A Start-up Journey (Re-Pivoting)

This is the 13th post in this series, click here to read the first one.

No, no, no… re-pivoting is not the right word. I’ll come up with a better one by the end of this post. Here’s what happened: we are working away on our new “Pay to Attend”, “Expert Webinar Marketplace”, having almost forgotten about our first “Free to Attend” idea, when the phone starts ringing. 

We had not shut down the first marketing site (Today’s Webinars), we had just launched another one (Next Webinars). I had every intention of re-visiting our first idea, but we needed to start generating revenue and it just seemed like the expert idea would get traction faster. So like I said, the phone starts ringing, and these people are interested in the “Free to Attend” platform. Why all of a sudden? I have no idea. My head is deep into our new idea and I have to stop for a minute and remember what was so awesome about our first idea. Oh yeah, pre-recorded content and all our bells and whistles for attendee interaction (shameless plug).

So I’m talking to this dude from Canada. I like Canada and Canadians, but this fellow is not their sharpest representative. I know the call is not going to go well when he asks if I could call him right back on this number so he can save on long distance. I do, because I’m a sucker. He starts by telling me that he is using some service that costs him $65/month that sounds like more of a go-to-meeting clone than an actual webinar platform. He tells me that he does all his presentations live, and gives his attendees his phone number so they can call him (of course) offline during his “webinar” so he can react to their questions on the “webinar”. I kindly explain that our system does not work that way, and he asks if I will contact him when we add that functionality. I explain that we will not ever be adding that functionality as our platform is designed for a different purpose. He says this functionality is critical to how he does it, and insists that I call him back when we add it. I say, “okay, you’ll be my first call”. Moron.

I take another call from a snooty, professorial sounding guy. He is listening quietly until I mention that the content is pre-recorded at which point I can actually “hear” him stand up. “What? What kind of fraud are you trying to perpetrate here? Webinars are supposed to be live!” , “Says who?” I looked it up, just to be sure, and according to the World Dictionary, Webinar means “an interactive seminar conducted over the World Wide Web”, fine, that’s what we got, no fraud.

I spoke to another guy who crowed that he always has at least 300 people on his webinars! While not really impressed, I did manage to work up a “Wow!” for him. He says he has been doing basically the same topic for a while now, but is not sure how this would work for him. Since he has been doing it for so long he has been able to cover just about every question that has been asked, and fine-tuned his presentation as a result, but still, every webinar, he gets someone with an obscure question that he needs to be able to address in the webinar.  How could he do that with our platform? Seriously, you got 300 people online listening to your well crafted content, and you’re gonna run 299 of them down some rabbit hole to address one attendee’s obscure question? I don’t think the platform is the problem here.

Another guy (why all guys?), says he likes to do his webinars “free-form”. His slides are really just “there”, he prefers to present his “stream of consciousness” on the fly. Sounds like a rambling snooze-fest to me. I reach the conclusion that webinars are not automatically successful, regardless of platform. In fact, the platform probably has little to do with success. I spoke to many more people who were already using the established webinar platforms, and many of the initial reactions to the “pre-recorded ” aspect were similar, but I did find plenty of enlightened people. A common “perk-up” point would be when I would mention that you can have video in your webinar. “What?, did you say video?”. Video is hot, and will be for a while, we all know that. Many presenters would like to add some video to their webinars, but due to the design of those platforms, it’s not workable today. Those of you who have been paying attention, might be saying “Steve, if your content is pre-recorded video, then of course you can “do” video”, yes, I get the irony. This also means that a lot of people are still not understanding what the hell I am talking about.

I speak to several more Webinar snobs and was able to craft my pitch a little better (“you can even do video”) duh. And, since we do have the live chat capability (shameless plug), our webinars can be as live as you want them to be. People are starting to come around, and I am once again seeing a life in the “Free to Attend” angle. I talked to a few people who were using free webinars to pitch their video products who I got to thinking about converting those products to “Pay to Attend” webinars and using both sides of our platform.

Okay, so I’ve thought about it, it is not so much a “re-pivoting” as it is a “straddling”. Two different markets, with different needs, all of which we can satisfy with our platform, at least, in my opinion.

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