Tracy previously posted about her former failed cofounder[0] experience (before Julia came aboard), this one is about a failed hire, but she has a lot more stories about failed acquisitions, fundraising, and products. I've experienced some of these things with my own startup too but it never ceases to amaze me how diverse and different, yet universal, the "hard parts" of startups are.
I wish more people were brave enough to talk about that side.
Thanks. :) A lot of people at Startup School were more than happy to talk about the troubles they went through, but only after the fact — it was really hard for me to press submit to talk about current troubles. So much pressure for startup bullshit out there!
That's awesome, haven't seen that before. Funny because I was just at Brooklyn Beta and Ben spoke at length about how he didn't know what he was doing and attributed some of Svpply's "failure" to his run as CEO.
I'm interested to hear how you came up with your pricing. Likely you spent a lot of time coming up with the packages, but it seems like your market is really a tough market to price properly.
There is so much complexity in this industry that I would assume that the right pricing strategy would make a huge difference in your business.
At first glance I would assume things like... you must be low enough to not compete with wedding planners, so that would imply a max price of $2K to $3K. But then your pricing is only $79 which is far below (what I think is the average cost of a wedding planner). I'd be interested to find out what makes up that difference.
Are there ways to close the gap?
I'm sure there are a lot of considerations in the pricing that I cannot even think about properly, but it seems like there should be a lot of opportunity here.
HA good question. Succinctly, our pricing is not set in stone is likely to change.
Keep in mind that the vast majority of weddings these days do not have full planners, and if they work with a planner, generally it's a month-of or day-of planner, so that lowers the tiers of people we would be "competing" against.
WeddingLovely is also very new, so starting out at $14.99/month seemed ideal to test out. $19.99 is actually an experiment in price anchoring. $119 is because people usually work with us way before their wedding so we wanted to have a tier that rewards people who start with us early.
Basically, these are all guesses that we're testing, and will update and improve both our pricing as well as our features as we work more with engaged couples as well as gain more experience running an online wedding planning app.
Oh, and it's worth noting we work with planners (http://WeddingPlannerLove.com) — we're not about replacing the planner, since we do recommend planners within the app. :)
I got married a year ago, the organisation was so painful that I considered (and quickly dismissed) and idea to go into this space myself..
If I had to do it again, I'd want (and pay good money for):
* RSVP: via web/email, Facebook and post. Charge for post.
* Wedding Website (incl gallery!)
* Gift management (use a partner)
Then you can add:
* Make deals with Photographers, possibly vet them. Maybe get them to fill your galleries? It could be a hard sell, especially if you try and compete with them (i.e. by offering prints). Actually, why not partner with them: give them the ability to sell their prints more easily, not just to the Bride & Groom, but to the guests!
Actually, building a wedding business around the problem-domain of Wedding Photographers seems like an excellent strategy. If you increase their profits then they'll evangelise your site.
* Wedding plans / inspiration. Nice because you can sell stuff there (via partners).
* Directory for Wedding locations: it was hard finding good pictures and prices of wedding locations.
* Directory for Reception locations: same problem as Wedding Locations. This is also a more general problem, the discoverability of these places is terrible.
* Diversify into cards. This'll be a massive win for men: never forget your wedding anniversary again. Heck, implement this as a simple reminder service. Make a fun "Groom" styled-skin to solve his problem (and double your market!). BTW this also works for anniversaries / birthdays etc. Men forget this stuff really quickly.
The post wouldn't be complete without some feedback:
I personally don't like the copy on your site. You sound like a Bridal magazine. Your focus is on "curated links we found on google", but it should be on how you actually solve the problem of organising a Wedding. I don't care about the pretty things you've found on Google*
Question: why on earth are you charging a monthly fee for a one-off occasion? Why not let people try your site out for a month, with a larger flat fee at the end? Then offer to host the wedding picture gallery for N months, with the option to buy N months extra hosting.
What is your conversion rate like?
I like what you're doing, there's certainly enough to support a small but healthy business.. it would be cool to see you succeeding, especially if it comes from advice from HN :)
This is great timing since I'm actually working on revamping ALL the marketing copy. I agree completely with your points — I got wrapped up in "this is what a wedding startup would say!" rather than what is actually awesome about us.
Why we're charging monthly for a one off occasion: We actually have a monthly charge and a one-off charge, and our conversions are roughly split between the two. People who are just a few months out from their wedding tend to pick the monthly option, and people who are far out tend to pick the charge-once option. That said, I'm not justifying this — we're still (and probably always will be) in the process of testing out new pricing!
Good points about what you pay for. We actually work with a little over 1,500 wedding vendors (and almost 500 wedding photographers), and we're almost done with our vendor integration into the planning app.
Thanks so much for poking at WeddingLovely and spending time writing your feedback!
By offering the option to do either by month or a 1 time fee, your customers are doing the following:
1) Calculating number of months to wedding day (since they likely know the date)
2) Deciding which is cheaper
3) Purchasing the cheaper option.
*You are probably also losing conversions to people who decide to wait to save money, then just forget to purchase.
I'm not suggesting you do this, but just think about what would happen if you priced it in the opposite way. 6 months before the wedding, $80, 5 months before the wedding $90, 4 months before the wedding $100 etc.
My guess is that you may end up making a bigger $/user, and may even increase your conversion rate.
Looks like a good site and like you are offering real value. Best of luck!
Great Post Tracy. Great going for your startup and ATB. Thanks for being open in talking about your current troubles and not giving a rosy picture about ur startup.
Technically I've done both, since WeddingLovely was in the 500 Startups incubator a year ago. ;) Just haven't raised any more money since, which is another long and complex story that I should probably write about too!
Cliff notes: I don't feel comfortable raising money until the timing is absolutely right, and the timing was not right at 500's demo day since this online planning product hadn't launched yet, there was another weddings company in my batch doing something similar, and another two prominent wedding startups were fundraising at the same time too. :)
I wish more people were brave enough to talk about that side.
[0] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3776972