What I'd be really interested in is this:
1. What's the growth strategy longer term?
2. Has anyone on the team got any offline old-school marketing experience (direct mail etc)?
3. What related activities could be pulled in with this as a value-add to the consumer? A blog category interviewing users of the service and how they've used it would be invaluable, and a great way of generating great testimonials, for example.
4. You could potentially end up with a massively valuable data set in terms of looking at what is resonating with consumers, which could be collated and published in some form quarterly. This'd be a huge boon to market researchers, and marketers who deal with broad selections of clients across dozens of market sectors. Hell, I'd pay for it.
5. I'd be interested in knowing how the 60% reduction was made, and what decisions were taken at that point, plus the rational behind those choices.
</braindump>
(To clarify re. old ideas moved online, I'm thinking LinkedIn, MailChimp, Google Maps style services, which traditionally existed, being pivoted on)
Thanks for the comment and great questions.
In regards to the future and what we're planning - we try and let the product speak for itself. That way if were wrong, no one knows ;), and it gives us an opportunity to delight and surprise our customers.
re: background - my first startup was MaritimeVacation.com and I used direct mail as my primary marketing channel. Our team has deep DNA in marketing in general - kind of my area of study. http://www.udemy.com/social-marketing-for-startups/
re: 60% reduction - Let go of our customer coaches / contractors - Everyone took 50% pay cut - Cancelled any accounts that weren't critical - Stopped any payable = no money out unless needed to keep the lights on.
I've been doing startups for a while, and from experience, if you need to cut - make it quick and deep.
Hope that answers some of the questions.
I'd be curious to learn more about the company's current plans and product; if any of the company's founders are here and willing to share.
our investors definitely invested in the team and were grateful for having them on board. super supportive and amazing.
Small businesses are difficult customers. They are difficult to acquire.
