This month our three speakers have greatly different products and use different marketing strategies to sell their products. Read below a little of what they had to say.

 Cory Langner, Sr. Business Development Associate,

Elance  @Elance

Elance is a cloud-based employment platform that revolutionizes how work gets done. Cory noted that 30% of the workforce is made up of contingent workers (ed. It was just over 4% in 1999). Elance provides opportunities for small businesses to find part-time workers who are willing to take small jobs. Elance is free to post jobs. Freelancers bid on the jobs and build reputations. No money is paid out until after the job poster approves the work. Cory says this makes a great check and balance system that guarantees that everyone does what is expected. Elance compiles the performance data, distributes monies and does the paperwork including filing 1090 tax forms.

Sizes of hiring businesses and sizes of jobs can vary, but small businesses, especially startups, can benefit from workers competing for jobs from around the world. Cory gave the example of app vendor Echoer, whose CEO Daniel Cowen has a geographically dispersed talent pool of 20 freelancers that can be engaged on demand. Not only is there a vast labor force but American businesses can realize savings from lower prevailing wages paid elsewhere in the world. Elance has 2.3M freelancers, 500,000 hiring companies and 100,000 job postings in the last 30 days. Lifetime freelancer earnings are almost $750M. Elance takes a service fee of 8.75% when work is delivered and payment made. It is free for both hiring company and freelancer to sign up. For fixed price jobs, Elance has an escrow pool. Freelancers get paid from the pool when they meet milestones.

 Michael Castellano, Co-Founder and CEO, engajer, @engajerMC @engajer

Michael is the founder and CEO of engajer, an online video platform that allows presenters to make 30-second (or less) videos that conclude with offerings of follow-up videos. They are useful for training, sales presentations and marketing pitches. Viewers select video snippets and navigate through the follow-up videos.

Michael says presenting short videos in a stream maintains customers’ interests and is efficient. This works for presenters too because valuable customer information is in the choices customers make.

Because of different objectives, presenters have different pricing considerations. Marketers tend to like fixed price contracts, sales people like to pay per seat. engajer is valuable in making customer sales, as a marketing tool and for training. This greatly affects which capabilities presenters heavily use.

Michael has tried four different pricing strategies with four different usage components. He discussed and reviewed them with us. Then he analyzed them, and in order, he then dismissed them as; “Not Scalable,” “Too Limiting,” “Too Complex,” and “Too Crazy.” Michael learned to keep pricing simple and to not fear change. “You must get out there and sell,” he says, “and take input from your customers.” “They will help you figure out your pricing.” And engajer does have a Freemium model, but only gives a small amount away for free. Premium features like reporting and analytics have a monthly fee. If you can shoot your own videos and build your own packages, engajer is free. If you are selling something through engajer’s ecommerce module, then engajer takes a percentage of the transaction price.  Heftier packages are available for clients that want custom features from one of engajer’s partners.

Micha Benoliel, Co-Founder & CEO, Open Garden, @anthenor @OpenGarden

“Share all of your devices on one network,” says Micha, Co-Founder & CEO of Open Garden. Open Garden allows you to share connections on a free wireless mesh network. Devices find their best 3G/4G connections and share them with other network devices. Micha gave an impressive real-live demonstration of how much faster internet connections are using Open Garden. Several devices can team up to speed downloads. Networking uses Bluetooth and Wi-Fi Direct, so devices can be up to twenty to thirty meters apart. Each device also can act as a relay and extend the network. It is only free now but in the future there will be a premium subscription version that will allow more control over Wi-Fi and be even faster.

The Freemium SF Bay Area Meetup is all about monetization and the Freemium model in SaaS, web, and mobile apps. It is the place where industry leaders share insider views. All who want to know more can attend. Come and join us. We meet on the second Thursday of each month. Visit our Meetup Blog, Freemium as a Business Model, where you can read more about us and our previous speakers. We also provide video recordings of past Meetups to watch.

The post Freemium SF Bay Area Meetup Report — April 11, 2013 appeared first on Kachingle Blog.

