting to mature. There’s been a few organized angel deals over the past two or three years and those investors are starting to get smarter about how they investment, so I think there’s an opportunity for rapid-growth companies to leverage angel investing locally.”

“There’s a broader theme of companies developing here in this state in a way they haven’t been able to before,” he added. “Part of the reason for that is tech and part of it is the people we have here who are able to compete on a global scale. That’s what exciting about working in Nebraska.”

More about Deckerton and a video interview can be found on Silicon Prairie News