Questions

Online Contract Negotiation. www.clearcontract.com (sorry, landing page needs work). We are in a Microsoft incubator in Seattle. This idea came out of a I-Banker needing to solve his own problem and selling the solution to his own firm. We think the ideal market has these characteristics: 1) lots of transactions that require a contract for money to change hands 2) need to negotiate contracts often 3) lots of counter party risk/ downside risk We think that means: Real estate (commercial, residential, bank owned) Finance (hedge funds, private equity, I-banks) Lawyers (general counsel) Procurement, Import/Export

I think you already answered your own question. Start with the market you know - investment banking.

This is clearly an extension of virtual document rooms. Start there. Who buys VDRs? Target them. Figure out which conferences Merrill and Intralinks attend. Go there as an attendee, corner a few people, and figure out who else has the same problem. Sell a few of them. Then buy a booth at the next one and set up some real meetings.

One huge trick to SaaS is to stay very focused on an achievable, small market first. Then, as you get traction, start expanding you markets and capabilities. The biggest problem in SaaS is that either your development team or your sales team is always going to be behind. It's much more likely it'll be your development team. The more markets you add just creates more initial complexity and slows down your developers.

Build a tightly defined product and market it to one market. Then create derivative products and expand your brand.

I'm happy to chat through more strategy with you if you'd like to go deeper, but I think you already have the first market figured out.


Answered 9 years ago

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