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I presume by 'user' you mean the IT person who manages existing PBX, either 'traditional' or IP-based systems from Cisco and such? One thing you might want to t

by mjs00 15y ago

I presume by 'user' you mean the IT person who manages existing PBX, either 'traditional' or IP-based systems from Cisco and such? One thing you might want to think about is having a succinct answer to the market opportunity to frame the opportunity better with those you talk to. For example: - What is the market / opportunity for replacing existing PBXs - assuming that cost/features/benefit don't make sense to keep these vs moving to something IP based? - What is unique about what you are doing, such that it's compelling against Cisco? (assuming they are most successful IP-based telephony equipment provider) - What is unique about what you are doing, against SAAS alternatives, such as using things like RingCentral in the cloud with IP/SIP handsets. - And are you price/feature competitive against what integrators and companies internally are doing with Asterisk? Seems like with a great story against these types of questions, you could have a reasonable chat with an investor. You could consider aligning yourself with a national VAR/Integrator if you made life easier for them in terms of placing or managing systems. You could also approach someone that might want 'in' to this space. Maybe you are just upmarket from what someone like "RingCentral" does, and you would give them a solution complimentary to their own, such that they'd want to fund and distribute this. Just some ideas, hope something potentially helpful. Best of luck!

Aloha 15y ago
By User, I mean business owner, it ought to be like an apple product in so much as the default interface is easy enough to do most of the things you would want to do with your PBX, Obviously, some stuff like configuring site-site peering, and a T1 PRI would need more experience, and an advanced interface. The idea is, some of the product line, may only be sold by VAR's, like anything that cant auto-configure itself, for example. For what market slice, think smaller :-P, I'm looking at the 3-300 Seat market, which is a much larger portion of the system market, then the high end stuff Cisco is selling. I'm looking at competing with Panasonic and Toshiba, and folks who have no phone system at all - for now, I have an idea for a much much larger system, that simply moves the point of aggregation up a level - I personally would love to knock Cisco out of the game at some point, their product is junk in many ways. I've never seen a Cisco install work as expected - and I've seen somewhere north of 30 of them - in my opinion any phone system that need regular reboots is garbage. Having supported phone system as a service, its often roses, honestly, in most cases it just doesn't work, the biggest issue being call quality (Choppy Audio, one way Audio, etc), also, SIP and NAT do not play nice, so you usually need an ALG if you want more then one phone on the customer premises, which annoys the customer as its another 200+ dollar piece of gear. I think the best idea is to partner with folks like Vonage, and other IP Telephony Carriers (Looking with a big eye towards the cable carriers offering business voice service like Comcast), to provide branded hardware, so they provide the trunking to the premises, we provide the phones. The customer can manage all their stuff internally, and the telco has an inbuilt market. Thanks so much for the advice!
deleted 15y ago
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by mjs00 15y ago

Aloha 15y ago

By User, I mean business owner, it ought to be like an apple product in so much as the default interface is easy enough to do most of the things you would want to do with your PBX, Obviously, some stuff like configuring site-site peering, and a T1 PRI would need more experience, and an advanced interface. The idea is, some of the product line, may only be sold by VAR's, like anything that cant auto-configure itself, for example. For what market slice, think smaller :-P, I'm looking at the 3-300 Seat market, which is a much larger portion of the system market, then the high end stuff Cisco is selling. I'm looking at competing with Panasonic and Toshiba, and folks who have no phone system at all - for now, I have an idea for a much much larger system, that simply moves the point of aggregation up a level - I personally would love to knock Cisco out of the game at some point, their product is junk in many ways. I've never seen a Cisco install work as expected - and I've seen somewhere north of 30 of them - in my opinion any phone system that need regular reboots is garbage. Having supported phone system as a service, its often roses, honestly, in most cases it just doesn't work, the biggest issue being call quality (Choppy Audio, one way Audio, etc), also, SIP and NAT do not play nice, so you usually need an ALG if you want more then one phone on the customer premises, which annoys the customer as its another 200+ dollar piece of gear. I think the best idea is to partner with folks like Vonage, and other IP Telephony Carriers (Looking with a big eye towards the cable carriers offering business voice service like Comcast), to provide branded hardware, so they provide the trunking to the premises, we provide the phones. The customer can manage all their stuff internally, and the telco has an inbuilt market. Thanks so much for the advice!

deleted 15y ago

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