5 ms·

SwipeGood (YC W11) Is Now Elastic, A Sales-As-A-Service Platform For Startups

119 points by anemitz 14y ago

aaronbrethorst 14y ago
Error on loading the elasticsales.com homepage: GET https://ad.retargeter.com/seg?add=346584&t=2 The certificate for this server is invalid. You might be connecting to a server that is pretending to be “ad.retargeter.com” which could put your confidential information at risk.
- philfreo 14y ago
  thanks, fixed
  - michael_fine 14y ago
    I'm still getting it.
    - anemitz 14y ago
      What does this output? curl --silent https://elasticsales.com https://elasticsales.com | grep retargeter
      - bound008 14y ago
        anthony ... be nice to our visitors.... aaron, what you should really do is complain to support@retargeter.com for not supporting HTTPS.
        aaronbrethorst 14y ago
        I'm not a Retargeter user. Why would I complain?
thomas-st 14y ago
a link for the lazy: https://elasticsales.com/ https://elasticsales.com/
knemitz 14y ago
Good job, hunny bunny! Lya Mom
- andrewdumont 14y ago
  #win
dm8 14y ago
Good job guys! How did you guys get such a good domain name? Importantly, how much did you pay?
- anemitz 14y ago
  We got lucky and it was available:) Thx!
ozataman 14y ago
Chrome says the SSL cert has expired... Should probably pay attention to these things if you're going for HN first page. Edit: I meant for the SwipeGood website - not sure if you don't care about that anymore.
jhuckestein 14y ago
I'm curious about the pricing. Do you pick the companies you work with? Is pricing purely performance based? Do you take the risk for products that just don't sell? What about dynamic commission? E.g. I tell you my product costs X/month and if you manage to sell it for more you keep the difference. If you manage to sell it with a set-up fee, you get to keep that as well.
- SteliE 14y ago
  Good questions :) 1) Yes we pick the companies we work with :) 2) No. But it has a strong performance component so we only really make money when we perform 3) Not often 4) Potentially :)
  - huhtenberg 14y ago
    Oh, hai :) So what's the criteria for #1? In broad strokes.
    - anemitz 14y ago
      A great product that is already generating revenue. A market that we can address. A sales cycle that is reasonable. Ping Steli at ElasticSales dot con for more info!
      - brusch 14y ago
        I think it should be dot com - dot con sounds fishy !
seafront83 14y ago
Congratulations - sounds like a great move :)
mnemitz 14y ago
Awesome!
vaksel 14y ago
to do sales, you need to really know the product...I don't imagine an off the shelf sales guy will be all that effective. And I'd imagine cost is also an issue. With your own sales team you can just hire people to work on commission...and here you not only have to hire a sales team...but also include a healthy profit margin for Elastic.
- SteliE 14y ago
  Companies use our service for the same reason companies use Amazon's AWS (even competitors like Netflix). If sales is not your core competency you probably want to work with us :)
kurtvarner 14y ago
>The headcount growth has been purely from Elastic’s own reinvested revenues. >Elastic has started to field interest from venture capital firms looking to provide funding, Efti says, but for now the company is focusing on the business. Good for them. It's refreshing to see a company grow organically with their own reinvestment.
- ovi256 14y ago
  I'm sure there's even a name for it, and pretty soon a whole movement could develop around this amazing approach, complete with evangelists, books, e-books, courses, conferences.
kurtvarner 14y ago
>Elastic has started to field interest from venture capital firms looking to provide funding, Efti says, but for now the company is focusing on the business. Good for them. It's refreshing to see a company grow organically with their own reinvestment.
izak30 14y ago
Interesting concept, I have a couple questions: * If you couldn't hire a strong sales team, what makes the team you just hired any good? * How do you handle things like company culture? For sales-oriented businesses, the salesperson is the first contact, and the face of the business to the customer, do you try to integrate anything? are you white-label or upfront that you're outsourced sales? * What about sales engineering? Sales can be technical, how is that handled? I think that qualified lead-generation is slightly more interesting to me than getting sales. Warm leads would be fantastic.
- anemitz 14y ago
  All our sales reps are highly technical and just amazing startup hustlers. A lot of our success is also due to technology. Ping Steli at ElasticSales dot com and he'll give you the details.
jmvoodoo 14y ago
I'm in the enterprise software business and there are already a lot of available options for enterprise resellers. The typical reason they fail is essentially dilution (lack of product knowledge or lack of incentive to sell your product vs another). It will be interesting to see how (or if) they manage to solve that. Does anyone from the company want to chime in (to a potential customer if you have a good answer?)
- SteliE 14y ago
  Sure :) We're not resellers. You can use dedicated sales resources on Elastic that exclusively sell your product and we have a track record at succeeding at this. Ping me at steli at elasticsales.com and we can chat more!
thetrumanshow 14y ago
Hi Elastic, welcome to the sales business. We're working on a sales process standardization system, which we assume will be a component of your business going forward, so it will be interesting to track your progress. We probably won't be getting anywhere near the sales-team-as-a-service area. Best of luck! Edit: removed a baseless assumption.
holdenc 14y ago
I'm working on something similar, but for customers. It's called customers-as-a-service. Basically, it provides on-demand paying customers for products that have none. It's quite simple and only charges a 10% premium on your base price.
- anemitz 14y ago
  Love it! Lol ;)
MJR 14y ago
Their website has a giant "Learn More" button that links to a contact form? Really? The "What We Do" page has three bullet points about how it works, but they really need to add more details on the actual service. There's more content on the "Work Here" page then the rest of the site combined.
- SteliE 14y ago
  That's a fair point. To be honest right now we have more demand than we can handle so we haven't really optimized the website for that. It's more of a recruiting tool for hires :) Definitely plan to improve on it though!
tezza 14y ago
A few questions: * Conflicts of interest: how do I know my Product X is given fair treatment if you have another client with a similar Product X'. Say they have a higher price and your cut would be larger if you sell theirs, not mine. * if you collapse, I stop using your service or leave for another sales team, do I get to keep the contacts? * what measures do you have in place to prevent staff selling my contacts to my competitors or leaving with the client list?
- SteliE 14y ago
  Right now we solve conflict of interests by not working with competitive customers in the exact same space. There are long term solutions for this. Regarding contacts - yes you keep all of them :) We use contracts and processes that make it tough for our sales reps to steal any of your data. But beyond security we pay a lot of attention on who we hire in the first place :)
leftih 14y ago
Good Luck! Waiting to see more of this... Cheers from Germany.
garzuaga 14y ago
The concept is interesting, no doubt about it. More and more activities are outsourced (your hosting, your WP site, your customer service, your landing page optimization, etc, etc). When it comes to selling, mostly B2B as they mention, I believe there are long funnels in order to get new customers to pay the bills. Let's see how the concept evolves. Good luck!

