The Startup Playbook, 2nd Edition

Chapter 25How to Get Customers

Getting customers to part with their money to purchase your product can be extremely challenging, even when they love your solution. My (Rajat's) company, MobileDay, was a case study in this. MobileDay was a one-touch conference calling application for smartphones. When you needed to join a conference call, you would just tap your phone rather than having to type in up to thirty digits. Sounded great for business professionals, right?

MobileDay attracted hundreds of thousands of users, but it struggled to turn a large percentage of those users into paying customers. From the fan mail the company received, there is no doubt about the value that the solution provided to people. Unfortunately, that value wasn't enough to get the bulk of the users to pay for the app. As a result, MobileDay's original business model to give the app away to casual users and to charge power users failed.

Because of this, the company was forced to pivot and charge forward in a completely different direction. Ultimately this pivot, too, failed, and the company was subsequently acquired for its assets. The app is now a small part of a broader solution for users to join meetings whether on their phone or in a conference room. While the MobileDay app still exists and delights its users, there wasn't a clear way for us to make money from it. In MobileDay's case, a broader solution just may have been the ticket to finding a business model that worked.

Why Focus on a Go-to-Market ...