 

Jules Maltz, General Partner at Institutional Venture Partners (IVP) prefers to invest in second and third stage funding rounds. Past investment has gone to freemium companies like Zynga and Dropbox. He likes the Dropbox take on freemium where customers naturally grow into a premium product. He says freemium offers should avoid the “Ikea problem” where a product requires some assistance with its use. The market for a freemium product must be large since only a small amount of users will convert into customers. Jules is the co-author of the TechCrunch article: Should Your Startup Go Freemium? and the whitepaper: Freemium Software: A Guide for Startups”.

Mike Farr, Manager Medrio Scholars at Medrio explained the dilemma Medrio found itself in when trying to price Electronic Data Capture (EDC) and eClinical tools for complex clinical trials into the two major markets needing the services. The target markets were academic institutions and pharmaceutical companies. Despite strong efforts by Medrio, university research institutions would not pay for what Medrio was offering. However, Medrio discovered that when students and teachers left the universities and went to work in the private sector, those companies subscribed to the software. Medrio has free software for universities but charges for the same software to for-profit corporations.

Michael Horvath, Co-Founder and CEO, Strava says Strava is a way runners and cyclists can get into their best shape by sharing, comparing and competing with each other’s personal fitness data via mobile and online. The apps are freemium where the premium version provides extra features for analyzing and displaying collected data. Serious athletes don’t mind paying for this but different segments do like to pay differently. Runners and cyclists are different and Michael targets each market based on its feedback.

The Freemium SF Bay Area Meetup is all about the freemium model in SaaS, web, and mobile apps. It is the place where industry leaders share their insider views about freemium and all who want to know more can attend. Come and join us. We meet on the second Thursday of each month.

Visit our Meetup Blog, Freemium as a Business Model, where you can read more about what this month’s speakers had to say and read about our previous speakers. We also provide video recordings of past Meetups for you to watch.

The post Freemium: Offers Should Avoid the “Ikea Problem” appeared first on Kachingle Blog.

Cory Langner, Sr. Business Development Associate, Elance connects entrepreneurs, business owners and other professionals — some in the employ-ing and some in the employ-er position! Find out how they combine technology, business and marketing for all players’ success. Michael Castellano, Co-Founder and CEO engajer has one of the hottest video selling platforms around, increasing sales and decreasing costs (don’t we all want that?); and Micha Benoliel, Co-Founder & CEO, Open Garden allows users to share mobile Internet among all devices, something everyone needs in a multiple-gadget-driven world.

Join us for networking starting at 6pm, followed by our speakers, Q&A and more time for networking and refreshments.

For complete information & videos on all speakers from past Meetups, please visit our Freemium Blog.

What Our Speakers Will Talk About

Our speakers will share their knowledge of marketing and monetization, their personal relationship with the Freemium business model, and share their experiences of what works and doesn’t work.

SPEAKERS & MODERATOR

Cory Langner, Sr. Business Development Associate, Elance

@Elance

Cory Langner is a seasoned pro with a passion for connecting people and nurturing customer relations. He’s helped small and medium businesses embrace new technologies to freshen-up their brand image, acquire new customers, foster relationships and develop solid frameworks to enhance business operations. As Sr. Business Development Associate for Elance, Cory connects freelancers with businesses who need online workers. Since 1999 Elance has been helping businesses hire skilled freelancers for jobs in Finance, IT & Programming, Marketing, Writing & Translation and more. Whether it’s a small project or long-term contract, Elance can connect you with instant, on-demand talent without draining your budget. Elance is pioneering a new way to build and grow your company.

Michael Castellano, Co-Founder and CEO engajer

@engajerMC @engajer

engajer is an online interactive video selling platform that increases revenue and reduces sales costs. Founder Michael Castellano is a Silicon Valley 3x entrepreneur, nominated by Ernst and Young as 2012′s and 2013′s “Entrepreneur of the Year.” Michael graduated from Santa Clara University Cum Laude in three years, receiving a Bachelors degree in mass communication and a Minor in Music. In 2002, he was appointed as a United States Senate Page for the 107th Congress.

Micha Benoliel, Co-Founder & CEO, Open Garden

@anthenor @OpenGarden

Open Garden allows users to share mobile Internet among all devices. Micha has been a technology entrepreneur since he was 8 years old. He helped launch several telecommunications services in the last 10 years including Skype. His ultimate challenge is to provide free wireless broadband access to the Internet and advocate Net Neutrality.