119 points by anemitz 14y ago

Error on loading the elasticsales.com homepage: GET https://ad.retargeter.com/seg?add=346584&t=2 The certificate for this server is invalid. You might be connecting to a server that is pretending to be “ad.retargeter.com” which could put your confidential information at risk.

philfreo 14y ago
thanks, fixed
- michael_fine 14y ago
  I'm still getting it.
  - anemitz 14y ago
    What does this output? curl --silent https://elasticsales.com https://elasticsales.com | grep retargeter
    - bound008 14y ago
      anthony ... be nice to our visitors.... aaron, what you should really do is complain to support@retargeter.com for not supporting HTTPS.
      - aaronbrethorst 14y ago
        I'm not a Retargeter user. Why would I complain?

thomas-st 14y ago

a link for the lazy: https://elasticsales.com/ https://elasticsales.com/

knemitz 14y ago

Good job, hunny bunny! Lya Mom

andrewdumont 14y ago
#win

dm8 14y ago

Good job guys! How did you guys get such a good domain name? Importantly, how much did you pay?

anemitz 14y ago
We got lucky and it was available:) Thx!

ozataman 14y ago

Chrome says the SSL cert has expired... Should probably pay attention to these things if you're going for HN first page. Edit: I meant for the SwipeGood website - not sure if you don't care about that anymore.

jhuckestein 14y ago

I'm curious about the pricing. Do you pick the companies you work with? Is pricing purely performance based? Do you take the risk for products that just don't sell? What about dynamic commission? E.g. I tell you my product costs X/month and if you manage to sell it for more you keep the difference. If you manage to sell it with a set-up fee, you get to keep that as well.

SteliE 14y ago
Good questions :) 1) Yes we pick the companies we work with :) 2) No. But it has a strong performance component so we only really make money when we perform 3) Not often 4) Potentially :)
- huhtenberg 14y ago
  Oh, hai :) So what's the criteria for #1? In broad strokes.
  - anemitz 14y ago
    A great product that is already generating revenue. A market that we can address. A sales cycle that is reasonable. Ping Steli at ElasticSales dot con for more info!
    - brusch 14y ago
      I think it should be dot com - dot con sounds fishy !

seafront83 14y ago

Congratulations - sounds like a great move :)

mnemitz 14y ago

Awesome!

vaksel 14y ago

to do sales, you need to really know the product...I don't imagine an off the shelf sales guy will be all that effective. And I'd imagine cost is also an issue. With your own sales team you can just hire people to work on commission...and here you not only have to hire a sales team...but also include a healthy profit margin for Elastic.

