Sharing the stories of America’s small businesses

Editor's note: This is our fifth and final post in a series celebrating National Small Business Week. Previous posts highlighted small businesses (Revenue Spark, Smart Furniture, and Free Range Studios) that have adopted Google Apps, and tips for using Gmail at work. Today, we’ll hear the story of one more entrepreneur and discuss how you can share your own.

Among many things, Vinny Lingham is an entrepreneur, CEO, search engine marketer, and recipient of numerous business related awards including the World Economic Forum’s Young Global Leader (2009), the Top ICT Young Entrepreneur in Africa (2006), and the Endeavor High Impact Entrepreneur (2006). Currently, Vinny is serving as the CEO of Yola.com – a San Francisco based startup company that offers easy-to-use, browser based website creation software for over 3 million users worldwide.

Yola became a Google Apps customer as soon as it was formed more than 3 years ago. Today, with a distributed workforce of over 60 people globally, Yola is using Google Apps for everything from email to document collaboration resulting in tremendous savings and increased productivity.

According to Vinny, “The founders of Yola knew the company’s potential and wanted a scalable and cost effective solution that could grow with their business. Google Apps made it easy to be up and running within minutes and was a fast and low-maintenance solution that fit the needs of a growing company.”

Vinny and his team at Yola are among millions of entrepreneurs and small businesses that are having a positive impact on our economy; this week we celebrated their contributions. In addition to Vinny, we selected a few other organizations, shared their stories, and showcased ways that they take advantage of Google Apps. Now it’s your turn.

Learn how to share your story by visiting the AdWords Blog where you can find tools that teams at Google created to help small businesses succeed. Included are steps on how to create a “Search Story” that walks through your journey as a small business, then share it with us and the world. We’re looking forward to seeing what you create!

Posted by Michelle Lisowski, the Google Apps team