The journey so far and the road ahead…
TLDR
- Pivoting feels like crashing the plane and rebuilding it while flying
- Smart Contract didn’t resonate. Instant Estimates, Contracts & Payments does…
- If you’re embarrassed by your product that means you’re ready to start selling it
- 20 general contractors using Revonate = Product Market Fit?
Pivoting feels like crashing the plane and rebuilding it while flying
In my last post I explained how Revonate pivoted away from serving two masters (Homeowner & General Contractor) and decided to focus on building the smart contract for construction.
Sunsetting a business model that was bringing in $20k+ monthly revenue is NOT fun.
We laid off 2 employees and my original co-founder left along with 3 early angel investors.
Jefferson and I proceeded to deprecate everything (Most SaaS, Marketing Website, Business processes etc…) and fortunately were still able to raise $150k from StartupNV and friendly angels.
From July- mid October we built a mobile CRM tradespeople can use to manage Projects & Prospects while doing everything we could to minimize our personal/ business expenses to extend our runway.
Smart Contracts didn’t resonate. Instant Estimates, Contracts & Payments does…
We quickly realized after speaking with investors and contractors that Smart Contracts didn’t resonate. At this stage the only thing that actually matters is if customers are paying you to solve a problem.
Being forced within the confines of Adalo, our no code tool of choice, we built a simple, mobile interface to manage Projects & Prospects. The feedback was clear from the 5 customer development calls we had:
- Help me close deals: This meant providing an experience that feels to them like they are instantly sending an estimate or contract to a Client
- Automate follow up tasks: This meant that a standard sales email automation following up with prospects is better than nothing, which is what they do today.
We also built valuable features to process payments as milestones are complete and securely access transaction data from banks to create revenue reports. But at the end of the day they’re using us because we help them close deals.
Revonate — 10 October 2022 — Watch Video
If you’re embarrassed by your product that means you’re ready to start selling it
Most of our product value hinges on our ability to provide a simple, mobile CRM experience that integrates with their existing systems (Quickbooks, Google) and automate tasks.
There’s so much we should build before we can confidently ask for our 5% payment processing fee. There’s so many reasons people should say no.
But in the 5 demo’s we gave to real tradespeople they didn’t say no. They asked how they could get started.
They also said that IF they successfully use Revonate to close deals with a higher markup and the product worked then they’d be happy to pay the 5%.
You know what we call that in SaaS sales ladies & gentlemen? A mutual success plan.
20 General Contractors using Revonate = Product Market Fit?
The current plan is to get 20 general contractors using Revonate to close deals and get paid as milestones are completed.
If each GC does $2M in project payments annually through Revonate then we should be at $1.2M ARR with just a 3% processing fee.
If we achieve that we probably won’t need money, but if we want it then it should be available from VC’s deploying capital in vertical SaaS.
Are we doing this right?