How can we reach customers, Simon Yi?
Simon Yi is a growth marketing advisor of Techstars and project director of Tachyon Accelerator. Having a bachelor’s degree in business administration and economics from University of Michigan, he has vast experience of financial trends in the market as he has been a finance reporter for ten years. He has been serving as financial advisor at several firms, such as GenoPallete, Interseller, and Roundhill Investments. His current venture is focused on a web accelerator relating to blockchain technology. In this conversation, we get into the depths with Simon about the financial markets.
Q: How to enhance the customer base of my pre-revenue, post-product company?
Simon: The secret to expanding your company’s customer base is through a continuous survey about your products with your customers. Interact with your customers, tell them about your product, tell them how your product can solve their particular problem. The least you can do is get proper feedback from the customers on your product, which will help you gain specific insights about the future of your product.
Q: How can I enhance the reach of the products of my startup through web peers?
Simon: Enhanced reach depends on three major points. The first one is proper indexing, which means that search engines like Google can correctly analyze your startup’s content and show it to the related customer base. Number two is social pipes, where content is appropriately oriented for the people to understand. A good example is msn.com instead of using Microsoft.com. Number three is decentralization, where the data is placed on several decentralized servers instead of storing it on a single dedicated server. This not only expands the reach but also helps in maintaining the privacy of the data.
Q: How do you speed up your sales generally?
Simon: Depending on your sales development, you can take different steps towards enhancing your response. The best way is through automated outreach. High-quality automated emails and other WhatsApp groups related to your products help you to improve the outreach.
Q: What marketing or sales channels have proper worth?
Simon: Social media sites like Facebook and search engine giants like Google have dedicated marketing channels for advertisements. In the previous decade, the spread of the Internet has granted these platforms an enormous significance in digital marketing. Efficient targeting campaigns with a proper time frame and a related audience can lead to rapid boosts in sales. Optimizing the digital marketing campaigns using keywords in context to the products you are offering can help to enhance the outreach of the products and services you are offering to the related audience.
Q: Is joining more than one accelerator a good idea?
Simon: Joining more than one accelerator to the same startup is a negative signal for the investors. This is because each accelerator you hire takes up a specific percentage of the equity. This takes the profits of your startup to the lower side, which is a nightmare for investors.
Q: Which resources do you recommend to understand blockchain technology?
Simon: For understanding blockchain technology, you can go to different universities. Moreover, many finance media companies such as Bloomberg have dedicated content relating to cryptocurrency and blockchain technology, which help understanding blockchain step by step. Also, there are several podcasts available on the Internet where people talk about blockchain to get an idea of what a blockchain actually is.
Q: Is there differences between startups and established companies when acquiring customers?
Simon: I think that the number one trait in acquiring first users as our clients is that startups are more empathetic towards their customers. They understand the needs of their customers and modify their products and services according to customer feedback. On the other hand, established businesses mostly try to sell their products without any empathy towards their customers.
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