[HN Gopher] Launch HN: Journey (YC W21) - a better tool for sell...
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Launch HN: Journey (YC W21) - a better tool for selling software
Hi, we're pclark, bweitz and anilsevim, the founders of Journey
(https://journey.io). We want to make buying and selling software a
better experience. We do this by allowing sellers and marketers to
combine all sorts of content--slides, videos, forms, calendars,
text--into one sharable webpage, which they can then easily
personalize for specific prospects. Think of it like a website that
is specifically designed for a specific individual to take a
specific action, which answers any questions or objections they may
have. For example, I took one of our standard demos and made a
"personalized" version for HN here:
https://jny.journey.io/p/3bbb55f82a224e399aafd2dc04f4f32b?pr.... To
customize it, I simply added the YC logo at the top, and a "Welcome
HN" video to intro the demo--but you can customize these things as
much as you like, as your sales process moves forward. Edit:
here's a further example on top of that one:
https://jny.journey.io/p/3bbb55f82a224e399aafd2dc04f4f32b?em.... In
response to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27235504, I made a
new version of the "Welcome HN" demo by adding a personalized intro
video, changing the logo at the top (I just picked a different one
arbitrarily), and restricting it to a specific person (note the
"only visible to [email address]" text on the right). Of course
it's not really restricted, because we want you all to see it, but
it's an example of how you can evolve these demos in response to
specific people's questions. Back in 2012 I launched a B2B email
marketing startup called Userfox on Hacker News
(https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4715237), and as that company
grew I repeatedly found that it was really hard to create an email
that performed well--because if an email is too long users will
skim over it, and if it has more than one link they'll never come
back to click them all. Our hope is that Journey helps fix such
interactions by allowing you to send users a specific page that has
_all_ the content you want them to read, including answers to their
specific questions about your product. Sales people have a hard
job, and we don't think their tools help them enough--they have to
rely on live meetings and phone calls. Which is annoying because a
live phone call is pretty much the last thing I want to do when I
want to actually use a product. You have to talk to a sales person
because there isn't a good way to communicate complexity today in
an asynchronous manner. Sales and marketing is actually 'just'
storytelling. You build something and then you tell people why they
want it. We often think that the latter part is the easy part--but
it isn't! It's really hard to introduce your product to someone,
even when you know they would benefit from it. If Journey can
provide a superior storytelling experience it stands to reason that
humans will require fewer live meetings. You don't need to
telephone for a taxi because you have the Uber app.... You won't
need to talk to a human to buy software because you'll have
Journey... Journey specifically is a web app where you can embed
and sequence various pieces of content (videos, slides, forms,
calendars, ...) and then share that sequence (a "Journey"). You can
then take a Journey and personalize it for a specific recipient.
Once you've shared a Journey, you get insights on where they're
spending time, and any comments they may have. Over time, you and
your prospect can build up an entire sales conversation this way,
focused around what they specifically need from your product. And
you can reuse any bits that worked particularly well in your future
conversations with other prospects. We'd love to know what HN
thinks of Journey, here's a link again to our HN demo mentioned
above:
https://jny.journey.io/p/3bbb55f82a224e399aafd2dc04f4f32b?pr....
From there you'll be able to sign up, request an onboarding call,
view case studies, and learn more. Thank you!!
Author : pclark
Score : 101 points
Date : 2021-05-21 13:28 UTC (9 hours ago)
| fuddle wrote:
| I'm seeing a "NET::ERR_CERT_INVALID" error on Chrome when opening
| the site.
| pclark wrote:
| Strange!! You're the second person to report this in 24 hours
| (the first was an important prospect for one of our users :( )
|
| I don't suppose the HN community has any idea how to debug
| this? I can't recreate it. I don't suppose you're running a pi-
| hole? (I had some SSL issues a while ago but it was because of
| my pi-hole...)
| lyime wrote:
| Congrats on the launch, Peter! I want to try this.
| pclark wrote:
| thank you! it's been a while (lyime and i were both in YC S11)
| -- looking forward to your feedback.
|
| Terminal49 looks fascinating!!
| raldu wrote:
| > Think of it like a website that is specifically designed for a
| specific individual to take a specific action, which answers any
| questions or objections they may have.
