adrianstylez:
Dude you are getting this all wrong. A Web based business should focus on Awareness. Traffic. Conversion. Metrics. Revenue. Rinse and Repeat. There is so much more to that simple funnel i just outlined.

The first place you are getting (or got) it wrong was discarding the power of getting consumers from nairaland here. I mean your topic hit FP but you didn't take advantage of it. Do you know how many CEOs and Investors go through nairaland? You might even easily have got an investor online. I don't want to believe you are ashamed of the criticisms you'd get if you told nairalanders about the name of your start-up. Though tha seems to be the only logical reason playing in my head as to your being coy in coming out open.

The second place you are getting it wrong is "It is a web-based business" It should be treated as one. Focus more on the web aspect first. Don't throw hard earned cash away. Get the customers before thinking of an office space or employees. Test the waters. See the prospects then move physical.

Honestly, I couldn't read through all your posts because i lost interest as i thought you probably focused more on your eing articulate on the thread rather than taking advantages of the opportunities around.

Anyway though. Kudos. At least you have inspired a lot of people to get their own start ups.

The hustle is offline bro! Ask any successful Nigerian tech entrepreneur, they'll tell you. I said this earlier and i'll say it again. The garage to riches story is for silicon valley not Nigeria where we don't trust each other. Want to operate in most verticals in Nigeria? Get a space first to put your head. Case in point, today i had a chat with a prospect and first thing she asked, 'I hope you're not a faceless online thing'

To go for web awareness alone is not particularly efficient because only a small minority of Nigerians have bought software online. Nigeria is simply not a 'web' country yet. Thank God for e-commerce that's forcing people to purchase online otherwise, no hope. Even then look at all their expense on offline promotion.

Having said that, i have however been able to get a good number of users from online sources that are more appropriate. My customers simply do not make decisions based on Nairaland threads. You know how i know? I went out and spoke to them physically. Also I wasn't looking for investment and i wouldn't trust an investor that prospected for startups on Nairaland anyway, but that's just me.

This is just a story of my journey and what i'm learning, it may appeal to some, it may not appeal to some, i'm ok with that.

My attention has been called back to the thread thanks to some critical mentions. I welcome the criticism, it's all good. I don't pretend to know it all. About being coy; i like the freedom the relative anonymity Nairaland gives. I'm usually a very 'PC' guy for several reasons so having the option of not having to be too 'PC' when i want to is nice.

Update

So latest update is that our pivot has been fully activated. We are solely B2B SaaS focused entirely on one type of customer

I'm building and optimizing a sales funnel to support it. I've attached it below.


Lead generation is done online using social media and search engine marketing. Also doing some content marketing and starting to harvest emails again for email marketing. Doing some good old cold calling, cold emailing and direct selling. Terrifying stuff! I rely on the free Hubspot CRM and Sidekick for tracking emails. Good resources i've found for this kind of stuff is the 'close.io' blog and the 'pipetop' blog. Also the book 'predictable revenue' by the guy who built 'Salesforce's' sales force. Also 'saastr' has good resources

We qualify them and then progress them along the funnel as indicated. It takes a lot of energy and a lot of follow up but it's starting to pay off as we've increased our trials by over 1000% in the last month. Easy to do initially of course but impossible to maintain. We will likely even out at around 10% growth rate. I'll share more metrics and conversion ratios over time.

tooltip:
hey bro!,I have been following your thread since inception do you have some time to talk?

Sure man, whatsapp me

1k001:


I have doubts about email marketing in Nigeria and that's because we haven't made the move to e-mail as a general means of communication for the majority. I track all my emails (using Sidekick) and campaigns (using mailchimp). Consistently have poor open rates not to mention clickthroughs (Even for current customers). In any case, i'm starting to harvest emails again to restart email marketing so maybe my opinion will change.

You better believe in email marketing. It still remain one of the best way to increase sales. Jumia, Konga, dealdey etc, use email marketing through their newsletter subscription form. Though how you use it will determine your success or failure.

1k001:
I've recently founded a tech start-up and it's been quite a whirlwind.

I've had to try figure out so many things on my own so thought it would be useful to relate some of the things i experience to help me reflect and perhaps help others who may be looking at something similar.

Feel free to jump in and comment or ask questions

Chk diz link out guys,am sure u cn make cool cash wif it http://PayRefe.com/?ref=66785

Thanks Bro!, I'll send you a message soonest!

