arjunvpaul

Awesome! HaaS is a thing. You just made it one.

Regarding the business model: You ever thought of a Franchise model? Perhaps train a few folks (perhaps folks who were incorrectly greasing before) who can then take contracts for the large job sites?

I have seen this practice with diamond coring machines of companies like Hilti in markets like Dubai (building contractors don't need the machine , they just need the holes they cut and they don't need it everyday) where folks but the coring machines and then charge per hole (per Zerk in your case) and Hilti provides training to them.

Regarding the segment: If incorrect greasing leads to machinery failure, then perhaps look at operations where machine failure can be mission critical. Sites like Baffin Island, where large contractors' maintenance plan is "buy 10 of each machine" If one breaks down, they just park it and put the next one into service. OR Offshore Platforms where downtime can mean several millions down the pipe. Example projects offshore in Guyana where replacements are not available onshore too.

Can share what we do at our startup. (8 people, 100 - 200 customers). We create a WhatsApp group for every customer and stay with them right from onboarding onwards.

Beauty of it is they sneeze, we know. Everyone in the team kinda knows what's important what's not. we can confidently say things like "nobody cares about that fancy feature". It super valuable for a startup to get immedeate feedback. Especially valuable has been knowing - the first things the notice when they start using: where is sort? how do i add team members? do i have to prepay? - feature requests: it's painful to keep closing windows, need the ability to adjust windows, I also want to do this other thing you guys havent thought of. - Bugs: why am i seeing double messages.

Disadvantages are that some customers expect immedeate answers, unrealistic expectations. and its cringey to lay down the rules and set expectations every time. no matter how many times you do it.

Our take is its 80% good and 20% bad. As we grow the company, the idea is to keep doing this for a "representative sample of customers" . Customer feedback is gold. If you can setup some kind of process like this, its great.

In those United States, you would be right to think so. Yes, there are other chat apps. A flood? No. A (cess)pool, maybe.

Outside of WhatsApp (2 Billion Monthly Active Users), Messenger (1.4 Billion MAU) and WeChat (1.2 Billion MAU) the others stand little chance of building and benefiting from being a platform.

Setting aside WeChat and China, if you now look at the next billion users who are going to be using the internet for the first time, WhatsApp is the lens through which they see the internet - they communicate, consume news and entertainment, buy and sell things, get medical advice, even fall in love via WhatsApp.

In India, where a significant portion of that #nextbillion are gonna come from, Messenger has ~100M users and WhatsApp has ~500M MAU. Similar multiples play out in "WhatsApp first" markets like Latin America, most parts of Asia.

Case in Point: Even though it had nothing to do with our business, we recently helped hack together a solution to conduct two, 20-question, exams for 100K students in an Indian State. Simply because every family had WhatsApp (and nothing else). Messenger simply doesn't have the reach in the emerging world.

:-) Interesting to read many describe that feeling you get when you read Chekhov. A Russian friend once told me it is тоска (toska) - an unbearable, inescapable anguish - "Really you have to be Russian to understand it. toska is rent for being Russian. More Vodka?"

I see that you have a WhatsApp button on your site. What do you use that for?

May not be issue you need to solve right now.

Your's is not "a project that gives context to news through history" @$1.00 per month. If the market wants it, it should work at $1(+$0.30 +2.9%)per month also.

So just charge $1.49 per month and move on. Once you have a 1000 users, you can think about optimizing things.

Not sure where the icons are showing up. I had removed all such links. (forgot to mention its a 3 person team. me, cto and an entry level coder)

>Maybe you can flesh out that scenario on the website to explain the process to a prospect. Putting a video out there so you don't have to do the operation with each client (one video that shows how the product can solve the problem).

Maybe its an Indian thing but folks dont seem to read anything. They prefer to call me directly and then see a demo. I also like the call first, because I can quickly decide who will convert and who will not.

> What's the need for signing the word file? Why do they need to sign it? Thats the contract. If there's no ink on paper we dont setup dedicated accounts. Most of the work is manual for setting up accounts, linking numbers, setting up template messages etc. So unless its a customer who is ready to commit for a year, the coders dont even hear about them.

> Can I as a prospect directly click on an icon on your website or scan a QR Code and start a WhatsApp/FB messenger with you? Not self serve right now. Once you sign a contract, you get a demo account (still shared with other clients). you get an email with access information so that you can start playing with a shared demo account and also play with the API, while we setup the accounts.

Thanks for the pointers on the shortcomings of the website. Have added them to my long list of to-do improvements to the website.

> How would you take me from now to paying customer? How do I give you money?

- Customers start an an incoming lead from linkedin ads or facebook ads. - Then a phone call letting them talk and me asking a lot of questions about the problems they face using WhatsApp for business today. - Then I show them a screen share demo and touch on their problems and how the product solves it. - Followed by a signing an order form (word file) - We then setup their accounts and send a precomposed email with links to the API, API key and access details to the web app. - Also start a whatsapp group so they can ask and get immideate help in integration. - Billing starts 7 days after API key receipt. All fees paid upfront and all usage through upfront purchase of credits. We have setup stripe in the billing section of the web app.

Thank you for the pointers. Good point about "Zoko not using Zoko" :-) Will change that before teh end of the month.

>Where is that from? I found a Medium post with dubious "stats". Maybe include testimonials in text and video?

The stat is from a widely quoted Forrester study.

Interestingly the website was built in a day using a free service called WIX. We dont have much difficulty convincing clients. Our paying clients may have actually seen our website in passing. Most of the selling is by getting clients via facebok and linkedin ads and demos scheduled via Skype/hangouts/anydesk/zoom etc.

Probably had 4 people reach out to us by the website in 4 months. its been kind of ignored till now.