MODERATOR: Cynthia Typaldos, Founder Kachingle

@typaldos @kachingle @FreemiumSFBay

Cynthia is the co-inventor of Kachingle Premium, a turbocharged App monetization platform, including bundling, distribution, billing and co- marketing. She previously was a software developer at Bank of America, and Director of Software Product Management and Marketing at Sun Microsystems. She founded GolfWeb and RealCommunities before starting Kachingle. She holds degrees from UC Berkeley and MIT. Her passion is internet bundles and micropaymen

AGENDA

6pm-7pm: Networking, hors d’oeuvres

7pm-7:15pm: What’s new in Freemium: Presentation & Discussion

7:15pm-8:15pm: Speaker Presentations

8:15pm-8:45pm: Q & A of Speaker Panel, moderated by Cynthia Typaldos, Kachingle

8:45pm-10pm: Raffles and prizes, networking, wind down

GENERAL INFORMATION

Members, send us Speakers! We are actively looking for speakers for our monthly panels. If you would like to be considered or have any suggestions for speakers, please email Cynthia Typaldos at cynthia@kachingle.com, or contact us through Meetup’s email capability.

Sponsorships Available: In order to help members achieve visibility and cover costs of food and room rental, we offer two Sponsorships Levels: Venue Sponsor and Premium $250 Sponsor. Sponsors are highlighted on this Freemium SF Bay Area Meetup site, on the Sponsors & Past Sponsors Pages, honorable mention by Cynthia Typaldos—Moderator, before the presentation, and more. We limit Premium Sponsorships to the first THREE paid. To register your Sponsorship, please contact charlotte.monte@kachingle.com. Thank you!

The post App/SaaS Monetization: Freemium, Premium, etc.: Elance, engajer, and Open Garden appeared first on Kachingle Blog.

About our Meetup | Details & RSVP | Freemium SF Bay Area

Michael Horvath, CEO of Strava, heads up one of the hottest apps for athletes in the world. Jules Maltz, Partner at Institutional Venture Partners (IVP) is an expert on investment funding and Freemium; and Michael Farr of Medrio will talk about Medrio’s exciting developments for their apps in the clinical field.

Jules is the co-author of the TechCrunch article: Should Your Startup Go Freemium? and the whitepaper: Freemium Software: A Guide for Startups.

Join us for networking starting at 6pm, followed by our speakers, Q&A and more time for networking and refreshments.

For complete information & videos on all speakers from past Meetups, please visit our Freemium Blog.

SPEAKERS

Michael Horvath, Co-Founder and CEO, Strava

@stravamh @Strava

Strava lets athletes all over the world experience social fitness—sharing, comparing and competing with each other’s personal fitness data via mobile and online apps. Strava lets you track your rides and runs via your iPhone, Android or dedicated GPS device to analyze and quantify your performance. Strava makes fitness a social experience, providing motivation and camaraderie even if you’re exercising alone. Mr. Horvath was previously CFO & VP Operations at GlycoFi, Associate Professor at Dartmouth, Assistant Professor of Economics at Stanford University, and Kana Communications CFO & Co-Founder. He helped build Strava from his love of athletics.

Jules Maltz, General Partner at Institutional Venture Partners (IVP)

@JulesMaltz @IVP

Mr. Maltz joined Institutional Venture Partners (IVP) in August 2008 and has over ten years of venture capital and startup experience. He focuses on later-stage venture investments in rapidly-growing Internet and software companies. Jules was recognized as one of the top 100 venture capitalists in the AlwaysOn 2012 VC 100 List. Jules led IVP’s investments in Buddy Media (CRM), Dropbox, and WhaleShark Media, and was actively involved in IVP’s investments in LivingSocial, Marketo, Ngmoco (DeNA), Spiceworks, Sugar, Twitter, and Yext. Jules currently serves on the Board of Directors of WhaleShark Media and Yext.

Mike Farr, Manager Medrio Scholars at Medrio

Medrio provides advanced Electronic Data Capture (EDC) and eClinical tools suitable for the most complex clinical trials. Medrio is built on a platform that makes their services faster, more cost efficient and streamlined than the competition. Since 2005 Medrio has been building a true Software as a Service (SaaS) solution for data management in clinical trials. Based in San Francisco, Medrio puts the control in your hands with our smart, forward thinking eClinical offering. Medrio is available free to university researchers.

