4 ms·

A lot of the advice I have seen though is too take a niche industry and own it, then generalize. Its much easier to grab traction when you really know you exac

A lot of the advice I have seen though is too take a niche industry and own it, then generalize. Its much easier to grab traction when you really know you exact sales targets.

notahacker 12y ago
The ironic thing about the niche in question is that it's arguably one that can be tackled quite happily without VC money (tech-savvy, relatively easy-to-reach B2B market, decent margin on an individual sale, small total market size but acquirer-friendly and can organically grow into other areas of finance intel driven by customer development). Raising $11.5M in total commits them to generalising though, and there's no shortage of competent competition in the market-data aggregation space.
- larrys 12y ago
  "The ironic thing about the niche in question is that it's arguably one that can be tackled quite happily without VC money" At what scale and how long would that take? The VC/angel money allows you to move faster, take more chances and perhaps hire better and faster. And lose money. Important point. Look at their pricing: http://mattermark.com/#pricing http://mattermark.com/#pricing Then this: "Today, Morrill’s curiosity and her 27-person team’s" Imagine the payroll for those 27 people and how many subscriptions they have to sell with what is (for now) a niche product. What are the figures on fully loaded labor costs for a 27 person team?
  - dchuk 12y ago
    > What are the figures on fully loaded labor costs for a 27 person team? Probably somewhere around $2mn - $4mn/year. That's a pretty big team for the amount of money raised to this point, they must be doing ok subscription-wise.
  - dmritard96 12y ago
    Somewhere (maybe the linked article) that it was 500 subscriptions for $400 a month meaning a little of 2M in annual revenue. 27 mouths to feed is a lot with that revenue.

4 ms·

A lot of the advice I have seen though is too take a niche industry and own it, then generalize. Its much easier to grab traction when you really know you exac

by dmritard96 12y ago

A lot of the advice I have seen though is too take a niche industry and own it, then generalize. Its much easier to grab traction when you really know you exact sales targets.

notahacker 12y ago
The ironic thing about the niche in question is that it's arguably one that can be tackled quite happily without VC money (tech-savvy, relatively easy-to-reach B2B market, decent margin on an individual sale, small total market size but acquirer-friendly and can organically grow into other areas of finance intel driven by customer development). Raising $11.5M in total commits them to generalising though, and there's no shortage of competent competition in the market-data aggregation space.
- larrys 12y ago
  "The ironic thing about the niche in question is that it's arguably one that can be tackled quite happily without VC money" At what scale and how long would that take? The VC/angel money allows you to move faster, take more chances and perhaps hire better and faster. And lose money. Important point. Look at their pricing: http://mattermark.com/#pricing http://mattermark.com/#pricing Then this: "Today, Morrill’s curiosity and her 27-person team’s" Imagine the payroll for those 27 people and how many subscriptions they have to sell with what is (for now) a niche product. What are the figures on fully loaded labor costs for a 27 person team?
  - dchuk 12y ago
    > What are the figures on fully loaded labor costs for a 27 person team? Probably somewhere around $2mn - $4mn/year. That's a pretty big team for the amount of money raised to this point, they must be doing ok subscription-wise.
  - dmritard96 12y ago
    Somewhere (maybe the linked article) that it was 500 subscriptions for $400 a month meaning a little of 2M in annual revenue. 27 mouths to feed is a lot with that revenue.