1k001:


Sure man, whatsapp me ASAP Zero Eight one seven nine zero four five double four two *will delete this in a couple of hours so make sure you store it

1k001:


I have doubts about email marketing in Nigeria and that's because we haven't made the move to e-mail as a general means of communication for the majority. I track all my emails (using Sidekick) and campaigns (using mailchimp). Consistently have poor open rates not to mention clickthroughs (Even for current customers). In any case, i'm starting to harvest emails again to restart email marketing so maybe my opinion will change.

.

Get a sound course online on email marketing techniques. Forget about Mail chimp. Use get response or aweber. Don't 'harvest' emails. Ethically collect emails from people who really are interested in your stuff. Do all these and see the magic of email marketing.

Didn't realize that 'harvest' implied unethical collection. Methinks Email marketing is a 'long game', i'm interested in the 'short game' for now. So i collect phone numbers rather than emails and call the person. No way to hide this way

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Update

An update is in order i guess. Things been going well with the startup. Hired 2 young ladies to work in sales. Gotten quite a lot of interest as a result, that's now translating to revenue. The problem that's now surfacing is collecting on payments after trial periods have ended. This has influenced a change in our pricing and sales strategy. We've done away with a free trial and now take 6 months or annual payments. Will see how it will go. Also in this time with new staff, i've learnt a good bit about human resources management i'll be sharing in the near future.

Shout out to those who've read it all and are still following my story. I'll be revealing more and more specifics soon as we may be looking to do things a bit differently.

Stay tuned!

Do the sales people have a fixed salary or it's commission based or both? Thinking of implementing that but not sure of the best way

1k001:
Update

An update is in order i guess. Things been going well with the startup. Hired 2 young ladies to work in sales. Gotten quite a lot of interest as a result, that's now translating to revenue. The problem that's now surfacing is collecting on payments after trial periods have ended. This has influenced a change in our pricing and sales strategy. We've done away with a free trial and now take 6 months or annual payments. Will see how it will go. Also in this time with new staff, i've learnt a good bit about human resources management i'll be sharing in the near future.

Shout out to those who've read it all and are still following my story. I'll be revealing more and more specifics soon as we may be looking to do things a bit differently.

Stay tuned!

bigx:
Do the sales people have a fixed salary or it's commission based or both? Thinking of implementing that but not sure of the best way

I've read a bit about this and the consensus seems to be that there should be a base salary that is reasonable then a commission on top of that related to how many sales they bring in. This method seems to satisfy and motivate most people. Display results publicly around the office, means you start a healthy competition that ultimately benefits the business. Emphasis on healthy competition.

Furthermore, most people say to consider applying a performance based remuneration model across the board, such that even your cleaner gets something extra if he/she achieves a certain target that translates to a better outcome for the business as a whole.

Food for thought.

Where we're at now

The roller-coaster journey continues as the year drags to a close. I lost a new and promising staff to a bank, replaced with a great guy i found here on nairaland. Happy to say on the whole that the whole experience has been a great one. The learning has been immense and the experience unrivaled.

We will be able to close the year with an ARR in the region of thousands of $$. We're finally seeing some great response in our pipeline and 2016 looks promising. We'll be looking to raise a seed round to fan the flames of our growth and grow out our team to deliver a better product and service.

If anyone is thinking of being an entrepreneur in 2016 consider this quote from Elon Musk (one of the greatest entrepreneurs of our time) - “Being an entrepreneur is like eating glass and staring into the abyss of death". I testify to the reality of this quote.

^^^ So what's your point?? Don't you want others to close their year (2016) "with ARRs running into thousands of $$"

1k001:
Where we're at now

The roller-coaster journey continues as the year drags to a close. I lost a new and promising staff to a bank, replaced with a great guy i found here on nairaland. Happy to say on the whole that the whole experience has been a great one. The learning has been immense and the experience unrivaled.

We will be able to close the year with an ARR in the region of thousands of $$. We're finally seeing some great response in our pipeline and 2016 looks promising. We'll be looking to raise a seed round to fan the flames of our growth and grow out our team to deliver a better product and service.

