How is this different from simply running ad campaigns with lead gen companies?
LeadGeni.us: User acquisition as a service
61–70 of 84 posts
Re: LeadGeni.us: User acquisition as a service
#62We've been using another ex-YC company http://hiplead.com/ which uses more algorithms and less outsourcing, and they've totally kicked ass for us-- that screenshot on their homepage is from us. I'm ex-google eng and know my way around AdWords, and hiplead clobbered it. I'm curious if anybody's tried both?
Yes. The response rates have been much higher than anything I've seen before.
Re: LeadGeni.us: User acquisition as a service
#63Congrats on the launch of LeadGeni.us guys! Looks great and is a awesome market fit. Best wishes moving forward!
Thanks a lot, Mark!
Re: LeadGeni.us: User acquisition as a service
#64We've been using another ex-YC company http://hiplead.com/ which uses more algorithms and less outsourcing, and they've totally kicked ass for us-- that screenshot on their homepage is from us. I'm ex-google eng and know my way around AdWords, and hiplead clobbered it. I'm curious if anybody's tried both?
I'm very curious now that I've seen that screenshot. Can you tell us roughly what the emails they sent where like? What kind of template, how much personalization, etc?
Re: LeadGeni.us: User acquisition as a service
#65I wish there was a smaller / one-time price option. I would love to contract out a very specific 'early adopters' type of search (person with x background in y local area so I can meet them in person), get maybe 10-25 leads, and then I can reach out to them and pitch my idea and get feedback on a MVP or whatever. There is something to be said for doing this type of search for a potential market yourself, but if you a…
You may want to look at http://hiplead.com
At least for now, this is how their model works.
Re: LeadGeni.us: User acquisition as a service
#66I don't understand the plans.
The cheapest plan, for instance, is $800/mo for 20hr/week of lead research. Are these 20hr/week time that a real employee of LeadGenius is using to my services?
If that's the case, it translates to $1600/mo for 40hr/week -- a 20k salary for the employee?
Re: LeadGeni.us: User acquisition as a service
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
We mean that lead lists aren't shared internally inside LeadGenius. All the work that's carried out is considered work-for-hire, and remains client property. It's more work for us, but this protects our clients who sell similar products into the same segments.
Your staff will remember this, even if they aren't sharing things directly. Doesn't this just end up using more hours for your customers?
Customers requested it, actually, even knowing that it'd use more time. It's more useful at the end of the day anyway -- lead data is often not contact information, but a good body of background information that can be used to determine if someone's a good fit for a particular product or service.
Re: LeadGeni.us: User acquisition as a service
#68Hey guys, co-founder of MobileWorks here. We were really inspired by the post from PG about acquiring users manually. We have done that before with the help of our crowd so it was a no-brainer to create this as a service. We have been testing this with a number of YC companies and the results have been phenomenal. We are happy to present it to the larger Hacker News community. Happy to answer any questions.
Question: do you use an offshore staff? If not, how can you charge only $3400/m for two dedicated team members? If so, clever!
We have a combinator of off-shore and US based leadgeniuses. We divide the time based on what needs to be done and it comes to a net profit. It's more of finding out talented people everywhere in the world rather than divide them based on geographies.
Re: LeadGeni.us: User acquisition as a service
#69I love this. So I guess the one thing I would ask is if you guys would be interested in doing a % of sales deal, for startups that can't afford those high fees. I would think that you could make even more than what you charge on a % basis - if you are confident in the leads you produce. Just a thought. I would take you up on that offer if you had that - for sure.
Although this sounds like a decent idea, the challenge with it is that you're assuming a couple of things: 1) The start-up acquiring the lead list has the ability to progress the deals to closure. 2) The start-up acquiring the lead list is able to appropriately break-down their revenue in an easily audit-able/non-modifiable manner to demonstrate which $ came from the acquired lead list(s). This type of thing may be a…
Excellent points:
>1) The start-up acquiring the lead list has the ability to progress the deals to closure.
We help start-ups figure out a process for doing sales. Most start-ups have some idea of how they want to do their sales and we fine tune the process with them.
>2) The start-up acquiring the lead list is able to appropriately break-down their revenue in an easily audit-able/non-modifiable manner to demonstrate which $ came from the acquired lead list(s).
We also provide monthly reporting on the response rates and so on and it helps the start-ups to understand what their ROI on the process is. In general, the money we are charging is small enough that its always ROI positive.
Re: LeadGeni.us: User acquisition as a service
#70Congrats! This could be really big: one force that pressures B2B startups to get acquired is that huge companies have a big salesforce with existing customers. That makes it more efficient for multiple products to agglomerate into monoliths like IBM, EMC, or Oracle. If LeadGeni.us is successful, then it would become something like a federation of enterprise startups that share lead lists. That would in turn lead to a…
Based on your comment, I'm going to assume you've never worked in B2B sales. "Lead Lists" are not something enterprises want to share - small or large.
But by the same token, they are something that is worth keeping up woth the joneses on. so this might be a case where equilibrium farms out the low hanging fruit and the proprietary differentiation is on the harder/rain-maker parts of the list. Just seeing the glass half full, in other wrds.