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Why the Summify shutdown pissed me off?
Before I left on my trip last week TechCrunch reported that Summify announced that it was being bought by Twitter. I had started using Summify for a few weeks now and it was my goto place in the mornings to catch up on popular news. Earlier, I used to weed through my Twitter feed but having a service that filters and curates content is wonderful. So, while going through the TechCrunch story I started thinking…Wow, that is awesome for the founders and the VCs that have invested in the company.
If Twitter can use the Summify engine and build the service into Twitter then that would be fantastic.
I read some more and noticed…
This sounds like a talent acquisition on Twitter’s part — in other words, the main purpose of the acquisition was probably hiring the Summify team. Some of Summify’s feature have been immediately disabled, it’s no longer accepting new users, and in a few weeks, Summify says it will shut down the current product entirely. Meanwhile, the startup will be moving from Vancouver to San Francisco to work out of the Twitter office.
My reaction was - damn, these guys sold out to Twitter and don’t care about their users. Something here was not right. Sure, if Summify went belly up then the service would be shut down. But, willingly killing the service is not cool.
This got me thinking about what we would do if someone wanted to buy out DeskAway. If DeskAway is getting a bigger, better home then why not. If they are going to kill the app then a big NO NO. If they are going to pay me to kill the app - then even a bigger NO NO. That would be complete injustice to our users who rely on the service each day.
Luckily, we are not investor-backed (by choice) and do not have the pressure to sell or go IPO. Definitely, not at the cost of our current users.
If Twitter bakes Summify into its service then this acquisition makes a lot of sense. Until then I am going to check out News.me.
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How to get your SaaS business its first 100 customers? (InformationWeek)
I’ll take you back to 2007. We spent almost a year developing our Software As A Service (SaaS) project collaboration product, DeskAway. It was ready to go live but the uphill climb of getting our first 100 customers had just begun. We wanted to be profitable while bootstrapping.
Luckily, I realized early on (after being burnt a few times trying to do offline sales for an online product) that SaaS vendors should utilize low-cost marketing techniques to gain market traction and increase user adoption in markets that were evolved (like the US). While old-school software had marketing budgets of millions of dollars and sold by downloads or via CDs, selling SaaS requires an understanding of the Web, user behavior and implementing online techniques and methods.
As I look back today, the following strategies were instrumental in getting us to our golden 100 customer mark - the mantra being (for any online business) to get as many qualified leads to our website, convert them into trial users and then into paid customers.
Tap into the known
Before DeskAway, we built websites for small businesses. We used an in-house application (which later became DeskAway) to organize, manage and track their projects. When we launched, these were the first people we approached to power their businesses with DeskAway.Free
When starting out, I spoke to a very successful SaaS entrepreneur in the U.S. and he advised me to give out 50 free accounts of DeskAway to business friends and acquaintances. While I am a believer in people actually paying for a product (then they begin to really value it and give you candid feedback), this free strategy helped us spread the word initially.Conference/ Events
In January 2008, I applied for a spot at the prestigious start-up event called Proto run by Vijay Anand. A week later I got a call from him saying that we were chosen to present DeskAway in Chennai. We pitched DeskAway to an audience full of entrepreneurs, small business owners, bloggers and VCs. This event helped us build initial credibility and gain traction with early adopters in India.Self-promotion
My team scrounged the Web for blogs that discussed/reviewed small business SaaS tools, project management, collaboration, working virtually etc. We used a combination of Google Alerts and RSS Feeds. We shared our views and followed up with comments saying that, “This is DeskAway and here is why people should use us.” Our analytics showed that people actually clicked on our comments and came to the site to sign up for the app.Build virality
Email marketing companies always amaze me. People use their software and send mail to thousands of their subscribers. Each mail going out has the email marketing software company’s name and logo. I liked this model and built it into DeskAway so any personal email reminders going out to an agency’s clients will be “powered by DeskAway”. A link will take them to our site where they can try out the software for their own business.Be your own PR company
We contacted top bloggers in our industry (in India as well as abroad) and wrote them a quick pitch on why they should review our product. Back in 2007/2008 we were one of the first SaaS providers in India and convincing them to review us was relatively easy. Web Worker Daily liked our pitch and reviewed DeskAway in May 2008 which led to thousands of visitors to our site and sign-ups every minute for the first few days.Writing
I started writing for online publications and blogs early on. My first article was featured on ThinkVitamin in mid-2008 and spoke about the 7 hats an entrepreneur should wear when starting out. When people appreciate what you write, they will quickly look up who you are and see what you do. Hundreds of people came to the site to try out our product after the article was published live. Till date, I write a lot, not to mention my book ‘The SaaS Edge’ that was published early this year. Who would have thought that writing plays a key role in growing a software business?Finally, we hit the 100 customer mark in September 2008.