MODERATOR

Cynthia Typaldos, Founder & CEO, Kachingle

@typaldos @kachingle

Cynthia is the co-inventor of Kachingle, a platform for app bundling, billing and  co-marketing. She previously was a software developer at Bank of America,  and Director of Software Product Management and Marketing at Sun Microsystems. She founded GolfWeb and RealCommunities before starting Kachingle. She holds degrees from UC Berkeley and MIT. Her passion is internet bundles and micropayments.

For more information on Freemium and to view previous months’ presentations & video check out:

AGENDA

6:15pm-7pm: Networking, hors d’oeuvres

7pm-7:30pm: Welcome, What’s new in Freemium, sponsor presentations

7:30pm-8:30pm: Speaker Presentations

8:30pm-9:00pm: Q & A of Speaker Panel, moderated by Cynthia Typaldos, Kachingle

9:00pm-10pm: Raffles and prizes, networking, wind down

GENERAL INFORMATION

Members, send us Speakers! We are actively looking for speakers for our monthly panels. If you would like to be considered or have any suggestions for speakers, please email Cynthia Typaldos at cynthia@kachingle.com, or contact us through Meetup’s email capability.

Sponsorships Available: In order to help members achieve visibility and cover food and room rental costs, we offer two Sponsorships Levels: Event Sponsor (site host) and Premium $250 Sponsor. Sponsors are highlighted on the Sponsors & Past Sponsors Pages, on the overhead screen during networking, and get an honorable mention by Moderator Cynthia Typaldos during the presentation. In addition, each has a few minutes to pitch their company. We limit Premium Sponsorships to the first THREE paid. To find out more about being a Sponsor, please contact charlotte.monte@kachingle.com. Thank you!

The post Freemium: Meetup March 14! App/SaaS Monetization — speakers from Strava, IVP, Medrio appeared first on Kachingle Blog.

Freemium: Customers either see value or not – Amit Dhir

Comparing to Amit Dhir, small minority of vendors remain committed to the traditional business model based on permanent licensing of software as a product. A small but growing number of companies, mainly start-ups, focus exclusively on emerging models, including subscription SaaS with cloud deployment, pay-as-you-go based on actual usage, and Freemium with or without premium versions. The remaining companies are combining both approaches into hybrid business models.

The evolving world of Software

Amit Dhir

XaaS Services represented 11.2% of the $237.3B of the software industry revenues in 2011 for the 100 largest companies.  Amit sees nine technology macro trends fueling growth, innovation and complexity across these software firms and they are affecting licensing, pricing and delivery models.

Buy as they like, Deploy as they like, Pay as they like!

Consumers want flexibility, predictability and interoperability with software. They want the ability to purchase software they really need and easily install it on all their devices…and they want convenient ways to pay for the software. These three factors bring the most complexity into the selling of software, especially for traditional software sellers who now must mix their old offerings with new models in creative ways.

“Buy as you like” software can be bought as subscription SaaS or in a traditional way with a rental license and possibly with financing. In a private cloud, or a public cloud, or on mobile devices consumers have the ability to deploy software in ways to fit their needs. With a flat fee or pay-per-user or by pay-per-view, customers now have choices.

Four pillars to determine pricing:

• Bounds—these are determined by customers’ perceptions of value, the price cannot be higher than the value given to it by potential buyers.
• Competition—everyone has competition. There are alternate solutions out there and the product needs to be competitively priced.
• Strategy— market goals can be to quickly gain market share or to position the company with a value platform for selling future services.
• Financial—this includes when and how a company plans to make money and the steps to get there.

Hybrids like Kachingle will be needed! – Amit Dhir

Many consumer and enterprise companies are embracing hybrid business models where both traditional and emerging software solutions are implemented.

Process Organization Technology Data & Analytics

Software pricing is a product of a company’s long-range goals, business model and the competition. Pricing excellence is the ongoing process of optimizing the price of goods and services to maximize profits. There are four elements in PwC’s pricing framework focusing on what drives pricing maturity and the impact financial results have throughout the pricing lifecycle.

