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Yaniv Ben-Saadon, CEO of FixYa: Using the Social Web for Technical Support (Part 2)

Posted on Tuesday, Oct 2nd 2007

SM: Where did you get the idea for your current venture? What is your domain experience in the segment?

YB: Like any other consumer out there, I had a hard time finding relevant and updated support information for my products, and therefore decided to create this site.

As for experience in the industry, I have managed the dating business unit at hotbar.com and before that co-founded the gaming portal 3turtles.com

SM: What was the market landscape like when you founded the company? Competition? Competitive Positioning?

YB: By 2005, many companies offered pre-sale services on the web. From product reviews to price and shop comparison. There was no one site that actually provided a post sale service for all consumer products. This helped us penetrate the market and achieve the steep climb in awareness and distribution that we’ve enjoyed since then.

SM: Describe the value proposition, including differentiation versus the rest of the market.

YB: Basically we’re a one stop shop for all your post sale needs. Fixya aggregates relevant content such as manuals and specs as well as providing an easy to use Q&A platform which is also being aggregated by product. On our catalogue, we have 700,000 products from strollers and coffee makers to iPhone and laptops.

One of the great things about our offer to the community is that top experts can generate nice profits by offering premium services such as Chat and Guaranteed Solutions. This helps us incentivize and improve retention of top contributers.

SM: How big is the market? How do you calculate TAM? What is your business model?

* Ecommerce Aggregation is the one of the most profitable industry niches with more than a dozen companies exited at $500M and above (eBay, Shopping.com, Nextag, Bizrate, PriceGrabber, etc.).

* Q&A communities are among the fastest growing businesses today. Yahoo Answers passed their 10 Millionth user/mo. threshold 6 months after launch and several other online giants are entering this space (Askvill.com, QnA.com).

* Expert On Demand seem to be one of the highest Rev/User business models (Inginio generates $100M/year, OnForce, LiveOps, etc.).

* Big part of the Repair/Fix business is expected to migrate from Onsite and House Calls to Remote Help Desk solutions (MarketIntelNow, Inc). [See chart below]

(to be continued)

[Part 1]