How should we allocate our startup's budget?
LiveHeats - Modern Surf Competition Management
Our startup - LiveHeats, a competition management and live scoring web app for surfing/skateboarding competitions, has about $30k in the bank from sales generated in 2018 so far.
This revenue is mostly for 'annual' packages so our customers will be using the app for the whole of 2018.
We want to figure out how to best allocate this budget to both improve the product (and make some tweaks so we can support new sports) as well as acquire more customers (particularly in the US and Europe). We'd like to leave about $10k in the bank for a 'sprint' holiday later in the year where we can go away, book a Airbnb somewhere in the world and work intensely (as well as surf) for a month.
We're bootstrapped, and this is a side project run by myself and co-founder. We both work full time jobs (he in tech, me in consulting).
Would love some suggestions on how to best allocate the remaining $20k!
@chrisfriendy First of all congrats on the common sense way of approaching this!
Two aspects that I particularly like:
Like another comment said, I would definitely improve the landing page. Could be tackled both by using a landing page builder, or hiring someone.
I guess facebook ads would work for you, but usually, it sucks a big chunk of money in the beginning, while you are learning to use it before it starts generating some positive ROI.
A good one could be reaching out to influencers in that space.
Congrats as it sounds like a good niche product.
Do you already know your customers well enough?
I would probably Invest in understanding your customers better, to find out who your customers are, how they found you, how they decided to use your product, where they hangout, what they like about you, which ones are valuable to you, why customers are not signing up, where are they going to etc.
This feedback loop will drive a lot of your decisions on the product (what to create/ expand), marketing (where to market) and design (your landing page for example).
On expanding to other sports, I would probably make sure to really nail the surf/skate niche before heading off to other sports, the devil is in the details and there is probably significant room to grow in the surf/skate niche.
With regards to comments on your landing page, you can invest in optimizing it when it is an important channel and you are currently losing customers on it.
I would add a word of caution before thinking about redoing your landing page. Before you go and spend 10% of your budget on that, some important questions to ask... who uses that page? How many visitors does it get? Do you currently close your leads exclusively online to get your existing sales? This will help you decide how important that is.
I have my own start up that's a bootstrapped side gig too, www.spotter.online. A big part of our growth is working on partnerships for referrals, normally on a kickback basis (so no risk / upfront cost).
I'm going to take a wild guess from your description there that your co-founder and yourself are coders (and surfers) :) To me your landing page is OK (not great, but OK) and clearly you've got a decent product if you've already got some paying customers.
Could it be worth exploring bringing in some different talent, perhaps someone with the gift of the gab who could work with you freelance to try and build partnerships to expand the business? For my own start up, we target personal trainers so I've been working on finding a PT who wants to make some extra cash on trial basis. Could you find a business-minded surfer who's well connected to help you out a few hours a week on building a pipeline? Just a thought.
$20K is good enough to do two things:
As of #1 - I would consider hiring a landing page specialist and improving your website. It could use some heavy improvement. For $2-3K you can get a highly optimized landing page from one of the top freelancers. This will help you close more sales from visitors.
Your website needs a proper re-design for sure.
Regarding 2 - research your market and try to find out if you can use your current market position to offer more services. You can use remaining money as an investment in creating more services/products.