• Pricing strategy – pricing goals, portfolio analysis, overall strategy, segment-specific strategy
• Price formulation – overall pricing and policies, segment-specific pricing and policies, pricing data and rules
• Transaction management – opportunities and requests, prioritization and allocation, quotations and deal management, policy enforcement
• Performance management – sales force and partner enablement, pricing performance measurement and management, compliance

PwC’s “Price Waterfall”

The visual tool, the “Price Waterfall” diagram, helps businesses reduce leakages by identifying costs. Businesses can follow a targeted sales price as it cascades down the sales channel from List Price to Buy Price to Invoice to Discount to Profit Margin.

Limit leakage using the Price Waterfall

• Identify the right pricing levels in business models, find a solid pricing strategy, have good operational factors and access routes to market. 
• Using the identified levels to determine what are optimal list prices, regional list prices, and good volume discounts and establish pricing floors.  
• Define policies for pricing levels, including who has the authority to exceeded set boundaries.
• Develop implementation plans with greater visibility into pricing adjustments where companies can analyze data about customer and market segmentation, product design and discounting effectiveness to improve their efficiency and profitability.  

Maximize economic benefits with good pricing

One of PwC’s Price Optimization and Management projects typically results in pricing improvements ranging from the changing of a vendor’s pricing model to the establishment of new pricing floors and discounting policies.

Pricing adjustments for increasing profits

• Adopt new pricing models for each customer segment reflecting customer value-drivers and costs-to-serve expenses
• Adjust prices to reflect market conditions (i.e., competitor pricing and customer willingness to pay)
• Establish pricing floors and eliminate pricing outliers
• Exit unprofitable customers
• Address pricing cannibalization by establishing price separation in good, better and best product lines
• Identify to customers up-sell opportunities
• Take out/reduce unnecessary discounts and promotions
• Charge for or eliminate cost-to-serve elements (e.g., freight, samples)
• Eliminate any unnecessary credits and rebates

Want to learn more about the Freemium Business Model for your business?

If you are in the Bay Area, join our monthly Freemium SF Bay Area Meetup for a chance to hear world-class speakers and make networking connections! If you can’t make it, you can always catch the summary, video and presentations.

The post Freemium: Hybrids like Kachingle will be needed! – Freemium Meetup February 2013 appeared first on Kachingle Blog.

The Meetup was held at DELL Crossover Cafe on February 13, 2013 in Santa Clara.

00:13:20 Welcoming remarks by Cynthia Typaldos, Founder of Kachingle
07:08:25 Bob’s Buzzword of the Day, Bob Rice, Tangent Capital Partners, courtesy Bloomberg TV
12:56:08 Jason St. Peter of DELL on DELL Innovators Credit Fund
17:41:20 Cynthia Typaldos presents Kachingle Premium bundling
24:57:07 Amit Dhir, PricewaterhouseCoopers presents pricing strategies
56:20:12 Melinda Wittstock, CEO and Founder of NewsiT discusses NewsiT success story

Want to learn more about the Freemium Business Model for your business?

If you are in the Bay Area, join our monthly Freemium SF Bay Area Meetup for a chance to hear world-class speakers and make networking connections! If you can’t make it, you can always catch the summary, video and presentations.

The post FreemiumSFBay: J. St. Peter, DELL, M. Wittstock, NewsiT and A.Dhir, PricewaterhouseCoopers appeared first on Kachingle Blog.

At the February Freemium Meetup, Melinda Wittstock, the CEO and founder of NewsiT, gave her insights about Freemium as a Business Model. Melinda has always been intrigued by what makes freemium models work – or not. She shared her expertise and lessons learned at NewsiT with more than one hundred Meetup people gathered at Dell.

Freemium is an amazing business model when it works – but often it doesn’t – Melinda Wittstock

Too many startups assume that if you follow the rules of Freemium 1.0, millions of dollars will be yours as you scale to IPO.  Melinda Wittstock from NewsiT thought it would work, until it didn’t. NewsiT made a pivot that is now proving fortuitous and lucrative – and she talked about how to reinvent Freemium.

