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Built In Chicago would like to congratulate February’s Startup of the Month: PointDrive. PointDrive, a sales-oriented app for presenting content, has seen substantial traction in just a few months: users have created over 3,500 presentations and distributed them to over 8,500 individuals. CEO Bill Burnett said he plans to have 2,500 paying customers by the end of this year.
And this seems quite feasible at the rate PointDrive has been going. Since they’ve launched PointDrive in October at the DEMO conference, their 8-person team has been busy: they’ve signed up over 2,000 users and just launched PointDrive Pro Plan last month. The Pro Plan offers users enhanced analytics and integration with Google Contacts and Dropbox so that existing digital content can be presented and tracked even better. Next up for the team is launching a collaborative, team version of PointDrive (upon request from their current users) which will make the sales process even easier.
The story behind PointDrive actually starts within the story of another Chicago company, Fippex. Burnett and co-founder David Pessis also co-founded Fippex, a cloud-based client enablement and communications platform in early 2008. They started out marketing it just to financial services companies, but soon expanded to a many industries. The expansion didn’t stop there: from Fippex, Burnett and Pessis launched the PointDrive brand and tool that is growing so quickly today.
Built In Chicago caught up with Burnett to hear how he and his team have been keeping up with the stressful deadlines that come with launching and iterating a fast-growing, young product:
How did you realize there was a need for a tool like PointDrive in the sales process?
We saw that customers of our first product, a content sharing tool and data room solution for the financial services space, were using it in a business development capacity. From that we knew salespeople wanted customer feedback and a better way to present content, and believed that demand extended to a broad audience of professionals. This has proven true over the last three to four months, as we've seen the most traction with sales professionals across the consulting, marketing, advertising and PR industries.
What was most difficult about the legwork leading up to your October launch?
From our previous experience, we knew we wanted to build a scalable sales tool that provided a better way to present content on all devices and platforms, and get actionable feedback from customers. After interviewing our existing clients as well as a number of close business professionals, we validated the concept and then focused on execution. The greatest challenge was getting the product out the door and live. We could work on it forever, so putting a stake in the ground as to what features and capabilities would be in the launch version and driving the team to get those perfected in time, while also readying all our marketing initiatives, was a significant challenge.
What’s the biggest lesson learned over these first few months?
I've learned that it's important to have hard deadlines for the product that everyone is moving towards. Otherwise, you just keep iterating – there's always something that can be improved and you have to force yourself to stop and share what you have. The DEMO Fall event provided us that at launch. Then we did this for ourselves for the Pro Plan launch January 27. We stayed firm with our teams and with our customers that January 27 was the date. Everyone knew we were going live that day no matter what.
The toughest challenge we face as a small business is agreeing on the direction of the product and what features to build next. We’re fortunate to have received a lot of excellent suggestions from our customers, so we work together as team on what to prioritize and execute.
What sort of feedback have you been getting from users?
People love the product and many have shared their stories and successes. Lisa Ghisolf, whose case study is featured on our blog, said she landed new business in just a few days of using PointDrive. She shared her portfolio with a potential client then followed up later that day once she noticed they accessed her presentation. Lisa got the order right then. We've learned a lot from our early users over the last few months and based many of the updates to the Pro Plan on that valuable feedback.
Where do you see PointDrive headed in 2014?
A big goal of ours is to develop a team version of the product. The initial response from businesses has been stronger than expected, so we are working quickly to offer a version of PointDrive where a business can purchase and manage their whole team from one account. As far as specific numbers go, our goal is to have 2,500 paying customers by the end of 2014.
Have a lesson learned, an announcement or a recommendation for a future story? Email [email protected].
