Making SMEs Run Smoothly: René Lacerte’s Cashview (Part 8)

SM: To date, you have primarily been building the product. How do you feel about what you have accomplished in this aspect?

RL: I think we have done well in that phase. I am pretty satisfied with the progress.

SM: Now you have seen two businesses with a similar focus, with a sweet spot in the smaller companies, although you would not mind expanding into working with somewhat larger companies this time.

RL: I think that with this project, to make it work, we have to serve both. There must be a focus regarding ease of use in order to allow just one employee to do this. However, I think the way we make money is by getting a 75 employee company to use it. The checkpoint will be getting people to move over and start using the product. I was amazed that PayCycle, with no track record, and nobody having a clue who I was, could get bank account information from people to do payroll. Hopefully now there is more credibility in this industry, and companies will be even more comfortable using us.

SM: People in general are becoming more comfortable with the web. There is a huge cultural shift in the market.

RL: That is definitely true. Hopefully they can get even more comfortable faster with us because we can point to PayCycle as one of our achievements.

SM: What are your thoughts about how you execute a viral marketing plan?

RL: We will have to do a free trial period. We will also play with different ways of messaging the product. We may have to find incentives to invite vendors or customers to use our service to allow them to have a full history of their bills.

SM: One method could be to start with slightly larger companies; perhaps 20, 30, 60 people companies who have lots of vendors working with them. Smaller companies, likely, do not have as many vendors working with them.

RL: I think what we will do is, since we are willing to go up market and the revenue model supports going after 75-100 employee companies, we will go after telemarketing. This is something we did not do at PayCycle. We are willing to spend aggressively to figure that one out. If we can get a 100 employee company to use us, we will make enough money on that company, and we should be willing to pay a couple thousand dollars to acquire that customer, especially since they can bring other customers in.

SM: Your sweet spot is definitely a bit different that it was with PayCycle.

RL: Absolutely, and I have to go after other markets.

SM: I think you will pull the low end automatically if you start somewhere in the middle.

RL: The way I think of the market is that there are products out there which focus on automating accounts receivable. The independent contractor needs that. The one employee company needs something in terms of billing. The bigger companies, the 5,000 employee companies, have folks who manage the accounts payable. My belief is that in order to crack the market you have to produce a product which makes it easy for both of these parties. It will be interesting to see how that works.

This segment is part 8 in the series : Making SMEs Run Smoothly: René Lacerte’s Cashview
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