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Launch a boutique VoIP provider. Yes there are many out there, but the market is crazy big (and growing) and there is plenty of room for you. Big margins, low o

by aviv 8y ago

Launch a boutique VoIP provider. Yes there are many out there, but the market is crazy big (and growing) and there is plenty of room for you. Big margins, low overhead if you know how to do it right. A 20-person office customer is $18K in revenue over 3 year customer life (and avg. life is higher if you provide good service). Go after niche verticals and dominate those.

geetfun 8y ago
Just curious, what are boutique VOIP providers?
- aviv 8y ago
  More of a specialty shop, not a one-size-fits-all RingCentral competitor. Targeting specific industries with use case specific solutions (ie. going after car dealerships with overhead paging, DECT wireless handsets, etc.) -- yes, they can get all this with RingCentral or 8x8 or anyone else -- but your positioning, marketing, and niche expertise is what will win the deal. Can also offer more of a white-glove service, on-site install, etc. that the big guys simply don't offer. You don't even need to have local presence - just find good folks on FieldNation that can perform the job and pay them for 3-4 hours of work. $500 to secure a $18K contract is a no-brainer. Overall RingCentral and the other top-10 providers are shifting their focus away from SMBs to large enterprises. There is a big hole to fill. They are losing customers as fast as they gain new ones. This is a huge opportunity for smaller operators. If you get just one 20-person office customer per week (or multiple small ones adding up to 20 users total), after 1 year you are at ~$22K MRC at standard prices. And this is the bare minimum that you will be getting with bare minimum effort... people don't realize how big the opportunity is in this double digit billion dollar market.
  - geetfun 8y ago
    Thanks for the insight.
nickreese 8y ago
This guy is speaking the truth. Margins and overhead in the VOIP space will blow your mind.
SnowingXIV 8y ago
Huh, this makes a lot of sense and the timing of this comment is interesting. I work with a small commercial office building and they want to setup VoIP instead of using their PDX machine for phones because it’s quite expensive. Looked a lot of places but the big pain is having physical phones. Most tech companies just want you to have an app on your phone but a lot people still prefer an actual phone on their desk. This is why Dialpad wouldn’t work (also expensive) but is more complex than phone.com which will send you phones preconfigured. Still trying to figure out the best route since so many of these places have poor UIs or don’t support physical phones and fax very well. I can’t imagine I’m the only one running into these problems so their is an opportunity here.
- aviv 8y ago
  When you say "most tech companies" are you referring to employers in the tech space, or specifically VoIP providers? Dialpad.com is pretty much still alone in the mobile-first, anti-Deskphone, WebRTC-preferred approach. The rest are still primarily geared towards desk phones, even RingCentral that has a very slick mobile experience. Dialpad is definitely playing the long game here and will be the clear winners 10 years from now. I predict Amazon will acquire them in the next year or two. More and more businesses are switching from on-premise telephony to cloud based hosted PBX. The addressable market is very large, latest estimates put it at 55+ million seats. That's before you consider the contact center market... just focus on getting to 500, then 2000, and so on. It's not difficult. 2000 seats bring you $50K MRC, and again if you know how to this right, especially coupled with intuitive self service UI to the end users, overhead is very very low. And the actual Telco costs are too tiny to even worry about. About 75 cents per user. I thought about starting a "how to start a VOIP business" webinar or somethint.. its amazing how many are trying to create SaaS products in obscure fringe markets where the VOIP market is pure gold.
  - SnowingXIV 8y ago
    Referring the VoIP providers that are pushing out the anti-deskphone philosophy. I would love more of a blend of phone.com/ringcentral + using the designers of Dialpad. Their interface seems a lot nicer. With the more traditional ones it's nice that you can call them and they'll ship you ready to ring phones that connect to the cloud based PBX. This is huge and needed but Dialpad does not do this. Just look at their docs, you have to specify an IP and quite a bit more configurations unlike the shipped ready phones, but I have a feeling this is because of their licensing terms. Being able to move around or take your deskphone with you home, to a coffee shop, anywhere that has an internet connection is quite useful. Again, talking about a physical deskphone that connects via wifi or ethernet. I'm aware using a cellphone with an app easily does this but often that's harder to sell to some more traditional folks. Agree that this market is gold and this would be a really fun project to piece together, though the type that I want to exist might not be doable for $10k.

