eRoom Story

The eRoom Story

• Story of eRoom’s entry into the market
  • Pito and Jeffrey in 1995: Home delivery of groceries
  • The importance of domain expertise
• The case we made to the VC about our competitive advantage: Internet + Desktop software + groupware
• How to position it? Groupware, Collaboration, Teamware: all were dirty words
  • Customers (early adopters) really liked our value proposition
  • “We are constantly reinventing the wheel”
  • “there’s too much email”
  • “we should be sharing better”
  • “we are inefficient”
• How to sell: Download vs. Corporate sales team
  • Direct sales: selling an alpha and beta test
  • At first it went well but then it didn’t
• We needed to get more specific
  • Go beyond “nice to have” to “must have”
  • Vitamin vs. Aspirin
• What happened next
  • Horizontal/Vertical/Horizontical
  • The importance of real domain expertise
  • Why vertical (IMHO) is easier place to start
• Exercise Look to your “extended” team: what do you know better than eanyone else?