Freemium 1.0 Rules

Melinda Wittstock

• Build an awesomely cool product
• Attract a gazillion users by offering it for free
• Figure out a premium upgrade
• Make millions (of $)
• Flip or IPO to exit

OK, so what are the odds that your start-up is Instagram or Evernote? Freemium is an amazing business model when it works, and according to Melinda it can work out fine, but the odds are stacked against most mortals.

NewsiT is a mobile and social platform for verifying crowd-reported content for relevance and accuracy. When we first launched, we were all about building vibrant communities of interest around content creation and collaboration – so it made sense to be a consumer-facing free app. Of course, it was going to take off like wildfire, and we’d monetize with advertising and paid upgrades. We’d also assemble the very best from the crowd into meaningful high value pieces and sell to online news sites, TV stations and newspapers. Classic freemium.

You can’t just think, “My product is so awesome millions will use it and revenue will come!” – Melinda Wittstock

So NewsiT started as a consumer-facing free app  Everything was well planned out. The team had a good strategy and proven expertise for kick-starting communities and getting traction. It all looked great. On paper. But still they couldn’t raise enough money to pull it off. On the East Coast, revenue is a prerequisite of a Series A round.

This is a business, so duh, start with the paying part – and work backwards from there.  – Melinda Wittstock

PRE-PIVOT: build a community – POST-PIVOT: build on media outlets’ existing communities

Then came the epiphany – and the pivot.  NewsiT is now a platform that is licensed not only to media, but to brands, advocacy groups, businesses and others – in essense, any organization that needs real-time information of relevance it can trust.  “I thought, So duh, start with the paying part – and work backwards from there,” Melinda told the Meetup.

She thought “backwards” and focused first on what to sell. NewsiT went from a B2C model to a B2B – to C model. NewsiT had to think very clearly about what companies would pay for – and why. In practice, that translated into many weeks and months in a consultative sales process as they built their platform. Because the companies licensing NewsiT would be paying for the front-facing crowd-sourcing UI and processes as much as the backend algorithms, the team needed to understand how the free part would help the paying part…and how the paying part in return would help spread the free.

Melinda told the Meetup it is important for a company to know the ‘what keeps its customers awake at night’ pain. Put the revenue ahead of the cost, she said. Some companies may not know they need your solution yet, which is why start ups disrupt them, but the more you know about how your paying customers feel the more likely you will build something that they will be happy to pay for. A company can boost their revenue and/or reduce the costs by providing better service to their end users.

The NewsiT B2B Platform is consumer facing – and free to consumers

Now NewsiT is a mobile social platform that vets and verifies crowd-reported content in real time via algorithms, ratings and a reputational scoring process. NewsiT reconfigures original posts, tweets and other social media by weeding out elements of noise, repetition and inaccuracies. Users get relevant and trustworthy information. Users also get valuable connections with others who share their interests.

News sources need reliable content from credible sources, which NewsiT helps determine. – Melinda Wittstock

NewsiT figured out that in general brands, campaigns and media will pay for a reliable source of contextual information they can trust and is ready to publish… and a cost-effective solution to engage, retain and monetize individual ‘influencers’.  

But none of that will likely work without a ‘free’ product for consumers.   A high rate of customer acquisition is the key to building social communities.

Freemium: Users need Circles of Trust

In NewsiT’s case the free part is the “Communities of Interest” aspect of the mobile crowd-reporting interface. People connect with other people around interests they share and they can create and consume information within “Circles of Trust”. They can use the iPhone app (yes, it’s free too!)  And coming soon they can access NewsiT via a software development kit (SDK or “devkit”) that advertisers can customize by style, topic and location.

Consumers can get the free product direct from NewsiT or via content partners.  And this is where the potential of Freemium lies: users get a lot for free – relevant and reliable real-time information, a trusted connections and valuable conversations all for free.

Freemium: What might consumers be interested in paying for?

The traditional way to look at this would be to ask if there is a possible product enhancement a company could offer users. Maybe offering more cool features to premium paying customers (like  the standard Freemium  model used by Evernote or Hootsuite) might work, or offering gimmicks  like special access an event (like an NPR type membership model –“I get everything for free but I can meet Steve Inskeep if I donate more money”). But at NewsiT, Melinda thinks the most freemium value comes from network effects – the interdependencies between users – and believes this is the way in which her platform can drive the most value for consumers as well as the businesses licensing the platform to better serve them.