by aviv 8y ago

geetfun 8y ago

Just curious, what are boutique VOIP providers?

aviv 8y ago
More of a specialty shop, not a one-size-fits-all RingCentral competitor. Targeting specific industries with use case specific solutions (ie. going after car dealerships with overhead paging, DECT wireless handsets, etc.) -- yes, they can get all this with RingCentral or 8x8 or anyone else -- but your positioning, marketing, and niche expertise is what will win the deal. Can also offer more of a white-glove service, on-site install, etc. that the big guys simply don't offer. You don't even need to have local presence - just find good folks on FieldNation that can perform the job and pay them for 3-4 hours of work. $500 to secure a $18K contract is a no-brainer. Overall RingCentral and the other top-10 providers are shifting their focus away from SMBs to large enterprises. There is a big hole to fill. They are losing customers as fast as they gain new ones. This is a huge opportunity for smaller operators. If you get just one 20-person office customer per week (or multiple small ones adding up to 20 users total), after 1 year you are at ~$22K MRC at standard prices. And this is the bare minimum that you will be getting with bare minimum effort... people don't realize how big the opportunity is in this double digit billion dollar market.
- geetfun 8y ago
  Thanks for the insight.

nickreese 8y ago

This guy is speaking the truth. Margins and overhead in the VOIP space will blow your mind.

SnowingXIV 8y ago

Huh, this makes a lot of sense and the timing of this comment is interesting. I work with a small commercial office building and they want to setup VoIP instead of using their PDX machine for phones because it’s quite expensive. Looked a lot of places but the big pain is having physical phones. Most tech companies just want you to have an app on your phone but a lot people still prefer an actual phone on their desk. This is why Dialpad wouldn’t work (also expensive) but is more complex than phone.com which will send you phones preconfigured. Still trying to figure out the best route since so many of these places have poor UIs or don’t support physical phones and fax very well. I can’t imagine I’m the only one running into these problems so their is an opportunity here.

aviv 8y ago
When you say "most tech companies" are you referring to employers in the tech space, or specifically VoIP providers? Dialpad.com is pretty much still alone in the mobile-first, anti-Deskphone, WebRTC-preferred approach. The rest are still primarily geared towards desk phones, even RingCentral that has a very slick mobile experience. Dialpad is definitely playing the long game here and will be the clear winners 10 years from now. I predict Amazon will acquire them in the next year or two. More and more businesses are switching from on-premise telephony to cloud based hosted PBX. The addressable market is very large, latest estimates put it at 55+ million seats. That's before you consider the contact center market... just focus on getting to 500, then 2000, and so on. It's not difficult. 2000 seats bring you $50K MRC, and again if you know how to this right, especially coupled with intuitive self service UI to the end users, overhead is very very low. And the actual Telco costs are too tiny to even worry about. About 75 cents per user. I thought about starting a "how to start a VOIP business" webinar or somethint.. its amazing how many are trying to create SaaS products in obscure fringe markets where the VOIP market is pure gold.
- SnowingXIV 8y ago
  Referring the VoIP providers that are pushing out the anti-deskphone philosophy. I would love more of a blend of phone.com/ringcentral + using the designers of Dialpad. Their interface seems a lot nicer. With the more traditional ones it's nice that you can call them and they'll ship you ready to ring phones that connect to the cloud based PBX. This is huge and needed but Dialpad does not do this. Just look at their docs, you have to specify an IP and quite a bit more configurations unlike the shipped ready phones, but I have a feeling this is because of their licensing terms. Being able to move around or take your deskphone with you home, to a coffee shop, anywhere that has an internet connection is quite useful. Again, talking about a physical deskphone that connects via wifi or ethernet. I'm aware using a cellphone with an app easily does this but often that's harder to sell to some more traditional folks. Agree that this market is gold and this would be a really fun project to piece together, though the type that I want to exist might not be doable for $10k.