SteliE 14y ago
Companies use our service for the same reason companies use Amazon's AWS (even competitors like Netflix). If sales is not your core competency you probably want to work with us :)

kurtvarner 14y ago

>The headcount growth has been purely from Elastic’s own reinvested revenues. >Elastic has started to field interest from venture capital firms looking to provide funding, Efti says, but for now the company is focusing on the business. Good for them. It's refreshing to see a company grow organically with their own reinvestment.

ovi256 14y ago
I'm sure there's even a name for it, and pretty soon a whole movement could develop around this amazing approach, complete with evangelists, books, e-books, courses, conferences.

kurtvarner 14y ago

>Elastic has started to field interest from venture capital firms looking to provide funding, Efti says, but for now the company is focusing on the business. Good for them. It's refreshing to see a company grow organically with their own reinvestment.

izak30 14y ago

Interesting concept, I have a couple questions: * If you couldn't hire a strong sales team, what makes the team you just hired any good? * How do you handle things like company culture? For sales-oriented businesses, the salesperson is the first contact, and the face of the business to the customer, do you try to integrate anything? are you white-label or upfront that you're outsourced sales? * What about sales engineering? Sales can be technical, how is that handled? I think that qualified lead-generation is slightly more interesting to me than getting sales. Warm leads would be fantastic.

anemitz 14y ago
All our sales reps are highly technical and just amazing startup hustlers. A lot of our success is also due to technology. Ping Steli at ElasticSales dot com and he'll give you the details.

jmvoodoo 14y ago

I'm in the enterprise software business and there are already a lot of available options for enterprise resellers. The typical reason they fail is essentially dilution (lack of product knowledge or lack of incentive to sell your product vs another). It will be interesting to see how (or if) they manage to solve that. Does anyone from the company want to chime in (to a potential customer if you have a good answer?)

SteliE 14y ago
Sure :) We're not resellers. You can use dedicated sales resources on Elastic that exclusively sell your product and we have a track record at succeeding at this. Ping me at steli at elasticsales.com and we can chat more!

thetrumanshow 14y ago

Hi Elastic, welcome to the sales business. We're working on a sales process standardization system, which we assume will be a component of your business going forward, so it will be interesting to track your progress. We probably won't be getting anywhere near the sales-team-as-a-service area. Best of luck! Edit: removed a baseless assumption.

holdenc 14y ago

I'm working on something similar, but for customers. It's called customers-as-a-service. Basically, it provides on-demand paying customers for products that have none. It's quite simple and only charges a 10% premium on your base price.

anemitz 14y ago
Love it! Lol ;)

MJR 14y ago

Their website has a giant "Learn More" button that links to a contact form? Really? The "What We Do" page has three bullet points about how it works, but they really need to add more details on the actual service. There's more content on the "Work Here" page then the rest of the site combined.

SteliE 14y ago
That's a fair point. To be honest right now we have more demand than we can handle so we haven't really optimized the website for that. It's more of a recruiting tool for hires :) Definitely plan to improve on it though!

tezza 14y ago

A few questions: * Conflicts of interest: how do I know my Product X is given fair treatment if you have another client with a similar Product X'. Say they have a higher price and your cut would be larger if you sell theirs, not mine. * if you collapse, I stop using your service or leave for another sales team, do I get to keep the contacts? * what measures do you have in place to prevent staff selling my contacts to my competitors or leaving with the client list?

SteliE 14y ago
Right now we solve conflict of interests by not working with competitive customers in the exact same space. There are long term solutions for this. Regarding contacts - yes you keep all of them :) We use contracts and processes that make it tough for our sales reps to steal any of your data. But beyond security we pay a lot of attention on who we hire in the first place :)

leftih 14y ago

Good Luck! Waiting to see more of this... Cheers from Germany.

garzuaga 14y ago

The concept is interesting, no doubt about it. More and more activities are outsourced (your hosting, your WP site, your customer service, your landing page optimization, etc, etc). When it comes to selling, mostly B2B as they mention, I believe there are long funnels in order to get new customers to pay the bills. Let's see how the concept evolves. Good luck!