I guess the question is how much value it provides to your business. If it helps you to raise hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars, the pricing is cheap!
Our early pricing was actually much steeper, starting at 1999+ USD setup and 649+ USD per month, so I'm quite happy we were able to bring it down a bit further with the automation.
Compared to other companies in the field it's competitive pricing for the extra-value it brings ( e.g. social connectors for lead aggregation instead of just emails, full background checks, standalone professional looking sites from the get-go, behaviour statistics on the slide decks, CRM connectors etc. )
Our early clients managed to raise rounds in the 8 digit values with the help of a more organized fund raising round, and then transformed their pitchdecks into investor pages to keep investors updated.
So based on those good experiences and seemingly no comparable product out there on the market I do believe strongly in our product being very competitively priced.
If you haven't considered it already - this might be a great product for "pay only if you succeed" pricing. Might be easier to get people to pay, say, $5k from someone who has just raised $10m than $200 from someone who almost by definition has nothing.
Oh, that's brilliant (not sure how to enforce it though).
If it works to raise money, I am happy to pay for it (we're currently trying to raise $500k so very much a potential customer). Probably worth $1k to $2.5k to me if it is successful.
We have with some of the early stage startups based on trusted investors, but unfortunately this is a very risky, manual and not-scalable model based on too many factors.
We started all this for an early Skype seed investor; he was overwhelmed with pitching a lot of different companies to investors and losing track of it.
So we put a simple presentation behind a Facebook login, and that was it for starters. Later connected it to a CRM; added LinkedIn, AngelList.
Started signing on customers and growing it based on their feedback, mostly manual work. Finally we built a whole automated SaaS solution around this, and added some nicer style to it plus a lot of background checks on the leads themselves and their behaviour.
It looks cool but the pricing is huge. We're raising a round now and this looks like something that would be helpful but at $89 a month? Probably not, certainly not without a short trial.
I'm really loving the idea and want to propose this to our board of directors, but this won't stand a chance without a trial. Without a trial, the price is a huge setback. And even then the price is pretty steep.
How did (potential) investors like this? We're just starting our fundraising process. This looks interesting but I am afraid it adds friction for the investor who may not want to be tracked, nor does it make it easy for them to share it with others.
Regarding the pricing, it seems reasonable once you are going for Series A, but when you are still counting every penny, it is a bit steep (especially without a money back guarantee).
I agree on the pricing. We currently manage our decks in a page with our logo and an iframe with Google docs preview below. Paying 200$/m is tempting if they could provide useful connections. Just for the storage, even the 90$/m seems a bit high (pre funding, of course).
what about a simple one time purchase? I imagine the half life of a good pitch is really short. So your churn will be high. If people last a long time on your service, they have other problems.
A monthly subscription is just another thing I need to manage. Also, I feel like I am paying for a time where I may not be using it yet (there's a time delay between setting it up and actually going out to investors).
And the jump from $89 to $199 just for a CNAME is a little high as well.
Not everybody needs a secured presentation, and if you can create a page manually, that doesn't need access control, a CRM connector, slide behaviour tracking, activity notifications and/or lead background information - and if it looks great on mobile and other devices - then by all means!
The problem we solve is not the hardest problem in the world. It simply takes a lot of time to get around it, to maintain it and to implement all the 'nice to haves' into it. As we like to say in the XO office - "it's simple, not easy"
If you can do it yourself, without hiring another person for much more money than the existing solutions out there cost; and if it doesn't keep you from your main focus - then that's the way to go.
We have with our first few customers already approx. 1000 accumulated leads together, so based on that data and their feedback we can safely say that it does not provide any considerable friction.
Having said that, yes there's going to be some oldschool investors or leads who will ask you for a PDF. But most leads won't give you friction if you mention that they need to log in to receive access to your secured investor area - it's not hard to understand that your company material cannot be out in the public; and the tracking part is not ever mentioned from experience.
Our primary goal with this product is to give the presentation owner a full background picture on their leads. There is no email + password sign up possible to evade that process as a conscious choice - no escape routes. If it's a big friction for an investor - by all means send him the PDF.
About frictionless sharing :
A) We believe the business owner would like to know who sees his presentation, which areas they are interested in, and when they see it ( and PDFs don't provide any of that )
B) We are planning to add 'invite links' in the future, so leads can simply share to other leads by typing in their email address. If the feature really makes sense as opposed to keeping it simple - not 100% sure yet; but we'll keep on evaluating the idea.