None of the above would have worked had we not started with a simple product and evolved it over the last few years. It was important that DeskAway solved a problem that the the customer cared about. Working hard to get noticed would bring in the curious Jims, but a solid product would convert them into happy-to-be-paying Jennys.
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Spirit of Entrepreneurship: Featured in Times of India
Times of India is India’s national newspaper and has the largest circulation among all English-language newspapers in the world. It was simply stellar getting featured on the business page on Wednesday. I sprung out of bed when I read Manish’s tweet in the morning and went straight for the papers. Website traffic, signups, emails from potential recruits, and partnership requests starting pouring in all day.
You can read the online version here.
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Why DeskAway Chucked the Rolodex
This article originally appeared on StartupCentral.in
In the second half of 2007, I would wake up every morning and immediately check our DeskAway dashboard to see if anyone had signed up. People were signing up in a trickle. We were getting a measly 3-5 sign-ups a week, probably because we had added the the site to directories or maybe a friend told a friend who told a friend. None of these were converting to customers.
This happened for the first five months. It was frustrating and emotionally draining, especially since we had zero cash flow (the services part of our business had been phased out earlier that year).
I had contacted the CEOs and founders of popular advertising agencies in Mumbai and spoken to them about how DeskAway could add value to their teams and business. They liked the idea but they didn’t get why they should be ‘subscribing’ to an online software and storing their project data online. Others told me that they were happy using email and didn’t want to adopt a new tool even if it made them more efficient and system-driven. They would call me for a demo, then yet another demo (because some manager didn’t make it to the first demo) and then another meeting to negotiate cost.
I thought to myself – “this is not the way SaaS (software-as-a-service) is sold, especially since our price points were low. The sales process needs to be online and completely frictionless. We wouldn’t be able to scale if we did this for thousands of businesses and ramping up would be a slow process. Going door to door is just not going to cut it.” I ignored my Rolodex of decision makers and moved on to the anonymous users on the web. This business was is not about who you know but how many people know you. I learnt that in order to sell online software I needed to be there when companies were looking to find me. Selling SaaS offline and especially in India (at that time) was futile and a complete waste of my time.
We were burning cash (from our service business) faster than we thought. Salaries were increasing and finding developers to work on a product with zero customers was a challenge in itself. I had to paint a picture of how the future would look and hope they understood. In hindsight, this was a good filter to have. Most importantly, my family agreed with my thoughts and were very supportive of me which is a huge help when you are steering on your own.
I also experienced a new low in my entrepreneurial career. We had a product, a team but no customers. Fortunately, this was when I got to know myself better because I felt many things that I never felt before. Deep down I knew that I needed to continue building the product. I kept telling myself that if we do the right things then things will eventually fall into place. I was living on hope. Abandoning ship was never an option but I had to prove it to myself, my team and people who never believed in us to succeed. I wanted to show the pessimists that we could build a global SaaS business from India. I wanted to prove that we could do this without taking external capital. I think these emotions and feelings led me to stretch out of my comfort zone. Probably, because I wanted to build a web business that could run on its own and didn’t need an army of people.
