Hello,
We had a few startups before, one was successful
and another was a failure.
For the past 10 months our developers have been working with new SaaS project. SaaS is new experience for us.- cloud based call - contact centre software. Our clients are call centres and enterprise companies who have contact departments for making/answering the calls. Similar to www.five9.com.
We started with sales and marketing 2 months ago and now we received first feedback from our clients. They like the software, but they are asking for more functionality. It would take another 2 months to code what they ask for.
So in total it would take us 6-9 months from now to start generating at least $15k in revenue after we get our fist clients and then we can seek for investment and start growing.
We are wondering if it is worth our time to continue with this project considering it would take a lot of time to make first sales and there's already a lot of competition. Also, I am not sure about the future, because there are a lot of similar projects already and I am not sure if we could offer something radically new. We don't want to be just another ordinary software in the field.
Maybe we should invest our time and money into something that could potentially be worth much more.
Thanks
Without fully diagnosing the market potential of your space it's difficult to say whether to go all-in or change course. It's smart that you're not wanting to the "just another ordinary software", but you don't need to be the best per se. You simply need to be unique - which may prove challenging when providing a utility. If it were me, I would sell what you have like crazy and potentially offer the service at a lower rate to start with based on the expectation to clients that you are in the midst of integrating new improvements. This would allow you to onboard them earlier to generate cash flow, then increase the cashflow once the new features are built in. Since I don't know the full scope of what you're doing I could be off base in that clients either want it all or nothing, but if the latter is not true I would sell, sell, sell and offer unrelenting service which may prove to be part of your uniqueness. Good luck.
Hi, this is Ann, a business coach with a lot of experience in strategic planning and marketing.
To me, you did a very great job. You ran some beta test to know what the customers really wanted and also estimated how much the app would generate. To be honest, not a lot of entrepreneurs can do the same.
Next, I will summarize your situation in my own words, so feel free to correct me if I get you wrong. You have already developed an app and also done some tests with it and known what should be done next. However, the app is running in a competitive industry that there is few differences between the apps and sometimes you feel like all of the apps are just following the trend and hardly bring any (real) value to the customers. Hence, you want to do something different that really brings what the customers deserve.
To be honest, after a long time working for startup companies, I realize that only a few of them really suceed. In most cases, the successful ones are the ones that care about customers the most. So, by upgrading your app constantly, you already bring them some real values.
However, if you really want to do something else because you want to create offer the world what really matters, I suggest you do some deep inner work. It is because that I know so many people (actually including me) wanting to do something really amazing but they cannot finish it because that is not what they want to live their entire life with. A business that creates great values requires a great amount of passion that may take you an entire life. Do you really want it? In addition, you may need some financial support or at least some base/foundation (that's why we have KickStart and Indiegogo). If I were you, I would consider 2 solutions below:
After finishing my deep inner work, I would know what value I wanted to bring to people.
1. Then, I would consider whether I could develop the existing app towards that direction or not
2. I would still work on the app to generate some money so that I could use it for my ultimate purpose. I was half-way there, I would not think I should quit.
These are just my suggestions, which can be biased. The choice is yours. You know what you're doing best! If you find my answer helpful, you can have a look and take it as a referrence.
Should you need any help/motivation, don't forget Ann is here to help!
Have a nice day!
