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Ask HN: How to sell my startup transcode.io

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Ask HN: How to sell my startup transcode.io

#1

Post by amrit_b »

I am facing a lot of troubles with govt polices to run this startup. And also its getting tougher to take it forward alone. I got an exciting response when I launched it last September http://goo.gl/JHoMQK (~10k visits in a 3 hours span).

I built many missing parts, and also worked on the UI, payment gateways (2checkout), invoicing system, support ticketing system, etc. Everything works fine now and good to go for production.

Many of you (from the HN community) have registered and tested it, and gave valuable feedback (and few are already using it on production) - Thank you all for your support! And sorry, many accounts are still not activated.

Many of you tweeted about it https://twitter.com/search?f=realtime&q=transcode.io&src=typd - Thanks you guys as well for spreading the word :)

I tried to team up, but failed miserably. There are so many things to do - coding, testing, marketing, support, financing, fraud detection, refunds, taking care of customers, expansion, new features, legal, etc.

English is not my first language, hence I face a lot of difficulties while writing official emails and stuff.

I need suggestions/directions for selling it or getting funded or getting co-founders.

Cheers!

(http://amritbera.com/journal/why-i-built-transcode-io)

Re: Ask HN: How to sell my startup transcode.io

#3

Post by waterlooalex »

waterlooalex wrote: post #2

A few questions: 1. How much do you want for it? 2. How much revenue do you have? 3. Have you found a way to acquire customers? 4. How much will it cost the new owner to get it developed further?

Also:

5. What are the reasons someone would pay to use transcoder.io instead of zencoder?

6. What are the reasons someone would pay to use transcoder.io instead of elastic transcoder?

Re: Ask HN: How to sell my startup transcode.io

#4

Post by amrit_b »

waterlooalex wrote: post #3
waterlooalex wrote: post #2

A few questions: 1. How much do you want for it? 2. How much revenue do you have? 3. Have you found a way to acquire customers? 4. How much will it cost the new owner to get it developed further?

Also: 5. What are the reasons someone would pay to use transcoder.io instead of zencoder? 6. What are the reasons someone would pay to use transcoder.io instead of elastic transcoder?

1> Frankly speaking I have no idea. If there are more than one buyer, then will give it to the higher payer.

2> Right now, users are using a free version - so no income.

3> As far as I know, there is no other product in the market with makes video transcoding this simple. So I don't think its tough to get users.

4> From a developer's prospective, it only needs a "forgot password" function before it can go to production. Everything else is ready.

5, 6> Here are the details -> http://amritbera.com/journal/why-i-built-transcode-io (transcode.io is a completely different thing - its code-less transcoding and CDN hosting)

Re: Ask HN: How to sell my startup transcode.io

#5

Post by waterlooalex »

amrit_b wrote: post #4
waterlooalex wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also: 5. What are the reasons someone would pay to use transcoder.io instead of zencoder? 6. What are the reasons someone would pay to use transcoder.io instead of elastic transcoder?

1> Frankly speaking I have no idea. If there are more than one buyer, then will give it to the higher payer. 2> Right now, users are using a free version - so no income. 3> As far as I know, there is no other product in the market with makes video transcoding this simple. So I don't think its tough to get users. 4> From a developer's prospective, it only needs a "forgot password" function before it can go to producti…

Thanks for the responses!

3. From what I've seen customer acquisition is the key challenge of any startup. If you can acquire customers for less than their life time value then you are set!

Without a process to acquire customers your business is much less valuable.

Someone would likely pay more for transcoder.io if it had a scalable way to acquire customers but no tech, vs what you have which is tech but no customer acquistion.

5, 6. I did read that blog post before posting the questions.

From the end user perspective they just want their videos transcoded, it seems like all 3 of these services do that. I was hoping you could summarize the tl;dr of why someone would use your service to get their videos transcoded vs someone else's.

