

Review "my" profitable startup - md1515

A friend of mine used to work with a modeling and promotional agency when he lived in Australia. I guess he noticed a huge need for better coordinating employees so he developed a web based staff management system.<p>He is the programmer and has finished the site sometime in the middle of last year. In any case, he has done no advertising minus a dozen cold-emails to agencies in Australia and New Zealand, which have netted good results.<p>He has asked me to come on board and help him market and get more customers.<p>Currently, there are 4 customers with a price point of $250/month. I believe one of them was through his own connection and a couple were just cold-emails he did. There are also 2 in trials now, which he suspects will be paying customers after their free month trial.<p>He lives off of the revenue (cheaply) in Eastern Europe. He cuts into his savings from his past job too so there isn't a whole lot of money we can put into advertising. I tried doing some cold-emailing to American promotional/modeling agencies, but I had no luck. One lead was interested, but ended up not paying.<p>I'm thinking that if he can get 4-6 agencies in Australia/New Zealand interested enough to pay that kind of money, there should be plenty in the U.S. What do you guys think about the startup itself and how might you tackle the market for gathering more customers?<p>www.staffconnect.net is the staff management system.
======
hristiank
Interesting startup but I see couple of problems with it:

\- The landing page is sub par. Put more time and effort in it because it
looks horrible (at least to me) \- Maybe think about mobile application or at
least optimized version for mobile phones.

Keep up the good work.

~~~
hristiank
Also try going after Europe first before the US.

------
md1515
Hey guys, thanks a lot for the information. I also got an email regarding this
startup and the comments about the landing page were the same - and quite
frankly I agree.

Ironically, in the time between posting this and the first post, I was doing
some brainstorming and I thought about adding a brief video tutorial clip and
some testimonials. He just threw it together as his background is NOT design,
but I will get him to change a few things. Thanks again for your help! Maybe
Europe would be good to try..

------
mjs00
>plenty in the U.S.

You should first validate that assumption - 'talk' to a few U.S. agencies and
find out what they are using, how much they are paying, what their problems
with those systems are.

------
twog
In my opinion, in order for this to gain any traction, a UI update could go a
long way.

If you need any design pointers/UI, I would be happy to help.

------
keeptrying
Have a look at patio11's app - he builds for small business too. Take a page
from his marketing and sales efforts and design.

