Building their own startup is a lifelong dream for many. But this is a hard path to follow, thanks to a number of failures, rejections, betrayals, bankruptcy, and even depression that greet the aspirants on the way.
We are always trying to help new startups succeed and grow sustainably through our Startup Program and This time we are throwing the spotlight on one of the startups from our Startup Program, Tallyfy, a startup that raised $1.7M to automate tedious processes you carry out at work.
The startup is an initiative of Amit Kothari, who spent a decade in managing and optimizing business processes for top companies like CocaCola, Bank of America, and Vodafone while staying at the cutting edge of collaboration technologies and process improvement.
The Humble Beginnings
Amit graduated with a Computer Science degree from the University of Bath in 2004. After experiencing many failures during his professional journey, he realized that the current processes require a major overhaul. In his own words:
“Disruption of this industry depended on combining & making business processes easy to track and improve. This not only makes doing a repeatable workflow incredibly easy but also gathers necessary information that AI/Machine Learning algorithms can use to improve the workflow.”
This led him to start Tallyfy.
For Amit following a process is ‘very’ difficult. “Almost all companies have processes. But they exist in static documents or flowcharts. People are ‘supposed’ to do things according to the process. The reality is that processes just gather dust in a corner.” This is what his views are about the current state of business processes.
Majority of the employees in companies use spreadsheets, emails, forms, and even papers to note tasks and do approvals. This is tedious and hard-to-manage. So, he gathered a team of developers and started a company that could automate the whole stuff within minutes.
Finding a Product-Market Fit
Amit’s first goal was to remove all old BPM processes that were becoming a hurdle in improving the progress of the company.
“Strict flowcharts with fixed paths are not even how people work in reality. Professionals and leaders know that a project is not a process. Getting a project management tool and pretend your processes are working is not the right way to do it,” he says. Hence, he took all the fuss out of the business processes and turned them into a beautiful toolkit that anyone can use within 60 seconds.
Achieving Success, One Step at a Time
Due to the novelty of the idea, Tallyfy was soon funded by two leading accelerators of the Silicon Valley including 500 Startups and Alchemist Accelerators with a combined funding of $1.7million.
Use the BEST @Tallyfy checklists to improve business processes: https://t.co/jybllk2hRR #500STRONG #BATCH17 pic.twitter.com/JE1nkxLXtK
— 500 Startups (@500Startups) August 2, 2016
Amit continued to add more features to the platform because according to him what one really needs to succeed in any business is to have “a superior product” led by a true customer-first and design-first mindset.
Marketing that Works
Amit says that a major part of his business was based on effective content marketing and inbound lead generation. But he credits his success to having a brilliant product.
For Tallyfy, a large chunk of their customers come from organic marketing, but paid marketing, referral, and email marketing still make a significant part of sales. But since their budgets are low, they focus primarily on organic searches i.e. inbound lead generation and traffic conversion funnel to get more sales. This has significantly contributed to where Tallyfy stands today.
But where did Amit get this idea? His edge in BPM.
Amit says, “one of the most powerful recipes for our success is because old BPM processes are costly, broken, and not customized for most businesses.” This is where Tallyfy grabbed the market share because no one else was doing this sort of thing. It has become popular among small businesses that are trying to automate their business processes.
Amit’s marketing formula in a nutshell:
- Have a product that’s superior than your competitors.
- Market it through all marketing channels available to you – Tallyfy focuses on multi-channel marketing because this way they can easily cover all platforms.
- Build relationships instead of customers if you want long-term growth and a sustainable business.
Overcoming Challenges
The biggest challenge for Amit was securing funds for his startup. “Fundraising for an introvert like me was exceptionally hard in Silicon Valley,” he says, adding that he eventually learned that it was more about psychology than anything else.
“Picking the right investors is like getting married. It’s really about a great fit.” – Amit Kothari, Founder Tallyfy
Another hurdle that the company faced was to integrate new functionalities into the product. “MVP was doing great, but we learned specific things that could enhance the UX/UI and scale attributes,” he adds. So, his team built it from scratch while integrating the features that his users had pointed within the product.
Just like many startups, we were also confused about how to market our USP to generate more leads through content marketing. This was a major nuisance. And to sort it early on, we had to rebuild our entire product API so that we had a better infrastructure to grow and scale our product. This meant ditching most of the product we built as an MVP.
Softwares Tallyfy Uses
The team at Tallyfy uses multiple software for development and design. But the core comes down to three software that makes it more productive and agile. These are
- Slack
- Basecamp
- Github
Tips for Success
For those who are launching their startups in 2018, Amit has some golden words. He advises them to think about how they can generate more demand for their product. The more demand they can generate about their product to the right audience, the more chances they have of sweeping the competition.
Second, he wants these startup founders to find out what their unfair-advantage is. Without a uniqueness, a startup can’t stay in the market for long. Because if that happens, consumers will have a choice. They will move to alternatives that offer a lower price. Startups should focus on finding their unique selling point (USP) that helps them stand out of the competition.
Key Takeaways
- Make a product that solves a particular problem.
- Have an unfair advantage. It will not only bring a voice to your brand but will also help in getting initial funding.
- Use multi-channel marketing strategy to scale faster.
- Create hooks that can generate demand for your product. Do this by showing how your product solve user problems
Found Tallyfy story inspiring? Read some more from our Startup Spotlight series.
Arsalan Sajid
Arsalan, a Digital Marketer by profession, works as a Startups and Digital Agencies Community Manager at Cloudways. He loves all things entrepreneurial and wakes up every day with the desire to enable the dreams of aspiring entrepreneurs through his work!