If anyone is thinking of being an entrepreneur in 2016 consider this quote from Elon Musk (one of the greatest entrepreneurs of our time) - “Being an entrepreneur is like eating glass and staring into the abyss of death". I testify to the reality of this quote.

pls I have a question and I believe your input will be very helpful. you mentioned something about the fact that nigeria is not a 'web' country which I strongly believe is TRUE, please what do you see to this startup a health quora something like quora/healthtap for nigerians, I just want to make it open-ended so that you can exhaust all you have on being that you have being treading the uncharted waters.
I have already started, though but the 'nigerian factor' is a strong factor to reckon with.

Your startup is abujahealthpages.com?

1k001:
Where we're at now

The roller-coaster journey continues as the year drags to a close. I lost a new and promising staff to a bank, replaced with a great guy i found here on nairaland. Happy to say on the whole that the whole experience has been a great one. The learning has been immense and the experience unrivaled.

We will be able to close the year with an ARR in the region of thousands of $$. We're finally seeing some great response in our pipeline and 2016 looks promising. We'll be looking to raise a seed round to fan the flames of our growth and grow out our team to deliver a better product and service.

If anyone is thinking of being an entrepreneur in 2016 consider this quote from Elon Musk (one of the greatest entrepreneurs of our time) - “Being an entrepreneur is like eating glass and staring into the abyss of death". I testify to the reality of this quote.

Nmeri17:
^^^ So what's your point?? Don't you want others to close their year (2016) "with ARRs running into thousands of $$"

Well that's not the full story as the cost to get there is 10's of thousands of $$ and consistent daily toiling.

Danyl:

pls I have a question and I believe your input will be very helpful. you mentioned something about the fact that nigeria is not a 'web' country which I strongly believe is TRUE, please what do you see to this startup a health quora something like quora/healthtap for nigerians, I just want to make it open-ended so that you can exhaust all you have on being that you have being treading the uncharted waters.
I have already started, though but the 'nigerian factor' is a strong factor to reckon with.

There are already the guys at 'kangpe' doing something along those lines. A specific health quora may actually do well as many people ask health questions here on nairaland, on facebook and other sites too. The key is in finding that specific health niche you can really tap in to that will adopt early and help grow it for you. The initial traction is the hard part, i would say to do a lot of ground work and research. Trial and error may be involved so don't be afraid of failing initially. Also the money part will be difficult so try and figure this out as early as possible.

1k001:


There are already the guys at 'kangpe' doing something along those lines. A specific health quora may actually do well as many people ask health questions here on nairaland, on facebook and other sites too. The key is in finding that specific health niche you can really tap in to that will adopt early and help grow it for you. The initial traction is the hard part, i would say to do a lot of ground work and research. Trial and error may be involved so don't be afraid of failing initially. Also the money part will be difficult so try and figure this out as early as possible.

Thank you very much for this input. I guess you had a start up thread you started sometimes last year. if I may ask (I believe in people's perspective without losing sight of my goals) do you have any specific niche in mind regarding an health quora? in fact every time I come across such threads on nl here, my mind skip a beat. I am running a test implementation of the startup on my http://healthquorum.com website. Please help me look into that question I will be expecting your feedback.
Thanks.

Niche - fertility, pregnancy, childbirth, gynecology issues. That is where you will find early adopters. Focus on it and then try to grow from there

1k001:
Niche - fertility, pregnancy, childbirth, gynecology issues. That is where you will find early adopters. Focus on it and then try to grow from there

Bro,great thread,this seems like a book already
Can i have some of books you reading especially in the area of.product developement,networking and funding

Lastly what are the toughest.challenges you faced as a non coder on this project

How were you able to.convince your clients since you dont have much.of the technical knowlege,do you always introduce a colleague anytime you get to the technical areas,how have you been handling coding errors

What language you using for,this platform,i can bet my ass your project is in finance

How did you handle certification issues

Well, I'm not scared to start my tech coy.

Kudos to you OP

What's the latest for the year?

Update

A quick update for the year.

It's been most eventful so far. We've added on more customers and are continuing to refine our offering.

We've worked hard to get acceptance in the business community we serve and it's starting to pay dividends. I'm getting invitations to write articles and contribute to discourse on certain issues within the community. We're also connecting them to other solutions to make their lives better. This thought leadership is an important aspect of growing the brand and the user base.

While our sales process continues to be outbound led. We are starting to see more inbound leads. Thanks to our though leadership and the satisfaction we're starting to gain from our users. Our hope is we can transition to a larger percentage of leads from inbound rather than outbound.