Re: Ask HN: How to sell my startup transcode.io

#6

Post by amrit_b »

waterlooalex wrote: post #5
amrit_b wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1> Frankly speaking I have no idea. If there are more than one buyer, then will give it to the higher payer. 2> Right now, users are using a free version - so no income. 3> As far as I know, there is no other product in the market with makes video transcoding this simple. So I don't think its tough to get users. 4> From a developer's prospective, it only needs a "forgot password" function before it can go to producti…

Thanks for the responses! 3. From what I've seen customer acquisition is the key challenge of any startup. If you can acquire customers for less than their life time value then you are set! Without a process to acquire customers your business is much less valuable. Someone would likely pay more for transcoder.io if it had a scalable way to acquire customers but no tech, vs what you have which is tech but no customer…

Okay. Thats a valid point.

But I got ~40 customers without any kind of marketing and effort. All most all of them own video related websites.

Zencoder / bitsontherun have their own branding on user's videos. Even in the paid plans (which is extremely expensive) they show branded messages when some error occurs. Moreover you need to "upload" the videos somehow to initiate the process.

AWS elastic transcoder is of-course a good option, but again tat needs uploading and immense amount of code & development time. Not to mention, the developer should have enough experience to touch the AWS api/SDKs in the first place.

Transcode.io product takes care of your videos completely. From transcoding to hosting in a CDN. And you are free to theme your own video element. This absolutely needs no integration with api or sdk or anything.

Its like scaling and cropping images - just put the video path, and the rest will be taken care by the tool.

Re: Ask HN: How to sell my startup transcode.io

#7

Post by benologist »

It's no surprise you're demotivated, you've been creating empty work for yourself like an invoicing system and a support system when you don't have any customers. This kind of work does not make your company better and it's so premature it's not even useful.

Launch the paid version and focus on getting customers. Then your work will have meaning and impact and your company will be able to move forward.

Re: Ask HN: How to sell my startup transcode.io

#8

Post by waterlooalex »

amrit_b wrote: post #6
waterlooalex wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the responses! 3. From what I've seen customer acquisition is the key challenge of any startup. If you can acquire customers for less than their life time value then you are set! Without a process to acquire customers your business is much less valuable. Someone would likely pay more for transcoder.io if it had a scalable way to acquire customers but no tech, vs what you have which is tech but no customer…

Okay. Thats a valid point. But I got ~40 customers without any kind of marketing and effort. All most all of them own video related websites. Zencoder / bitsontherun have their own branding on user's videos. Even in the paid plans (which is extremely expensive) they show branded messages when some error occurs. Moreover you need to "upload" the videos somehow to initiate the process. AWS elastic transcoder is of-cour…

OK makes sense. 40 customers, nice!

What are your transcoding costs? Eg what is your profit margin on $0.3 per min?

Re: Ask HN: How to sell my startup transcode.io

#9

Post by amrit_b »

waterlooalex wrote: post #8
amrit_b wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay. Thats a valid point. But I got ~40 customers without any kind of marketing and effort. All most all of them own video related websites. Zencoder / bitsontherun have their own branding on user's videos. Even in the paid plans (which is extremely expensive) they show branded messages when some error occurs. Moreover you need to "upload" the videos somehow to initiate the process. AWS elastic transcoder is of-cour…

OK makes sense. 40 customers, nice! What are your transcoding costs? Eg what is your profit margin on $0.3 per min?

the transcoding price different and transferring price is different.. The invoice generation calculates it. transcoding_cost = 0.003 per second transferring_cost = 0.0003 per byte gets downloaded

Profit margin is double the expenditure.

but its flexible. need to tweak the values after production launch.

Re: Ask HN: How to sell my startup transcode.io

#10

Post by amrit_b »

benologist wrote: post #7

It's no surprise you're demotivated, you've been creating empty work for yourself like an invoicing system and a support system when you don't have any customers. This kind of work does not make your company better and it's so premature it's not even useful. Launch the paid version and focus on getting customers. Then your work will have meaning and impact and your company will be able to move forward.

Yeah definitely demotivated.

But there are ~40 customers and I needed that invoicing system to bill them :)

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