These are the slides from my keynote and demo for the Samsung / MoDev Mobile Developer event held at 1776 in July 2013.
See www.speek.com for more info on Speek!
UiPath Platform: The Backend Engine Powering Your Automation - Session 1
Samsung MoDev Keynote
2. Before we get started please install the Speek
mobile app from your app store
You’ll need it later for the demo
3. Hi, my name is Danny Boice
I am the Co-Founder & CTO of Speek
I am from Washington, DC
I love rap music
I hate conference calls
4. Conference Calls Suck
Speek makes Conference Calls Fast & Easy
Speek has Web, Android, iPhone and Windows
Phone apps
Our goal is to make Speek available
EVERYWHERE
5. Speek has raised $3 Million
We have hosted over 100,000 callers
For over 10,000,000 minutes
We are growing around 50% monthly
Speek is 1 year old
23. Ridiculously easy
conference calls
Guaranteed to increase your
productivity
Painless Web-based conferencing tool…
works like a charm
Make business calls not just bearable, but
easier and visual
Conference call service that all you
entrepreneurial types will love
“A more logical and web-oriented approach to coordinating
calls. I might stop giving out my phone number altogether.”
Speek makes the conference call experience
much more pleasant
Apps that set successful entrepreneurs free
Top 25 Startups of the Year 100 Most Brilliant Companies
I'm going to tell you how we started speek up and got out of beta and post revenue using the words of Biggie Smalls
Talk about the idea behind speek - john and I were sitting around talking about how bad conference calls suck and had the link concept
Talk about the idea behind speek - john and I were sitting around talking about how bad conference calls suck and had the link concept
Talk about the the lean startup methodology approach we took and how we validated our assumptions that people would use a link instead of phone numbers to dial in
We heard "no" from literally 100's of VC's and 100's of other people told us we were crazy. our market was too saturated, they had concerns about our business model. We just kept marching along and thought of raising our first round like any other sales process - high touch
We heard "no" from literally 100's of VC's and 100's of other people told us we were crazy. our market was too saturated, they had concerns about our business model. We just kept marching along and thought of raising our first round like any other sales process - high touch
We raised our first round - $1.5mm on a convertible note - which was crossing a major first hurdle but that was just the beginning now the microscope got bigger and we had to figure things out before the money ran out
The first major lesson in execution is that you need great people. we had to make some hard decisions early on and fire some folks in order to bring better folks on. now we have our A team and it's a matter of sticking to our plan and hitting max velocity all the while keeping an eye on key metrics
We leveraged a formal advisory board that consists of the founders of nextel, AddThis and other folks that had been there and done that. We also leveraged our 500 startups mentored all along the way (and continue to to this day). Almost all of these people share our data driven approach and we usually look deeply into data in every conversation.
you have to hook your free users so they become loyal paying customers. 2 metrics matter. 1) finding profitable user acquisition channels 2) retaining users. That’s all we focus on right now.
you have to hook your free users so they become loyal paying customers. 2 metrics matter. 1) finding profitable user acquisition channels 2) retaining users. That’s all we focus on right now.
At this point we've been covered by every major press outlet tech and mainstream, we've had 100's of thousands of users and we're doubling in every key metric every other month, we're being featured in a Wall Street Journal Documentary about Startups that's airing now - but we still act like we're back in that condo when we were just starting out and realize that it's easy come easy go. execution remains key.