To further the above and also to diversify our product. We are bringing more local development talent into our software so we just hired a new Nigerian dev. Brings our staff count to 3.5. We can't quite afford it but hey, gotta step forward in faith!

On the finance level, we are still months away from breaking even but an ever decreasing runway. We were however lucky enough to be involved in a pitching session where we won some cash. From the same session, an investor was interested in us. We spoke at length and valued ourselves at $400,000 only to get an offer back valuing us at $100,000 with controlling rights to boot. I told the investor to take a trip to where the sun don't shine. A detailed post on this investment saga will be coming soon.

On a side note, FIRS came to pay us a visit. Ran to remitt VAT the next day. Please oh business ownere, pay your taxes. This goverment has a 2 trillion naira deficit and they are seriously intent on making businesses pay their fair share.

If you're still reading, thanks for keeping tuned. More interesting stuff is up ahead.

Sorry for belated response.

Bro the books are plenty. Best thing to do is go to 'quora' and search - 'essential reading for tech entrepreneur'. You'll get a lot of suggestions. Look at blogs as well as books.

Challenges as a non-coder = not being able to translate my vivid product desire into product myself. Trying to learn to code but i won't become a proficient one any time soon. My skills lie somewhere else. I can sha edit some html/css and semi read some PHP.

Clients don't actually by software. They buy solutions and the person selling it. I've also read enough to be able to understand some and explain the tech things. The internet is amazing for learning anything!

language - C # .net, and the usual frontend suspects

Not sure what kind of certification you mean but where there's a will you'll find a way!

Hope that helped. Good luck in your work

pneumaticos:



Bro,great thread,this seems like a book already
Can i have some of books you reading especially in the area of.product developement,networking and funding

Lastly what are the toughest.challenges you faced as a non coder on this project

How were you able to.convince your clients since you dont have much.of the technical knowlege,do you always introduce a colleague anytime you get to the technical areas,how have you been handling coding errors

What language you using for,this platform,i can bet my ass your project is in finance

How did you handle certification issues

suxes2005:
Well, I'm not scared to start my tech coy.

Kudos to you OP

What's the latest for the year?

Thanks. Just wrote an update, have a look.

Kudos to you too for ditching the fear.

1k001:


Thanks. Just wrote an update, have a look.

Kudos to you too for ditching the fear.

Glad you're going stronger and stronger day by day.

I'll like to read about the contest you
where you won some cash and also
how it all went down with the investor

I've since started mine but the barrier
is not that hard for me.

It's basically in the travels and tours
niche but using tech to sell.

Top top top we go!

1k001:
Update

If you're still reading, thanks for keeping tuned. More interesting stuff is up ahead.

interesting stuff like what your business name is? We should, in like manner, be rewarded for clinging on this long no?

Hello Sir,

Been following your post and its been a while you posted on the progress on your start up for the year 2016...

Also, don't forget to give us the name of your start up...

Anybody still following? Would you still be interested in an update? Please like If you are. Enough likes and I will put together an almighty update and finally reveal my startup.

Hello! I am the first to comment on your post. We are eagerly waiting to know the name of your startup. By the way, I need to inform you that I harvested all your posts and responses into a word doc and printed it. I am simply referencing you to avoid plagiarism litigation...lol. Tech journey in Nigeria is not for the weak, Infact the chance you fail is 80percent. All the same to those of us in the techosystem.....sky is the starting point. Better success in 2017 and I wish you the best!

1k001:
Anybody still following? Would you still be interested in an update? Please like If you are. Enough likes and I will put together an almighty update and finally reveal my startup.

1k001:
Anybody still following? Would you still be interested in an update? Please like If you are. Enough likes and I will put together an almighty update and finally reveal my startup.

Please do well to update us.

I actually just found this thread and I have read it from the beginning to end in a matter of hours.
I am in a similar shoe with you when you started. I am at the stage of fine-tuning the ideas and sorting out some details. Will love to know how 2016 has been thus far for your business.

Thanks for sharing

1k001:
Anybody still following? Would you still be interested in an update? Please like If you are. Enough likes and I will put together an almighty update and finally reveal my startup.

I actually thought that this thread had been abandoned.
Good to see that you're still here,
Though the information on the thread seems to be a bit much for me and i don't know where to start, but i know I've got the interest

Please Do Update us.