Ask HN: Can anyone help us with Positioning?
The original problem we thought we'll solve was the problem with emails - huge mail volume, threading, clutter etc.
We built it as a collaboration tool and later thought we'll integrate email so that it will behave as an email client. But the email client thing hasn't materialized as it would take huge dev effort.
Now we have a collaboration tool or a Unified communication tool.
- Previously, we positioned it as a unified communication tool. Very low conversion rate and we thought it isn't working, so we changed it.
- Currently, we have positioned it as a tool to organize work, eases meeting scheduling and reminders (as you can see on the website).
- We are thinking to change it to 'The Next Version of Email' (which is a validated problem - we used to have 9% signup rate on this previously). Herein we'll say that we are a closed email system and just like you create an email ID elsewhere, you reserve your username here and communicate with others (using the system) just like Email but much more powerfully. The problem here is that until others are invited onto Comtify, it's unusable and for it to compete with email, a huge critical mass of users would be needed.
- Another thought is to position it as a 'Free Business Email', wherein we'll say that we are the first free provider of business email. [Herein, we'll look at other revenue sources like charging businesses only on on-premise deployment etc.]. This would not actually be emails, but usernames on Comtify (just like Twitter handles). But again, the problem here is of critical mass - unless it grows fast enough to be able to be used by many businesses, it can't be used for external communication and company will have to use standard email client for that.
Kindly help!