|
| OK that's quite a philosophical description for a platform to
| conveniently share sales pitches.
| pclark wrote:
| My hope is that people will use Journey for:
|
| * HVAC quotes
|
| * Concierge shopping
|
| * How-to guides
|
| etc etc! Stories can be all sorts of things!
| mwcampbell wrote:
| Congrats on the launch.
|
| I checked out the demo, and I have some feedback on the
| accessibility of the page with a screen reader. It appears that
| there are some clickable text elements that aren't marked up as
| links or buttons. I suggest using actual HTML links or buttons if
| you can. Failing that, you should use the role attribute to give
| them the proper ARIA role, and use tabindex="0" to make them
| keyboard focusable.
|
| But overall, I like what you're doing. HTML-based slides or other
| forms of interactive presentation have the potential to be much
| more accessible than either a static video or a typical screen
| sharing session.
| pclark wrote:
| Thanks! to be clear I believe accessibility is hugely important
| but also that such accessibility is beneficial to everyone. I
| am super excited to allow videos to have transcripts for
| example. I think the lack of investment in accessibility is a
| miss for everyone, not just those that require it.
|
| (Seems like we have some short term basic tech stuff to improve
| too!)
| mwcampbell wrote:
| I'm happy to answer questions about the tech stuff. My email
| is in my HN profile.
| n-exploit wrote:
| I had the opportunity to talk with the Journey team a few weeks
| ago, and I really appreciate their product and approach.
|
| We're going to be using Journey as an augmentation to our pitch
| process for investors who want tailored/detailed data than is
| usually available in your standard pitch deck.
|
| Keep up the great work, Journey Team!
| bweitz wrote:
| Thanks -- lots of interesting "fundraising Journeys" in the
| wild now. Here to help if you need anything or email us if you
| would like to chat with other founders using Journey similar
| use cases for any inspiration.
| huhtenberg wrote:
| Do I get it right that it's basically a tool for making
| (interactive?) pitches and/or presentations? Presumably with a
| focus on ease of creation.
|
| If so, you'd probably want to explain it like that. Because the
| presentation on the site and your description here are pretty
| dense and take an effort to parse. If only there were a good tool
| for efficient pitch crafting... :)
| pclark wrote:
| Haha, yup...
|
| My biggest challenge right now is Journey is so meta when
| discussing Journey. It's why we're trying to lean into success
| stories: https://www.journey.io/success -- but yes.
|
| Like if you're describing Journey in isolation, without
| discussing how someone uses it, you sound like a crazy person:
|
| Journey is a builder that lets you embed all sorts of content
| (slides, video, forms) into a sharable site. These sites can be
| used for when you want to convey complex ideas in an accessible
| way.
|
| Maybe that is pretty good actually! I had actually always
| wanted to post on HN with "how would you describe Journey?" :)
| bberenberg wrote:
| Sounds like you need a meta journey.
| an_opabinia wrote:
| > "Userfox"
|
| That memorable era when names were just things plus animals.
|
| > really hard to create an email that performed really well
| because if an email is too long users will skim over it
|
| On the other hand, how do you know, really, that videos convert
| more? They too can be tedious.
|
| > choose your own adventure sales story
|
| This is a phenomenal concept. Is it really this interface in your
| demo? My feeling is your leaning into the TurboTax wizard - that
| the kind of person too stupid to read in order to help themselves
| benefits immensely by reframing their _problem_ as a _chore_ with
| a _deadline_ and these _nice people_ will do it for you for $100
| - is "choose your own adventure sales story."
| pclark wrote:
| Haha, thanks. I remember coming up with the userfox name pretty
| much solely because I really like foxes and we had an awesome
| logo :)
|
| It's worth noting Journeys can be much more than just videos -
| interactive slides and charts for example.
|
| You make a good point about people being too laissez-faire but
| what we know is: a) people already do a ton of research before
| being compelled to talk to a human - Journey allows companies
| to slide into that research process without being annoying
|
| b) we fundamentally believe you'll get more sales if you
| empower people to think for themselves rather than forcing them
| on to a call. Lead submission forms convert at approx 1.5% ---
| there must be more users out there that are intrigued but not
| yet willing to talk to a sales person (and btw we don't
| cannibalise those that want calls, if anything we make it
| easier to coordinate since we embed meeting booking right
| there)
|
| ... and yeah our UI is a bit Turbotax right now and that isn't
| the desired first impression, we want people to think we are
| Nethack (well actually a more accessible and beautiful video
| game) or something equally fun and interactive.
