Describe a situation where you encountered an ethical or moral dilemma.
August 10th, 2005Another recycled school paper… This time I’ve decided to post one of my essays from my Harvard Business School application in 2004. I was able to get an interview with Harvard but alas, they did not admit me (their loss!). I realize that my description in this essay may sound a bit oversimplified but my word limit was tiny (400 or so?). I’ve got some more thoughts on this subject that I’ll put down in a future blog entry.
Starting a new business is an exciting experience, but one fraught with potential risk and opportunities for ethical compromise. The competitive landscape of today’s business world is cutthroat and demands owners take every advantage possible. In starting our by owner vacation rental directory, Safarium.com, my partner and I were faced with an important question: to spam or not to spam?
Most Internet users are familiar with spam, the unwanted advertisements for “amazing new products” and “unbelievable business opportunities.” However, many do not realize that spam comes in many varied forms and flavors. For instance, in promoting our mountain biking trail information website, Singletracks.com, my wife and I took to competing mountain biking websites and sent carefully targeted messages to users asking them to check out our new site. We figured mountain bikers would be glad to know about our site and wouldn’t mind that we had sent them an unsolicited commercial message. This turned out to be correct for a while, until we were reported to the SpamCop.
SpamCop is a website that Internet service providers and individuals can use to report unwanted emails. One of our email recipients notified SpamCop of our transgression, and SpamCop in turn notified our web hosting company. In the end, our hosts told us in no uncertain terms that they would not tolerate spam and they would terminate our account if we spammed again.
Fast forward four years to a new website, Safarium.com, and a new web hosting company. My partner and I were beginning to have doubts about our business and wondered how we could increase traffic to our website. We were offering free one-year listings while other sites charged upwards of $100 and we were confident that property owners would greatly benefit from our service. My partner and I knew that our competition was bombarding property owners with unsolicited messages and we sorely wanted the same exposure. Besides, it was cost effective and we were offering a smoking deal to our customers. But somehow, this all seemed too familiar…
After mulling the issue for several weeks, my partner and I sided against spamming. Today our site boasts almost 100 properties in 19 states and we are proud that we made the ethical decision against questionable business tactics. We’ve even made a name for ourselves through adding features to prevent our property owners from becoming victims of spam. In the end, our decision has given us the pride and resolve to continue running our business with ethical and moral conviction.
