

14 Days Later: What I’ve learned in the first 2 weeks of my startup - dcaldwell
http://blog.doddcaldwell.com/post/10178334836/startup-launch-lessons-learned-from-bellstrike

======
patio11
I (transparently) love HN, but very much do not love HN on pricing. A blog
post is sitting in my drafts folder about this. One of these days, one of
these days...

There are numerous Ask HNs about our demographics. Take a look at them.
Compare with your domain expertise about people who run non-profits. The
differences are fairly dramatic.

You'll never win an argument about pricing with someone who is not in the
market for your product anyhow. Their opinions are not relevant. Getting $0
from HN readers will not compromise the success of your business, since there
is no pricing strategy which will result in you getting more than $0 from HN
readers.

I also think that 9.5% is less than 6% + 3.5% when considered from the
perspective of the people whose opinions matter to you making your rent next
month. For that matter, I think 10% would also _also_ likely be perceived as
less than 6% + 3.5%. In any event, you'll likely be additive on their existing
revenue (or the customers will think you are), and 90% of free money is better
than 100% of no money every day of the week.

~~~
dcaldwell
Some wise words. Thanks.

You're correct - we are additive on the nonprofits' existing revenue (other
than cases where they would be switching from another service). The problem
that I seemed to be encountering in emails from prospective customers (actual
nonprofits) was that it was psychological. Nonprofits are pressured to keep
their Administrative and Fundraising expenses low. They tend to have a gut
reaction when they see a percentage that's above 0%. They also tend to think
about how much they could raise. When they think of it in very aspirational
terms, the % seemed prohibitive.

Of course, I could be wrong on all of this. I've only been doing it for 2
weeks...

~~~
trevelyan
Did you edit your post? I seem to remember reading that you were planning to
lower prices with scale.

If that is true and you're finding that people are price sensitive, you should
list your lowest price on the front page ("as low as 4 percent!"), and make it
clear in the signup process that rates are higher at lower volumes. Ten
percent is not a lot to pay at lower volumes considering you take care of
payment processing and tech hosting, and merchant accounts at Paypal start
around $30-40 USD per month, so someone will need to be collecting at least
$500 a month before they come close to breaking even.

~~~
noahth
I came here to suggest fees dropping as volume rises, but of course it's
already been covered! All I can add is that you're not even factoring in the
cost of finding a competent developer and paying them to make that happen -
small nonprofits usually don't have a developer on staff, often just a
volunteer or two who may really just be WordPress admins.

------
sandieman
Epic quote - "I’ve never even been to Silicon Valley. I think of Silicon
Valley as people in far flung areas of the Roman Empire must have thought of
Rome. Surely it’s a mythical land of people who hack apps together in a
weekend and sell them for $20 million on Monday."

------
kariatx
Wow! Impressive first two weeks. It seems to me that you're doing a lot right
here. I like how you sum up your business ("We let nonprofits setup a good-
looking, donation-enabled website in about 1-2 minutes."), and if I were a
website-less non-profit, I would be very interested.

I clicked over to your site, and your design blew me away. You really build
authority with it, but also keep things fun, lighthearted, and modern.

A couple suggestions:

\- You might want to test telling people they don't pay you fees after the
first X they receive in monthly donations (around $1333, right? maybe make
that an even $1000) as opposed to the maximum they pay you in fees. My
marketing copywriting intuition tells me that may be clearer / more compelling
than people having to do the math themselves. It also gives them a more
tangible goal to shoot for and story to tell themselves. ("I'm sure we can get
over $X a month, and the service is basically free after that!")

\- Possibly test a more prominent mention of Facebook / Twitter integration on
the front page (to the point that you don't have to click or mouseover to see
it). I have a feeling that these features are pretty important to non-profits,
especially ones who aren't savvy enough to have a good web presence yet. I'm
not sure - again, probably I would just test it out.

~~~
dcaldwell
Thanks. Those are great recommendations. I'll definitely look into testing
them.

------
j_col
That background makes the text very hard to read (at least for my eyes).
Literally had to copy-and-paste the text into a text editor...

~~~
dcaldwell
I'll look into changing it. I just put something up quick last night after I
wrote the post

~~~
fuzzythinker
Is the paper-bag background what he's complaining about or is that what you
changed into? I love the paper-bag background. Do you mind sharing where you
got it from? [EDIT] Nevermind the last question, saw the tumblr link at the
bottom.

------
thorstadt
I can definitely relate to the "outskirts of the roman empire" sentiment: I'm
also launching a startup in Greenville, SC, and it definitely feels like the
"middle of nowhere" in the world of tech startups. I'm curious how many other
startups/HN users are around the area.

~~~
mcrittenden
Small world, I'm also in Greenville and just recently launched
<http://fileslap.com>.

------
SeoxyS
I hate to be a downer, but I don't think there's any world in which two weeks
is enough to make any conclusions. I think you need to give it a serious shot
(think months) before you'll be able to objectively assess your business.

~~~
kariatx
I disagree. The most successful entrepreneurs learn quickly and iterate
quickly. You usually can learn something in two weeks - even if it's just that
certain language you use is unclear or a turn off. And that's a start.

~~~
Ixiaus
Quick iteration is the goal, but in two weeks you can't possibly gain enough
data, experience, and mindshare to properly build a conclusive picture. Sure,
iteration means making quick _tactical_ decisions and conclusions, but
business is about _strategy_ and that often moves on the scale of months (even
in lean startup land). Those that try to make strategic decisions faster than
they can figure out what their data and experience means always end up falling
over (I've worked for companies that have done this - twice).

~~~
kariatx
I agree, but I don't think that the original poster was claiming to have a
conclusive picture. He had a few observations from the first two weeks, and
I'm arguing that they were valid. Was it a good idea to act on them so
quickly? Possibly. In my experience, (nine years of running the same business)
intuition is sometimes enough.

