It seemed from that outside that he learnt about entrepreneurship at college, and then simply went about the business of putting that into practice.

Theory grounded in the type of common sense espoused on this site.

Congrats to him & Brian for making such a huge success of it. Has been very interesting to follow.

This is going to be massive over the next few years with web, mobile, tablets, internet TV, paid content etc. Interactive consumer and media experiences.

It's not art as you described, but imagine it would scratch the creative itch and keep you gainfully employed!

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1995066

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

From 94 > 37% series A is incredible, and ending up with 12.5%.

I wouldn't exactly be crying into my beer today if I was them, but I have to wonder if VC was worth it vs building organically for a few more years.

Especially when they are all Amazon based etc. Where did the money go?

It obviously works for writers, designers, artists etc, but for various reasons, I've always been skeptical about whether the work would be there for a developer.

I even have a Facebook account somewhere - just don't like logging into another site like this for some reason.

So what if they've introduced charges? If someone else provides this for free, go there. If not, cough up!

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1374676

Points: 3

# Comments: 1

Maybe ping me a mail if you are interested - happy to keep you in the loop and may be able to repay the favour next time you need feedback.

True re price sensitivity of the small business, but in a way, the target market is the fundamental USP. Nameley, take a tool that the bigger guys are using and make it available in a scalable fashion to small businesses.

Re thousands of subscriptions... If I could take 100 at that price I'd be happy with the outcome.

Plus I think there's a number of related areas I could move on to off the back of this.

Thanks for the comment - really useful. Also, if you have 5 minutes, feel free to include more info on your experience or link up with me be email twitter etc.

I wasn't aware of CardStar - a fair amount of overlap there.

+1 to that killer application in a sentence. I'm not quite there with my elevator pitch.

I guess I do want to sell both concepts - but definetly need to re-balance the two slightly.

Pricing is difficult - I want to be able to show ROI to something like a small cafe or restaurant.

Tiers might be the answer but at the same time I want a really simple pricing scheme, and will probably defer the choice till the user is more familiar with the system when they have more knowledge about what they might need.

I'm a bit torn on the images - stock photos are generally rubbish but it adds a bit of context.

Creating my own photographs is probably not the best time or cash investment.

Point taken though - maybe I'll look for better stock images!

http://www.loyaltyspace.com/faq.html

Thanks - Ben

I have built a system to manage customer loyalty programmes for small businesses.

By implementing my software, they'll be able to:

Improve sales by directly rewarding recurring purchases.

Be slightly more data driven in their approach and marketing - sending tailored offers and marketing.

Use the mobile channel - SMS and Mobile Web to push out offers and build a relationship with their customers.

There is a definite gap in the market for this. I have spoken with tens of potential customers who have looked for a similar system, but have been put off by the high setup costs and tie ins. These are businesses such as restaurants, salons etc, who want to try loyalty marketing but want to be sure of it's use before making any big commitment.

Anyway, would appreciate any comments about the idea, website, sofware etc.

[NOTE: There are still a few rough edges in the software to be cleaned up over the next day or so. My existing handful of customers out of my beta testing and development are on a seperate instances running older software.]