Thanks for your feedback, it was valuable as from all the others who commented. We just opened the doors, so of course we'll have to adapt quickly.
There's a few points this taught us :
a) Trial period to showcase the product is a must - done!
b) The pricing doesn't reflect the perceived value of the product - we need to work better on showcasing what's actually 'beneath the box', so visitors and potential customers don't just think that we're providing simple landing pages
c) The current page doesn't showcase the product well enough - we'll have hopefully by next week a short video on the frontpage to easy that up + an additional page which has to be simple enough to explain the usecases and what's all connected to it
d) Keep pricing simple. We removed the additional pricing options, and offer now unlimited admins and have set the lead limits way above the usual usage levels.
We are eager to grow with the feedback! Since yesterday we have introduced the trial period and simplified our pricing model as well.
26 comments
[ 5.7 ms ] story [ 65.3 ms ] threadCompared to other companies in the field it's competitive pricing for the extra-value it brings ( e.g. social connectors for lead aggregation instead of just emails, full background checks, standalone professional looking sites from the get-go, behaviour statistics on the slide decks, CRM connectors etc. )
Our early clients managed to raise rounds in the 8 digit values with the help of a more organized fund raising round, and then transformed their pitchdecks into investor pages to keep investors updated.
So based on those good experiences and seemingly no comparable product out there on the market I do believe strongly in our product being very competitively priced.
If it works to raise money, I am happy to pay for it (we're currently trying to raise $500k so very much a potential customer). Probably worth $1k to $2.5k to me if it is successful.
So we put a simple presentation behind a Facebook login, and that was it for starters. Later connected it to a CRM; added LinkedIn, AngelList.
Started signing on customers and growing it based on their feedback, mostly manual work. Finally we built a whole automated SaaS solution around this, and added some nicer style to it plus a lot of background checks on the leads themselves and their behaviour.
You can see an example of a lead view here : http://datascreens.pitchxo.com/lead_info.png
Hope you like it!
Regarding the pricing, it seems reasonable once you are going for Series A, but when you are still counting every penny, it is a bit steep (especially without a money back guarantee).
A monthly subscription is just another thing I need to manage. Also, I feel like I am paying for a time where I may not be using it yet (there's a time delay between setting it up and actually going out to investors).
And the jump from $89 to $199 just for a CNAME is a little high as well.
Not everybody needs a secured presentation, and if you can create a page manually, that doesn't need access control, a CRM connector, slide behaviour tracking, activity notifications and/or lead background information - and if it looks great on mobile and other devices - then by all means!
The problem we solve is not the hardest problem in the world. It simply takes a lot of time to get around it, to maintain it and to implement all the 'nice to haves' into it. As we like to say in the XO office - "it's simple, not easy"
If you can do it yourself, without hiring another person for much more money than the existing solutions out there cost; and if it doesn't keep you from your main focus - then that's the way to go.
Having said that, yes there's going to be some oldschool investors or leads who will ask you for a PDF. But most leads won't give you friction if you mention that they need to log in to receive access to your secured investor area - it's not hard to understand that your company material cannot be out in the public; and the tracking part is not ever mentioned from experience.
Our primary goal with this product is to give the presentation owner a full background picture on their leads. There is no email + password sign up possible to evade that process as a conscious choice - no escape routes. If it's a big friction for an investor - by all means send him the PDF.
About frictionless sharing : A) We believe the business owner would like to know who sees his presentation, which areas they are interested in, and when they see it ( and PDFs don't provide any of that ) B) We are planning to add 'invite links' in the future, so leads can simply share to other leads by typing in their email address. If the feature really makes sense as opposed to keeping it simple - not 100% sure yet; but we'll keep on evaluating the idea.
It is something we will consider we will consider using.
There's a few points this taught us :
a) Trial period to showcase the product is a must - done! b) The pricing doesn't reflect the perceived value of the product - we need to work better on showcasing what's actually 'beneath the box', so visitors and potential customers don't just think that we're providing simple landing pages c) The current page doesn't showcase the product well enough - we'll have hopefully by next week a short video on the frontpage to easy that up + an additional page which has to be simple enough to explain the usecases and what's all connected to it d) Keep pricing simple. We removed the additional pricing options, and offer now unlimited admins and have set the lead limits way above the usual usage levels.
We are eager to grow with the feedback! Since yesterday we have introduced the trial period and simplified our pricing model as well.
I really appreciate your responses.