------
civilian
Just FYI, the I Do Foundation (a service where you can donate to charities
that a wedding-couple list) charges 8% <https://www.idofoundation.org/>

So your 9.5% is not that far off. When I did my donation to the charity my
friends chose, it included a note about the 8% and told me that it's the
general rate.

From their site: """

Charitable Gift Registry: The percentage listed on the I Do Foundation website
for each store is the exact amount that will be donated to charity every time
a guest purchases a gift through an I Do Foundation registry link. For
example, a $100 purchase from Cooking.com generates $8 for charity. The I Do
Foundation does not deduct any fees from these donations. When guests make
online donations, an 8% fee is added to their donation. This fee covers the
cost we incur from our credit card processing company. For example, when a
guest donates $100, an $8 fee will be added. """

------
pknerd
No doubt that HN rocks. Being a person not living in Valley, even in US I got
to know about the things which I really needed to know; business and tech.
Though I have not done something "remarkable" yet but I believe in myself that
whenever I do, it would be because of things I learnt from HN.

Coming to your product, it's a cool idea and you are definitely targeting a
niche which makes it noticeable. One thing which I think successful
entrepreneurs don't share that how do they reach their target audience. This
is something which every entrepreneur should share by discussing his/her case
study.

------
18pfsmt
Somehow, I missed the original HN post, but I like the service as it serves a
vastly ignored market (I've also been a fan of Causes since they started).

As far as pricing is concerned, it sounds like it might be best represented on
a graph (donations vs. donations less fees).

Also, I'm curious about pointing people to Hover when they want their own
domains: is there an affiliate relationship there? I didn't get too far into
the 'help' section, but who is going to help with DNS settings? Is that
something Bellstrike will provide support for?

~~~
dcaldwell
We don't have any type of affiliate relationship with Hover. Most of our
target market is not super tech savvy and I just think Hover is one of, if not
the, easiest to use registrars out there. Right now, nonprofits have to just
forward their custom domain to their Bellstrike domain. However, we have plans
to implement domain masking. If we do integrate with Hover's API, we could
manage their DNS settings for them (if they choose) or just give them good
instructions. It's kind of hard to give great instructions on DNS settings to
a non tech savvy audience though because every registar is different.

------
callmeed
Good post. I can relate to a lot of it after posting my project here on HN a
couple weeks ago. (plus it's also a niche website builder)

You didn't ask for any marketing advise but have you considered targeting
Christian (or other) missionaries overseas? I have several friends from the US
who have moved to Africa or eastern Europe long-term. They are usually
sponsored by a US church and qualify as non-profits; but they also rely on
recurring support to pay their bills. I think many of them could use something
like this.

Well done.

~~~
dcaldwell
I'd love to target them. Do you know the best way to do so? I have a feeling
it's a pretty fragmented market so it could be difficult to get in front of a
large group of them in a single publication, website, or conference.

~~~
callmeed
Do searches of church blogs and facebook pages (example search "missionaries
africa site:facebook.com").

Also, pitch it to some of the top christian/theology blogs out there. Since
your product is essentially free to setup/host and quite beneficial, I imagine
you could get a few to post about it.

Many of the missionaries I know meet with other nearby missionaries monthly or
quarterly, so I think the word could spread if you were able to reach the
right people.

------
laconian
You are selling a publishing platform, so why use Tumblr? You might want to
switch your blog over to your product, you know, eat your own dogfood and all
that...

------
alexkearns
DCaldwell, I agree with you on the limits of the lean start-up philosophy. I
think the minimum viable product idea is hyped up immensely and is often an
excuse for someone to release a half-finished product and call themselves an
entrepreneur.

A minimum brilliant product, on the other hand, is something I could
unreservedly support. And I think that is what you have achieved. Well done!

------
cannuk
The design really caught my eye as well. I love the playfulness of it. Who is
your designer, if you do not mind me asking..

------
Valien
I've known the fine folks behind this project for a while and it's exciting to
see them launch and gain some traction. It's great for our area and great for
them. Congrats again Dodd and team. Looking forward to see more great stuff
coming down the pipe!

------
citricsquid
For dcaldwell: maybe consider working with reddit somehow?
[http://blog.reddit.com/2011/09/if-youre-nonprofit-
organizati...](http://blog.reddit.com/2011/09/if-youre-nonprofit-organization-
we-have_14.html)

~~~
dcaldwell
Thanks. We're actually setup as a for-profit. But I really want to provide
value and help nonprofits out on our blog. I'll probably write a post about
how they can use this service with Reddit.

~~~
citricsquid
Yeah that's what I meant, co-ordinate with reddit to offer this as a service
to your users. So they create a site with you and advertise with reddit :-)

------
masondesu
Thanks for being honest about your experiences. It's refreshing to hear some
real metrics, even if they aren't the most compelling stats for a launch.
Excited to hear more updates in the coming months.

------
bambax
> _Impeccable design is worth it_

The site's design is indeed impeccable; did you do it yourself or did you use
a service provider of some kind?

~~~
dcaldwell
We used the amazing @rogie (twitter handle) for the design of Bellstrike.com
and the amazing @squaredeye for 3 of our templates/themes. We iterated on some
of their work in house and did some other minor design stuff ourselves.

------
soho33
do you mind sharing how you actually got those hits in the first two weeks? i
know with many startups getting the word out after the launch is very hard.

so aside from HN what else did you do to get word out and get even foreign
non-profits?

~~~
dcaldwell
I've actually got a blog post planned for that :) I'd love to get a little
more traction so I actually have something to write about though. But a big
thing is just that people like to talk about designy stuff on Twitter a lot

