Pavel Demeshchik

📣 It's that time again! THIS FRIDAY - Founders First Fridays 💪 I'll be hosting the Royal Oak meetup again at Bamboo - 220 S. Main St., Royal Oak, MI. 9-10am in the lower level cafe. REGISTER IN THE LINK IN COMMENTS 👍 ​🧐 What is this you ask? The first Friday of each month, founders get together to connect, share their challenges, and be resources for each other. This is a casual meetup with no set agenda, just Founders helping Founders. ​​Founders First Fridays is held in multiple cities across the state so all founders have a place to connect with the other great folks building companies here in Michigan. Hope to see you there! ​​🧐 Who should come? ​- Active ​high-growth startup founders ​​- Founders considering significantly scaling their companies ​​- Experienced founders who have raised venture or high-growth capital ​​ 🧐 What to expect ​- Build relationships with fellow founders ​​- Sharing challenges and discussing issues together in a judgment free zone ​​- Sharing your own experience and expertise with other founders ​​ 💜 This event is specifically designed for founders to connect and support each other. We kindly ask that if you're not a founder, you allow this space to be dedicated to founders only. We also ask that this is a sales-free zone - no selling to other founders! #foundersfirstfridays Michigan Founders Fund #founderssupportingfounders #femalefounder #startuplife #humanconnections

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ChartMogul rand Baremetrics are the top players in our niche, primarily used by SaaS companies. Recently, a new customer inquired about our biggest differentiator before transitioning to Radix. So, how did I respond to this query? Here below are my 2 cents: #1 – There's no need to trash talk competitors, especially when they offer commendable products/services, aiding numerous businesses. And, of course, lying would be a grave error. - Unless, they trash talk you first, cowardice has no place in a world where ruthless competition is essential for survival. #2 – Your primary objective is to address the question: What sets us apart? The answer must be precise, honest, and, most importantly, geared towards fostering a long-lasting business relationship. Deception could result in churn and negative reviews, which could be valid. In our case, I emphasized our strengths, which is assisting PayPal merchants in tracking, analyzing, optimizing, and growing revenue. - Our platform offers unparalleled PayPal integration (there is nothing similar in the market), offering the most robust data revenue analytics platform to help PayPal merchants analyze subscriptions, customers, transactions, products, and invoices. - Thanks to our partnership with PayPal, we empower SaaS and subscription-based businesses to accurately track all their subscriptions by statuses (Active, Canceled, or in Trialing) in real-time, facilitating precise calculations of MRR, Churn, LTV, and Tenure within minutes by just syncing their PayPal accounts with Radix. - You can aggregate up to 50 PayPal accounts in one place, streamlining revenue management in one single place. - If you have secondary merchants, you can sync them to Radix and combine them with your PayPal merchants to see everything aggregated in one single place. - Our analysis provides detailed insights on recurring and one-time customers, enabling the conversion of one-time revenue into recurring. - We segment analysis by products, customers, subscriptions, invoices, and revenue. - Our forecast model, tailored at the business level, accurately predicts MRR, Churn, and overall revenue. - Our trial dashboards provide comprehensive insights and utilize machine learning to flag subscriptions on trial that may not convert. #3 – After explaining your biggest differentiator, offer them a free trial so they can test all their options in the market and make an informed choice. Ultimately, this embodies one of the positive aspects of capitalism. - If they opt not to choose our platform, we ask for feedback to enhance our product or service and remain competitive in the future. And remember, especially if you are a startup, before competing to be 'cost-effective,' compete by solving a problem really well, providing great customer service, being obsessed with feedback, and shipping as fast as possible. Just my 2cents. #paypal #competitors #founders #saas #ecommerce #data

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OpenStore Struggling to Pivot, Getting into Software with OpenDesk Support Software I don't know much about OpenStore, except these facts: * One of the first "Shopify aggregators". * Raised $150M and was reportedly at almost $1B valuation at one point. * It has acquired over 50 brands. * In 2022, his number one goal was to acquire "ten times more" companies with a goal of "acquiring a business a day." * It "automated" the offer process more than most other aggregators. * In 2022, the company said "eventually" it plans to move merchants to a single platform. And here are some other facts about these previous facts: * Most startups become worthless, because they are startups. * Most acquisitions fail because the acquired business is not worth much. * Most acquisition synergies even between two great businesses are never realized without destroying what made one or both special. * Automating a bad business process (acquiring bad startups) tends to accelerate failure. Now the company releases some new facts in an updated interview: * The company now says it needs to make very few acquisitions because it now "wants to pick only the winners." (duh) * The company is releasing its internal customer service software to the world, because "it's good enough for us." Of course, it's based on AI. (duh) Let's review: * We used to want to acquire a company a day. We built a lot of automation to do that. * Now we want to acquire almost no companies. * Our biggest opportunity is now in software. * But we are not going to build software that generates any revenue, instead we are just going to shave a few pennies from outsourced reps in Phillipines (?) by moving to AI. Don't call it a pivot -- instead, call it a reboot. I wouldn't think Gorgias or Zendesk are too concerned. The company is aiming lower than this in the market. Instead of building automations for their own customers who apparently are not succeeding ... they are going to sell to other brands below $1M in sales most of which are also not going to succeed. The churn in this tier of the software market is unreal. That said, the new business sounds better than the old one! Still, I ask simply: who is going to trust this operation to run their software stack?

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FY24 TL;DR 🚀 Doubled our paid users from 900 to 1800. Nice! 🚀 Doubled our ARR run rate from $600K to $1.2M - More zeros, more fun. 🚀 20K live event registrations (8K last year) - We're throwing the best parties, and everyone's showing up. 🚀 Tripled our content watch time - Binge-watching isn't just for Netflix anymore. 🚀 160+ accounting firms actively subscribed (60 last year) - More firms joining our cool kids club. 🌱 Added 1 headcount, to a team of 6 - Quality over quantity, folks. FY25 here we come! ⏳ Thank you to our loyal customers who continue to support us! Ashfords, Blaze Acumen Chartered Accountants, Sinclair Wilson Accountants & Business Advisors, Prosperity Advisers Group, PKF International, Carbon Group, Cutcher & Neale Accounting and Financial Services, Lineage Group, Jaquillard Minns Chartered Accountants, Aintree Group, i2 Advisory Pty Ltd, McKinley Plowman, Ipsum Advisors. And investors who continue to back us Ron Lesh, Antler, LaunchVic. And our instructors, the true superheroes eradicating death by Powerpoint! Andrew Henshaw, Alastair Abbott, Amanda Gascoigne, Dan Osborne, Daniel Taborsky, Elizabeth Burnheim, Inbal Rodnay, Brown Wright Stein Lawyers, Jane Harris, Joel Garrett, Judy White, Ken Fehily, King Tan, Lisa Greig, Mark Morris, Maryna Kovalenko, Meng Lee, Mike Mortlock, Nathan Yii, Paul Hockridge, Paul Mather, Peter Adams, Rahul Kumar... (reached the limit of mentions, continued in comments!) Tax Nuggets Academy is an online learning platform for accountants. taxnuggetsacademy.com.au #buildinpublic #radicaltransparency #startups

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