We continued adding new features, adding a payment gateway (even though we never saw a paid subscriber for months), hiring our third developer and just creating a better project collaboration tool. We stuck to building a better product and emailed bloggers to take a look at our creation. We started building our email subscriber list. We became much more personal (and less templatized) in our communication. We set up a blog to discuss what we thought. We read up on stuff that makes a true SaaS company – Bessemer’s Top 10 Laws for Being SaaSy (Bessemer’s Byron Deeter is the same guy I interviewed for my book The SaaS Edge last year.) I didn’t want to go back to running a service business and stuck to the hope that this business would take shape someday (sooner than later). People across the world needed to know that we (Indians) are capable of providing more than just low-cost services.
Looking back, I knew that SaaS/Cloud was a new industry and the going would be tough. I prepared myself to wait it out as there would be a time when businesses would readily subscribe to software, rather than hosting it on their own servers. I was biding my time.
On 31st December 2007 we got our first paid signup from our website. We celebrated till the wee hours of the morning. 2008 was a different story with many many many more signups, upgrades, reviews and most importantly, getting known and respected globally.
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Starting a web product company from India?
Update March 4, 2011: This post was featured in Pluggd.in - one of the top blogs on technology and startups in India.
I recently (see my slides below) gave a talk at iWeekend Mumbai (IIT Campus) on the 10 things one should look out for when building a product company. While going through my notes I realized I had some additional stuff that I had jotted down. So, here is all of my brain-dump (including the stuff on the slides)…
* Keep scalability and cost efficiency in mind. Products are highly scalable but also expensive and time consuming to build and market.
* Most programmers you will meet will be veterans of the service industry. Watch out. Hiring for a product company needs a shift in thinking. In addition, I always believe in hiring for attitude.
* Try to keep a slim team initially. Get ready to wear multiple hats - development, design, marketing and support.
* Do not use offline strategies to build an online business. Marketing offline will increase the cost of customer acquisition. Selling SaaS to Indian companies will include multiple demos, presentations and negotiations. You need to evaluate if that is worth the cost of the product that you are selling. Instead focus on online marketing strategies - SEO, blogs, email marketing, social media, forums, q&a sites etc.
* Startups are hungry for attention and reviews. People know that and take advantage of this. Avoid startup events that will ask you to pay money to participate and lure you to meeting tens of VC’s. That is BS. Instead use that money for product development or customer acquisition.
* Build your initial user base quickly. Give free accounts and see how people use your product. Get early feedback and iterate.
* Focus on the minimal viable product that does a couple of things well. Don’t let featuritis get to you.
* Charge early and try to break-even or get profitable. There is lot to learn when people won’t pay for your product.
* Get quotes, testimonials and case studies from initial paying customers. This early credibility will go a long way to get others interested in your product and might just increase the conversion rate on your website. People like to know that others have liked your site and are using it.
* Build an affiliate program. Instead of one to one, think one to many. Most brick and mortar companies have gotten big by leveraging ‘partners’ or ‘resellers’. The same applies to an online business.
* Get noticed early. Get reviewed in blogs. This is one of the best ways to spread the word.
* Create a clean and slick website. Back when I was in the web design business there was a stat which said that people take 1/20th of a second to make a decision about the site they are on. Make sure the initial user experience is a good one.
* In the iPhone/iPad era an ugly looking/feeling app is not going to cut it. Make sure your user interface is crisp. People will like your product if it feels good. This includes the speed of your app and site.
* Customers buy your vision and not what you are selling. There are tons of others who are selling the same thing as you. What you need to do is to fix your vision and truly understand why you are in business.
* Measure metrics and understand analytics. Everything on the web is measurable. Do this weekly. Create various spreadsheets to track traffic, engagement, visitor to trial, trial to paid, churn, traffic sources etc.
* Paid online marketing is expensive. Instead, spread the word via social media. It is much more personal and effective.
* Have someone with above average English writing skills. You will need an online community manager, customer service rep and someone who can maintain your website and blog. Broken English doesn’t cut it anymore.
* Lastly, don’t get too caught up in code. Remember, you are building a business, not just a product.
