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Launch HN: Navattic (YC W21) – Shareable demos for selling your SaaS product

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Re: Launch HN: Navattic (YC W21) – Shareable demos for selling your SaaS product

#12

Post by choyle »

mwcampbell wrote: post #10

Pardon the second top-level comment, but I have a few questions about the product: 1. Have you considered making the guided-tour functionality available for developers to integrate into the live app? That way applications can guide the user through the process of getting started with real data in their real account. 2. What about applications that have different UI entry points for different kinds of users? Can you d…

1. We do believe that this is a big opportunity, but it's quite a developed market (it's formally known as Digital Adoption Platforms). In order to compete in the space, there are a few more critical features that we need to develop. We would like to provide this for our customers so they can use the same guides throughout the early customer experience.

2. Yes. You can accomplish this by triggering guides to appear on pages matching certain patterns (such as url). You can also use guides to link between each other.

3. If that update results in an update to the UI, then it can be captured with DOM serialization.

Re: Launch HN: Navattic (YC W21) – Shareable demos for selling your SaaS product

#13

Post by ftio »

I've had this problem in literally every company I've been at. As a PM I'd be asked by my GM or CEO or Sales VP when they'll have a 'better demo environment' and I'd say, 'give me two engineers for several weeks' and they'd say 'no' and it would never happen.

This is sorely needed. Based on the problem alone, of all the companies I've seen in the W21 batch, this is where I'd place my bets.

Good luck!

Re: Launch HN: Navattic (YC W21) – Shareable demos for selling your SaaS product

#15

Post by rafrank »

ftio wrote: post #13

I've had this problem in literally every company I've been at. As a PM I'd be asked by my GM or CEO or Sales VP when they'll have a 'better demo environment' and I'd say, 'give me two engineers for several weeks' and they'd say 'no' and it would never happen. This is sorely needed. Based on the problem alone, of all the companies I've seen in the W21 batch, this is where I'd place my bets. Good luck!

Randy here. Thank you for the kind words! Engineering has bugs to fix and product to build and just doesn't have the time to spend on the demo environment.

Re: Launch HN: Navattic (YC W21) – Shareable demos for selling your SaaS product

#16

Post by ftio »

rafrank wrote: post #15
ftio wrote: post #13

I've had this problem in literally every company I've been at. As a PM I'd be asked by my GM or CEO or Sales VP when they'll have a 'better demo environment' and I'd say, 'give me two engineers for several weeks' and they'd say 'no' and it would never happen. This is sorely needed. Based on the problem alone, of all the companies I've seen in the W21 batch, this is where I'd place my bets. Good luck!

Randy here. Thank you for the kind words! Engineering has bugs to fix and product to build and just doesn't have the time to spend on the demo environment.

Absolutely.

I'm curious about your pricing. $700/month looks like the right balance between weeding out the tiny/expensive to support customers and not constraining your market too much.

How'd you land on a seat-based model? This feels to me like the kind of thing that, even in a company with a 100+ person engineering team, might be worked on by just one or two people, probably in Sales Engineering. Maybe one other person to handle the analytics side. Are you thinking that in larger companies, people from multiple product teams would do the demo for their portion of the product?

I don't have a better answer, but this is the kind of thing whose pricing should track relative to customer revenue. The more deals they close (bc of Navattic, presumably), the more you should charge.

I'm sure you've thought about this quite a bit. Interested to learn what your thinking is, if you care to share.

Re: Launch HN: Navattic (YC W21) – Shareable demos for selling your SaaS product

#17

Post by nrmclean »

ftio wrote: post #16
rafrank wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Randy here. Thank you for the kind words! Engineering has bugs to fix and product to build and just doesn't have the time to spend on the demo environment.

Absolutely. I'm curious about your pricing. $700/month looks like the right balance between weeding out the tiny/expensive to support customers and not constraining your market too much. How'd you land on a seat-based model? This feels to me like the kind of thing that, even in a company with a 100+ person engineering team, might be worked on by just one or two people, probably in Sales Engineering. Maybe one other p…

Yeah definitely, a conversion or revenue-based pricing model is interesting to explore. We landed on per-seat as we've noticed expansion to individual sales reps so they can share personalized demos with prospects. That said, it's still something we're working on refining.

Re: Launch HN: Navattic (YC W21) – Shareable demos for selling your SaaS product

#18

Post by nrmclean »

shodan757 wrote: post #14

Very cool! I was excited & shared this with everyone at my small SaaS company... then I saw your pricing. :( It's literally an order of magnitude out of our price range!

Thanks for the feedback. At this point we are targeting slightly larger SaaS companies, though we hope to bring this to a price point that's feasible for every SaaS company eventually!
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