Want to learn more about the Freemium Business Model for your business?

If you are in the Bay Area, join our monthly Freemium SF Bay Area Meetup for a chance to hear world-class speakers and make networking connections! If you can’t make it, you can always catch the summary, video and presentations.

The post Freemium: Think about the paying part first! – Freemium Meetup Feb 2013 appeared first on Kachingle Blog.

You can access the panelists’s presentations and full video from this Freemium SF Bay Area Meetup. Just click on the links to read or listen to anything, anytime.

A big thank you to our sponsors Dell and Intel!

Speaker:

• Cynthia Typaldos, Founder, Kachingle
• Jason St. Peter, Dell
• Brian Anderson, Dell
• Melinda Wittstock, NewsiT
• Amit Dhir, PwC
• Cynthia Typaldos, Founder, Kachingle

• Jason St. Peter, Dell

• Melinda Wittstock, NewsiT

• Amit Dhir, PwC

The post Freemium Meetup Speakers’ Presentations – February 13, 2013 appeared first on Kachingle Blog.

Dell Innovators Credit Fund

For entrepreneurs who are in charge of a rapid growing company and need additional funding to help growth, the Dell Innovators Credit Fund could be a solution. Jason St. Peter presented the opportunities to the Freemium Meetup Audience. The Dell Innovators Credit Fund is designed to help startups by providing credit, equipment and consultation. The fund was the brainchild of Ingrid Vanderveldt, a serial entrepreneur and Dell’s first entrepreneur-in-residence.

The Program is not a contest but a loan fund. It provides up to $100M to help entrepreneurs get the financial and scalable technology resources that they need to encourage innovation, bolster the speed-to-market and help with job creation. According to Jason, Dell’s Financial Services helps angel- and venture-backed companies obtain up to an additional ten percent funding. The funding comes with accelerated and limited credit terms. Additional financing is also possible. If you are a self-founded business then Dell has some other offerings for you. Actually, they are expanding their Entrepreneur-in-Residence community which already has lots of features, e.g. instructional videos, e-learning, advice from experts, etc. Dell aspires to be the number one technology provider in the entrepreneurial space.

Dell Software: End-to-End solutions

Brian Anderson

Dell Global Business Development Executive, Brian Anderson, spoke about how Dell’s vision has helped multiple Software-as-a-Service companies identify, create and deploy successful go-to-market partner models. He shared principles of indirect cloud services and highlighted Kachingle’s bundling model because he believes bundling is the future of SaaS.

Software: From Linear to Circular

Dell’s Software solutions are always End-to-End. The solutions are also an indirect model since they are available pre-cloud and in cloud. The historical way of software deployment was linear –investigate, acquire, use and retire the software. This was completely vendor driven. Errors, breaks, fixes are not documented, usage was not tracked and everything was in the hands of the vendor, including hardware and servers.

Today with SaaS it is a complete cycle. The vendor must continue innovating and evolving the product because the product is in use. And everything from the beginning experience to usage is all user-centric.

Boomi: AtomSphere: Trust and Suggest

Dell has its own platform for connecting to the cloud–Boomi. Boomi AtomSphere is the platform for cloud integration with on-premises applications. AtomSphere enables customers to design cloud-based integration processes called Atoms and transfer data between the cloud and the on-premise applications. An Atom is defined as what is necessary for an integration. Dell Boomi supports over one million middleware integration operations, and each operation may have anything from one connection of two disparate apps to two hundred connections. Dell Boomi proudly showcases their ability to support data integration via their live uptime website at trust.boomi.com

Boomi Suggest is the industry’s first and only suggestion wizard for data mapping. This feature allows customers to tap into the knowledge of an entire user community. Boomi Suggest learns which previous integration connections will work and abandons the ones that don’t work.

Applications supported by AtomSphere come from all sizes of companies. Currently, Dell Boomi’s customers include Salesforce.com, Pardot, Conga, and Cloud Analytics.

Want to learn more about the Freemium Business Model for your business?

If you are in the Bay Area, join our monthly Freemium SF Bay Area Meetup for a chance to hear world-class speakers and make networking connections! If you can’t make it, you can always catch the summary, video and presentations.

