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Marketing question: How do you plan to acquire customers? What channels will you use to get the word out? There are already dozens of very actively used databa

Marketing question: How do you plan to acquire customers? What channels will you use to get the word out? There are already dozens of very actively used databases out there. Some of them have track records that are decades long. There are dozens more new entrants into the market every year. How, in a marketing sense (not a technical sense) will you compete with them to get the word out and convince people that they should go with your solution instead of another?

david927 11y ago
Thanks for the great question. How do you plan to acquire customers? What channels will you use to get the word out? Even though we're not officially in beta, we already have a customer we're working with and we've been curating a list of prospects for our beta who have a high-degree of both interest and pain (usually due to the amount they're paying every month, but also due to managing complexity). We'll work with them first, rather than a big launch event, and slowly start to market to other customers, mainly newly forming start-ups at first. (Which is another reason why a YC Fellowship could be very useful to us.) This market is highly reputation-based, which means word-of-mouth is more powerful than other markets. Our market research tells us that based on the feature set specified, prospects would not only find it compelling enough to evaluate but they said if it matches or exceeds expectations, they would be willing to tell others. Our channels for this initial market are mainly direct: talking to directly to companies in accelerators and incubators, meetups for startups, etc. There are already dozens of very actively used databases out there. Some of them have track records that are decades long. There are dozens more new entrants into the market every year. How, in a marketing sense (not a technical sense) will you compete with them to get the word out and convince people that they should go with your solution instead of another? We have things easier and harder than a normal product. With an app you can have a harder time clarify your offering but an easier time getting adoption. It's the opposite for us. To be embraced and see high rates of adoption, we have to be more than fractionally better than others in our segment. We have to be so much better that we exceed the risk costs of switching (or adopting) new technology and the risk of relying on an initially small firm. So far, our market research says that when we state our offering, our feature set, the value is usually quickly perceived. Someone in this thread referred to us as aiming to be the Tesla of databases -- that's it. But we have to pair that with immaculate execution. We're applying to the YC fellowship to give us the best possible odds for that type of execution (as well as potentially increase our pool of first customers).

david927 11y ago

Thanks for the great question. How do you plan to acquire customers? What channels will you use to get the word out? Even though we're not officially in beta, we already have a customer we're working with and we've been curating a list of prospects for our beta who have a high-degree of both interest and pain (usually due to the amount they're paying every month, but also due to managing complexity). We'll work with them first, rather than a big launch event, and slowly start to market to other customers, mainly newly forming start-ups at first. (Which is another reason why a YC Fellowship could be very useful to us.) This market is highly reputation-based, which means word-of-mouth is more powerful than other markets. Our market research tells us that based on the feature set specified, prospects would not only find it compelling enough to evaluate but they said if it matches or exceeds expectations, they would be willing to tell others. Our channels for this initial market are mainly direct: talking to directly to companies in accelerators and incubators, meetups for startups, etc. There are already dozens of very actively used databases out there. Some of them have track records that are decades long. There are dozens more new entrants into the market every year. How, in a marketing sense (not a technical sense) will you compete with them to get the word out and convince people that they should go with your solution instead of another? We have things easier and harder than a normal product. With an app you can have a harder time clarify your offering but an easier time getting adoption. It's the opposite for us. To be embraced and see high rates of adoption, we have to be more than fractionally better than others in our segment. We have to be so much better that we exceed the risk costs of switching (or adopting) new technology and the risk of relying on an initially small firm. So far, our market research says that when we state our offering, our feature set, the value is usually quickly perceived. Someone in this thread referred to us as aiming to be the Tesla of databases -- that's it. But we have to pair that with immaculate execution. We're applying to the YC fellowship to give us the best possible odds for that type of execution (as well as potentially increase our pool of first customers).