

What to do next? - Aloha

I'm a support/telecom engineer (I use the term engineer loosely), I work (or have worked) on everything from phones, to web servers.<p>Here is the part I want to ask HN for help.<p>For 5+ years, I've been working on a distributed phone system concept (think broadcast domain scale, not internet scale), at this point, its mature enough (its been thru review with some other Telecom folks, and some IT/Networking 'experts', who judge it so), that if I could get some folks working on it, (also having sold/installed phone systems for 5 years) I think I have a viable product. The product in the end, is designed to bring simplicity to small/medium sized PBX's, very literally, just be plug and play (for 80% of users).<p>I can sell it, I've written some documentation, that is clear enough to explain it to either someone on the telecom end, or on the network/web end of things, I don’t know how to go about finding people to present it to, I need someone to work with me, or money, so I can hire someone to work with me. Even if I find someone, that still would take me back to where I am, how do I make the sale, or how do I make the contacts to do it?<p>I've looked at the various start up incubators, they don’t seem to really be thinking of people who want to develop a physical product, its aimed at the Web 2.0 Crowd, which while I want a nice online management component, its decidedly un-Web 2.0, or even Software/Infrastructure as a Service, its more or less a stand alone product, designed to be sold thru both Retail and VAR's, with money made for us, by hardware sales/support fees.<p>The question I ask is where do I go from here?
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mjs00
I presume by 'user' you mean the IT person who manages existing PBX, either
'traditional' or IP-based systems from Cisco and such? One thing you might
want to think about is having a succinct answer to the market opportunity to
frame the opportunity better with those you talk to. For example: \- What is
the market / opportunity for replacing existing PBXs - assuming that
cost/features/benefit don't make sense to keep these vs moving to something IP
based? \- What is unique about what you are doing, such that it's compelling
against Cisco? (assuming they are most successful IP-based telephony equipment
provider) \- What is unique about what you are doing, against SAAS
alternatives, such as using things like RingCentral in the cloud with IP/SIP
handsets. \- And are you price/feature competitive against what integrators
and companies internally are doing with Asterisk? Seems like with a great
story against these types of questions, you could have a reasonable chat with
an investor.

You could consider aligning yourself with a national VAR/Integrator if you
made life easier for them in terms of placing or managing systems.

You could also approach someone that might want 'in' to this space. Maybe you
are just upmarket from what someone like "RingCentral" does, and you would
give them a solution complimentary to their own, such that they'd want to fund
and distribute this.

Just some ideas, hope something potentially helpful. Best of luck!

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Aloha
By User, I mean business owner, it ought to be like an apple product in so
much as the default interface is easy enough to do _most_ of the things you
would want to do with your PBX, Obviously, some stuff like configuring site-
site peering, and a T1 PRI would need more experience, and an advanced
interface. The idea is, some of the product line, may only be sold by VAR's,
like anything that cant auto-configure itself, for example.

For what market slice, think smaller :-P, I'm looking at the 3-300 Seat
market, which is a much larger portion of the system market, then the high end
stuff Cisco is selling.

I'm looking at competing with Panasonic and Toshiba, and folks who have no
phone system at all - for now, I have an idea for a much much larger system,
that simply moves the point of aggregation up a level - I personally would
love to knock Cisco out of the game at some point, their product is junk in
many ways. I've never seen a Cisco install work as expected - and I've seen
somewhere north of 30 of them - in my opinion any phone system that need
regular reboots is garbage.

Having supported phone system as a service, its often roses, honestly, in most
cases it just doesn't work, the biggest issue being call quality (Choppy
Audio, one way Audio, etc), also, SIP and NAT do not play nice, so you usually
need an ALG if you want more then one phone on the customer premises, which
annoys the customer as its another 200+ dollar piece of gear.

I think the best idea is to partner with folks like Vonage, and other IP
Telephony Carriers (Looking with a big eye towards the cable carriers offering
business voice service like Comcast), to provide branded hardware, so they
provide the trunking to the premises, we provide the phones. The customer can
manage all their stuff internally, and the telco has an inbuilt market.

Thanks so much for the advice!

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mattblalock
Could you send me an eMail?