The post Freemium: Dell Innovators Credit Fund: Designed to help startups with credit, equipment & consultation appeared first on Kachingle Blog.

Giacomo’s Apps in the iOS Store

Giacomo Balli is an iOS entrepreneur and freelance developer. He has lots of experiences about Freemium in the mobile app space. Originally from Florence, Italy he recently relocated to San Francisco, CA.

“The biggest benefit of Freemium is removing the sales funnel.” – Giacomo Balli

FreemiumSFBay: What does the term Freemium mean to you?

Giacomo: Many people invest a lot of time debating whether freemium is a business model, revenue model or marketing technique. I believe these marco areas are not applicable since they were coined at the time of “traditional” business. Freemium is a hybrid generated by today’s extremely advanced business world. It glues together the 3 macro areas in a completely new way: a revenue model on which you can build a business model which already implements marketing benefits.

FreemiumSFBay: What is the biggest benefit of Freemium?

Giacomo: The biggest benefit of freemium is definitely removing the sales funnel when attracting new users. There is no “harsh” decision to be made upfront which then gives you many opportunities to sell and upsell.

FreemiumSFBay: What is the biggest danger of Freemium?

Giacomo: The biggest danger is the fact that many people still associate cost and quality. The danger with freemium is that, depending on your product, you might want to keep that funnel in place not to waste resources. Freemium isn’t a silver bullet; you need to asses whether it makes sense when applied to your product, target and business structure.

FreemiumSFBay: What was your first experience with  Freemium?

Giacomo: I make mobile apps, the industry where freemium was invented. I started using it when it first came out and was immediately amazed by the potential.

“You product needs to be “sliceable” into tiers.” – Giacomo Balli

FreemiumSFBay: When should a company offer Freemium?

Giacomo: Freemium should be adopted only when it fits well with product, target and business structure (or you are able/willing to change these). You product needs to be “sliceable” into tiers, target needs to be the mass and business needs to be able to scale and satisfy high volume.

FreemiumSFBay: If you have a free and a premium product, how “extreme” should the difference be?

Giacomo: Another great benefit of freemium is flexibility, hence the huge success in the SaaS business; there is no need to be extreme. If your product has a huge value, you can create intermediate tiers to accommodate all kinds of customers (think price elasticity).

FreemiumSFBay: What is the one issue you find most troubling with Freemium?

Giacomo: The one element that most often backfires is scalability of the infrastructure/service. When you implement freemium you open the doors to the mass: people who try the product just to try it. While these may generate sales, most will only “leech” resources. You need to be ready. Second is putting in place the best pricing model.

“Freemium is not the holy grail.” – Giacomo Balli

FreemiumSFBay: Users often expect free on the internet. How to do you change their mindset?

Users do expect free on the internet but they’re willing o pay if they see value applied to their life. Show value and they will pay (especially if there aren’t competitors).

FreemiumSFBay: How can you accurately measure success with Freemium?

Giacomo: Success is extremely vague and subjective. The main benchmark is obviously conversion and revenue. However, after the first implementation, companies usually start setting goals for the different aspects involved in the model (think advanced Google Analytics use).

FreemiumSFBay: To go Freemium or not to go Freemium–which way are you leaning?

Giacomo: Freemium is not the holy grail. There are big risks that hit very quickly due to the high volume. However, especially if you’re cautious with it an gradually implement it, most suitable companies will benefit from it.

Giacomo Balli

Giacomo Balli @BigBalli is an iOS entrepreneur and freelance developer (iPhone and iPad). Originally from Florence, Italy he is currently based in San Francisco, CA. In 2010 he founded his business and has released over 50 personal projects in the AppStore in addition to all the apps commissioned by companies. Currently he focuses on developing his own concepts and helping early stage startups get on their feet with an app.

Want to learn more about the Freemium Business Model for your business?

If you are in the Bay Area, join our monthly Freemium SF Bay Area Meetup for a chance to hear world-class speakers and make networking connections! If you can’t make it, you can always catch the summary, video and presentations.

The post “Freemium is a hybrid generated by today’s business world.” — Giacomo Balli in Interview with FreemiumSFBay appeared first on Kachingle Blog.