
Ask HN: Can anyone help us with Positioning? - paekut
We have built www.comtify.com .<p>The original problem we thought we&#x27;ll solve was the problem with emails - huge mail volume, threading, clutter etc.<p>We built it as a collaboration tool and later thought we&#x27;ll integrate email so that it will behave as an email client. But the email client thing hasn&#x27;t materialized as it would take huge dev effort.<p>Now we have a collaboration tool or a Unified communication tool.<p>- Previously, we positioned it as a unified communication tool. Very low conversion rate and we thought it isn&#x27;t working, so we changed it.<p>- Currently, we have positioned it as a tool to organize work, eases meeting scheduling and reminders (as you can see on the website).<p>- We are thinking to change it to &#x27;The Next Version of Email&#x27; (which is a validated problem - we used to have 9% signup rate on this previously). Herein we&#x27;ll say that we are a closed email system and just like you create an email ID elsewhere, you reserve your username here and communicate with others (using the system) just like Email but much more powerfully. The problem here is that until others are invited onto Comtify, it&#x27;s unusable and for it to compete with email, a huge critical mass of users would be needed.<p>- Another thought is to position it as a &#x27;Free Business Email&#x27;, wherein we&#x27;ll say that we are the first free provider of business email. [Herein, we&#x27;ll look at other revenue sources like charging businesses only on on-premise deployment etc.]. This would not actually be emails, but usernames on Comtify (just like Twitter handles). But again, the problem here is of critical mass - unless it grows fast enough to be able to be used by many businesses, it can&#x27;t be used for external communication and company will have to use standard email client for that.<p>Kindly help!
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IanDrake
It's very hard to slice markets horizontally. A general purpose communication
tool is a tough sell because the target market is "anyone who communicates".
That's impossible to target, price, and sell effectively.

It would be better to target a vertical market. If you already have sales,
look to see which customer are getting the most value out of the product. If
not, you'll have some exploring to do. Figure out what industry has the most
need for a product like yours and will pay the most.

For example: FINRA has requirements for email archiving. Financial advisers
can't just use gmail. They have special requirements for their industry.
Providers for this industry have specialized email systems for these folks and
can charge outrageous amounts for email service.

I'm not suggesting you target that specific market, but look for something
similar. Maybe home builders? I know they use email to communicate between
clients, subs, and foreman. And I know it sucks for them. So go talk to a few.
Then think of another industry and go talk to them.

Once you find your industry, figure out how much this solution is worth to
them and what other features they would want. Now concentrate on that
industry. You can go to trade shows, send targeted emails, have a list of
clients on your website that makes them envious, and generally become an
expert in that industry.

So to summarize...Find the industry that needs something like your product and
will pay the most for it. Sell them version 1.0. Customize the software to
that industry. Change your website and product name to target that industry.
Modify your marketing to sell directly to companies in that industry. Iterate.

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paekut
Thanks @IanDrake for the inputs.

Let me work on them now.

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PaulHoule
I saw the landing page and frankly I was unimpressed:

(1) everybody and his brother claims to have something like this, I don't see
any reason to believe this is better than anything else

(2) "Free" is for the birds here. I am going to invest so much of my own time
into switching to your system that you might as well ask me to put some
financial chips into the pot.

(3) Is the product going to stick around? All the time we see people start
SaaS products and then a few months later they sell out to Google and shut the
product down.

(4) Without email compatiblity I don't see the point. Many of the tasks that I
have to do come in through email. If I have to copy every important email I
get, then it is almost inconceivable that your product could really save me
time.

