Bryant Quan, Slickdeals CEO

I've been with SD for a long time now and I gotta say: watching it grow into what it is today has been pretty amazing. Kudos to the team behind the scene for making it happen while providing an invaluable service to the online community. Sure there's alternatives but just like with everything else online, there's intangibles associated with the history and the community of members that make it that much more relevant to me specifically.

Keep up the good work!

Quote from bryantq : Mr. Slickdeals pays me in coupons and product samples... occasionally he'll throw in a free massage from a groupon he bought.

glad to hear from you. glad to know that you're not just a CEO who lets everyone else do all the work like some other sites..you're actively participating! keep up the good work. :-)

Quote from rman : " If I were the CEO [sic] of slickdeals, the first thing I would do is to eliminate the banned words when they refer to a competitor. I would have the courage to do that. Question is, do you?

Do you have the courage to let me go into your house and talk smack about your family? How about letting me go into your business and telling everyone to use your competitor's product instead?

As an American you have a right to free speech in public but SD is a privately owned internet forum with rules. Why should SD provide outbound links to build traffic and SEO for competing companies? Try sending customers at a place of business to their competitors in front of the shop owner and see what happens.

Quote from rman : hey guys, I think you need to balance between kissing ass and giving feedback to improve things around here. Lets not forget that we are the reason slickdeals exists. And just by participating on this site, we are helping slickdeals. Tit for Tat. Having said that, I would advise we use this opportunity [how often do we have the CEO's ear to our posts?} to make some positive change. Quit praising and provide specific suggestions on how to make the slickdals experience better for us, their clients.

Some of us are more visible then others, but I believe we are fairly in tune with our community.

Quote from rman : Here are a few I can think off.. 1. Before making radical changes to the User interface, I would suggest creating a thread to solicit feedback. I was really thrown off by the changes that got shoved down our throats couple of years back and had no way to express my opinion.

UI changes take time to get used to so all we ask is to give it 15-30 days for yourself to get acclimated to it. When we release UI changes, there are several things that we can do depending on the size of release. For more bigger changes such as the personalization feature, we will soft launch it on beta.slickdeals.net and solicit feedback. For the smaller stuff such as the unread bubbles, we'll push it right out. We are always open to suggestions so long as it makes sense for us.

Quote from rman : 2. Learn from competitor urlhasbeenblockedsonly.com , remove "only".. They provide a simple page where I can view all deals with pictures and such.

Are you talking about the frontpage in "grid" mode? That is picture mode for FP deals. If you're talking about the Hot Deals forum, we can't feature the deals in picture mode if there are no pictures attached to the deal. However, we are already working on grabbing images from the merchants automatically and will start to allow the community to collabrotively attach images to the deal.

Quote from rman : 3. Remove the silly banning of competitor names in all our posts as has been done in above point. It shows lack of maturity or confidence and displays paranoia

I don't think that's lack of maturity or confidence. If anything, it's just good business sense. Regardless, our policy on competitors is this: If they have a community and censor Slickdeals, we will block them and if they don't have a commmunity, we are free to decice whether to block them or not.

Quote from rman : 4. Make something meaningful out of the rep points. Right now, I care as much about a rep point as a fly on the roof of my car. How to make it more meaningful? Here are some suggestions - Ability to rep is good, but also have the ability to express disapproval and have it tracked just like the reps have periodic drawings and offer prizes for good helpful posts and so on

We have initial ideas on a point system that is separate from rep points. It is further down in our long list of projects.

Quote from rman : Promise us that you will never attempt to trick us, into assuming an ad is actually a deal. This doesnt mean, you simply place a tiny font size caption calling it an ad, but what I mean is do not give up real estate that is meant for deals to ads.. like how Google bastardized its results page etc. I will let you know if I think of anything else.

Here is a link to our FP commitment.

I think its great that you are announcing to your community who the CEO is and some information about him and the company! I realize that as users we do play a large part but without the free access and organization throughout the front page and forums, we wouldn't be using saving as much money as we are, so thank you guys for that. I enjoy the contests that are posted and I'll admit I visit SD more than any other website so thanks again for everything and keep up the great work!

Quote from rman : 1. Before making radical changes to the User interface, I would suggest creating a thread to solicit feedback. I was really thrown off by the changes that got shoved down our throats couple of years back and had no way to express my opinion.

We definitely have an initiative for this. If you'd like to register as a beta tester to have a voice in our upcoming features, visit http://slickdeals.net/beta/

Wish my boss would understand this:
" and that a fully stocked fridge can move mountains in an office!"

I personally enjoy the atmosphere of this site. I no longer shop as much as I did when I first started--how many computers do you really need if you are non-tech?? I enjoy the Lounge and Tech Support threads. Where else can you go to get landscaping, plumbing, computer expertise, etc from people who will respond with personal knowledge in a kind way?
Thanks!

Yes thanks for a very cool site. Great job SD team!

Granted I have made much more money on Groupon (by shorting the stock!)

Wish a WP7 app was in the works ...

I heart Slickdeals though. Site has saved me thousands of dollars over the year.

send me a t-shirt already :p

rman should put up his own deal site. Let the CEO run their business I guess.

Ah the memories! Well I might as well toss a quick post out there since I enjoyed reading the CEO's story, inspirational, well done. Been with the community for a fair amount of time, since I was just a trapped minion on an IT hell desk (errrrr help desk). Many co-workers in the IT world at several of the employers I've worked at would browse SD to pass the day - I've thankfully never seen it blocked, even by one of my crazy, controlling former managers that was an angry soulless ginger going through a divorce that talked to his workers like we were a football team down by 10 touchdowns at halftime - every day. .. Just wanted to say thanks, if I am looking for specific advice on a variety of tech or financial topics I hit the sub forums and post. The great deals are what got me here (and the free t shirt on my first ever FP post was really cool too), but the honest and real community keep me coming back.... Just wanted to say keep it up and keep innovating!

Mr. Slickdeals wrote a pretty comprehensive reply to you which mirrors my opinion.

Quote from rman : 1. Before making radical changes to the User interface, I would suggest creating a thread to solicit feedback. I was really thrown off by the changes that got shoved down our throats couple of years back and had no way to express my opinion.

In regards to this, I've spent almost half my life doing UI/UX and design work, so I tend to think I have a pretty good idea about positive and useful but iterative change. Inevitably the core users will always complain about changes, because it is human nature to be resistant to change.

However, if you look at it objectively, I think if you compared today's design to that of 5 years ago, you will say "yes this was for the better, even though I was upset at the time".

Finally, it is an inaccurate statement to say that you had no way to express your opinion: we're readily available via private message, and we have an entire forum dedicated to "Site Issues, Suggestions and Questions". Many people provide their feedback there, and if we think it makes sense, we're quick to turn around and implement that feedback. As Oly also wrote, we do have a new beta test group too. We're always happy to take feedback and we're always looking to improve

Quote from rman : not everything is as rosy as it seems. What I detest about slickdeals is that they ban the mention of competition even if it saves you $. I dont trust these guys completely, and I dont trust the front page items as they are placed there in exchange for $, in my opinion atleast some of the times. Example, you cant mention the word urlhasbeenblockeds.com <a competitor> since the URL is blocked, lets find a way.. www.technologybargains.com .. remove "nology" and you get what I mean. i visit that site as often as I visit slickdeals. I like slickdeals better because it does encourage speech, just not free speech.

ohh thank you for this deal site lol