4 ms·

This is actually an amazingly perfect example of the old B2B sales mantra "the buyer is not the user". I might steal it! How long have you been selling your so

by gomox 4y ago

This is actually an amazingly perfect example of the old B2B sales mantra "the buyer is not the user". I might steal it! How long have you been selling your software? If it's new-ish this honest question from the prospect can be life changing for your product positioning and marketing strategy.

gnicholas 4y ago
Good point! We've been selling for several years, but legal isn't our only/primary market. We've made much more headway in the higher education market, since students have to read so much on screen (and don't have these perverse incentives related to billable hours!). But we actually run into the same buyer/not user problem on the licensing side of our business. Textbook publishers don't really care about the student's user experience, for example. This is because the textbooks are assigned by the professor, so students don't have a choice about which textbook to purchase. Fortunately, we're finally going to launch an integration with a digital textbook platform. Not surprisingly it's a reseller platform, not a publisher. Unlike publishers, their product differentiation is more about the UI, so they're looking to provide additional value by adding our reading enhancement tech. [1] 1: https://www.beelinereader.com https://www.beelinereader.com
- gomox 4y ago
  So I was checking out your website and thought the product is actually deceivingly simple, but I couldn't find any mentions of actual reading speed improvements, other than the invitation to "take the challenge". What kind of speed improvement can I typically expect? Edit: I found the "research summary" link in the education page, but it doesn't appear to work in Chrome with uBlock for me. The actual "conventional" link in the FAQ does work. It might be because the former is not an <a href> but something else.
  - gnicholas 4y ago
    > What kind of speed improvement can I typically expect? For a typical skilled reader, up to about 25-30%. For people with reading challenges (dyslexia, ADHD, vision impairments), it could be much greater. One fellow with ADHD (and two PhDs) said that he could read about 3x the speed with BeeLine versus regular text. To get a sense of what the speed difference could be for you, check out our "Reading Challenge". [1] It's not super scientific (you might have more knowledge of one of the topics already, which would bias your results), but it can give you a ballpark figure. Thanks for pointing out the issue with the research summary link. I'll get that fixed ASAP! There's actually newer research that shows even larger gains for students with reading challenges, as well as data from companies (including a YC company) who saw dramatically lower churn rates and/or higher engagement for users reading with BeeLine in their apps. 1: https://www.beelinereader.com/challenge https://www.beelinereader.com/challenge
    - gomox 4y ago
      I mean I'm hardly an expert on your business but it seems to me like you might want to put that front and center at the very top of your website. "Read 30 to 300% faster with Beeline." Cool stuff!
    - mjreacher 4y ago
      Has there been much scientific research into how much improvement you can get through beeline or other similar tools like bionic reading?
      - gnicholas 4y ago
        There have been several educational studies about BeeLine, and they've shown various benefits for reading fluency (which is measured as correct WPM) and reading comprehension. These were done with kids as young as six, but mostly older. There was also a study done in an optometric office with patients, who saw improvements in visual tracking, not surprisingly. Various of our partners have also tracked to see how user behavior differs between people reading with BeeLine and people reading traditional black text. These have shown increases in article completion rates, average scroll depth, pages per session, and app usage. All of these studies were done independently and were not compensated. I don't know about bionic — they're pretty new, so I imagine they don't have a ton of research at this time.
    - stavros_ 4y ago
      Cool software. I have ADHD and it definitely made reading more comfortable (only 21% faster, but I read a LOT so that's not too surprising.) Hope it succeeds enough with commercial partners (especially ereaders!) that you can offer the browser extension for free on Chrome someday.
      - gnicholas 4y ago
        > Hope it succeeds enough with commercial partners (especially ereaders!) that you can offer the browser extension for free on Chrome someday. This is 100% our plan. As our B2B revenue goes up, we will reduce our B2C pricing, hopefully to $0. We've already released one tool for free, our iOS extension for Safari. [1] 1: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/beeline-extension/id1571623734 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/beeline-extension/id1571623734

by gomox 4y ago

gnicholas 4y ago

Good point! We've been selling for several years, but legal isn't our only/primary market. We've made much more headway in the higher education market, since students have to read so much on screen (and don't have these perverse incentives related to billable hours!). But we actually run into the same buyer/not user problem on the licensing side of our business. Textbook publishers don't really care about the student's user experience, for example. This is because the textbooks are assigned by the professor, so students don't have a choice about which textbook to purchase. Fortunately, we're finally going to launch an integration with a digital textbook platform. Not surprisingly it's a reseller platform, not a publisher. Unlike publishers, their product differentiation is more about the UI, so they're looking to provide additional value by adding our reading enhancement tech. [1] 1: https://www.beelinereader.com https://www.beelinereader.com

gomox 4y ago
So I was checking out your website and thought the product is actually deceivingly simple, but I couldn't find any mentions of actual reading speed improvements, other than the invitation to "take the challenge". What kind of speed improvement can I typically expect? Edit: I found the "research summary" link in the education page, but it doesn't appear to work in Chrome with uBlock for me. The actual "conventional" link in the FAQ does work. It might be because the former is not an <a href> but something else.
- gnicholas 4y ago
  > What kind of speed improvement can I typically expect? For a typical skilled reader, up to about 25-30%. For people with reading challenges (dyslexia, ADHD, vision impairments), it could be much greater. One fellow with ADHD (and two PhDs) said that he could read about 3x the speed with BeeLine versus regular text. To get a sense of what the speed difference could be for you, check out our "Reading Challenge". [1] It's not super scientific (you might have more knowledge of one of the topics already, which would bias your results), but it can give you a ballpark figure. Thanks for pointing out the issue with the research summary link. I'll get that fixed ASAP! There's actually newer research that shows even larger gains for students with reading challenges, as well as data from companies (including a YC company) who saw dramatically lower churn rates and/or higher engagement for users reading with BeeLine in their apps. 1: https://www.beelinereader.com/challenge https://www.beelinereader.com/challenge
  - gomox 4y ago
    I mean I'm hardly an expert on your business but it seems to me like you might want to put that front and center at the very top of your website. "Read 30 to 300% faster with Beeline." Cool stuff!
  - mjreacher 4y ago
    Has there been much scientific research into how much improvement you can get through beeline or other similar tools like bionic reading?
    - gnicholas 4y ago
      There have been several educational studies about BeeLine, and they've shown various benefits for reading fluency (which is measured as correct WPM) and reading comprehension. These were done with kids as young as six, but mostly older. There was also a study done in an optometric office with patients, who saw improvements in visual tracking, not surprisingly. Various of our partners have also tracked to see how user behavior differs between people reading with BeeLine and people reading traditional black text. These have shown increases in article completion rates, average scroll depth, pages per session, and app usage. All of these studies were done independently and were not compensated. I don't know about bionic — they're pretty new, so I imagine they don't have a ton of research at this time.
  - stavros_ 4y ago
    Cool software. I have ADHD and it definitely made reading more comfortable (only 21% faster, but I read a LOT so that's not too surprising.) Hope it succeeds enough with commercial partners (especially ereaders!) that you can offer the browser extension for free on Chrome someday.
    - gnicholas 4y ago
      > Hope it succeeds enough with commercial partners (especially ereaders!) that you can offer the browser extension for free on Chrome someday. This is 100% our plan. As our B2B revenue goes up, we will reduce our B2C pricing, hopefully to $0. We've already released one tool for free, our iOS extension for Safari. [1] 1: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/beeline-extension/id1571623734 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/beeline-extension/id1571623734