|
| One of the fun but hard things about building this product is
| we have to dogfood aggressively - but then we are only as good
| as our product, not our sales slides. Which is how it should
| be! But it makes you have to be very intellectually honest
| about where you're at today...
|
| Lots to do...
| leerobert wrote:
| This is a nifty idea. Some thoughts:
|
| 1. B2B is as much about product fit as it is with the sales
| contact / company fit. People buy other people's stuff. There is
| a ton of potential here in humanizing the person pitching.
|
| 2. Absolutely love the UX. Clean and all the relevant links are
| succinctly put next to the content (videos).
|
| 3. It's not clear through the demo but what tooling/processes are
| in place to enable me selling to be able to personalize the pitch
| to the client? It would be nifty to have video editing tooling
| where I can add a personalized pitch to the end of the standard
| video.
| pclark wrote:
| Sorry for the delay, I was walking my dog.
|
| Re: 1, I would also add that I think Journey may win because of
| our virality. If I send you a Journey, its a conveniently
| packaged experience that you can then share with your co-
| workers or boss for feedback and approval. Suddenly the buyer
| is empowered to properly sell the tool.
|
| Re: 2, thanks! We're working on it and I think there is much
| more we can do generally though. It's a super hard problem to
| make something obviously interactive + compelling without
| adding friction for creator.
|
| Re: 3, here you go :)
| https://jny.journey.io/p/3bbb55f82a224e399aafd2dc04f4f32b?em...
|
| This is the same HN Journey but I've personalised it for you
| with a brief video message at the start (users can record these
| from within Gmail with our browser extension) - I also added
| LambaSchool's logo at the top (I just picked that one
| arbitrarily) as an example of hopefully making it feel even
| more personal.
| sixQuarks wrote:
| The link you provided in #3 finally showed me the unique
| value of your product. The web site left me confused on how
| this product was different than just recording videos.
|
| I think you need more examples of real-world journeys on the
| site, not just videos of people telling me how they find it
| useful.
| pclark wrote:
| Thanks, this is great feedback.
|
| We actually tried making some hypothetical Journeys (for
| example a fundraising deck for Webvan!) but then people got
| confused at the content.
|
| But yes we are investing heavily in examples!
| https://journey.io/success as a start.
| codingdave wrote:
| > You have to talk to a sales person because there isn't a good
| way to communicate complexity today in an asynchronous manner. A
| salesperson would much rather work asynchronously if they could
| be equally as successful -- but they can't!
|
| Sales is more effective when direct in real-time because it lets
| the salesperson drive the conversation to an action.
|
| Marketing is storytelling... sales is driving actions after the
| story has been told. Understanding that difference, and the
| different skills and approaches needed because of that difference
| is what helps drive success.
| pclark wrote:
| Jessica Livingston had a good quote about how sales was making
| a few people love you and marketing was making a lot of people
| know about you.
|
| I agree with you regarding sales and why its effective in real-
| time, but it doesn't have to be that way -- technology is
| rapidly changing that, software is getting so good you can now
| just signup for products you'd typically previous have to talk
| to a human to use.
|
| I think this trend will continue, and with Journey my belief is
| we can accelerate that even more with powerful marketing tools.
|
| I would add that sales is absolutely also storytelling - a
| great example is fundraising! I joined a B2B technology company
| (AdRoll) and worked there for 4 years and saw first hand how
| effective sales people sell - by telling stories, not reading
| from slides.
| pwillia7 wrote:
| I agree with both of you. You're absolutely right that
| effective salespeople are fantastic story tellers. They are
| also fantastic at reacting to the subtle and overt signals
| the buyer is giving off. I struggle to see an Enterprise
| sales person (or buyer honestly) going for something like
| this today. So much of sales is relationship building and non
| real time communication methods will never be that.
|
| I'm not even sure you can ever replace salespeople flying out
| visit people, even with 50 years future VR tech, because part
| of the value of flying out is the sacrifice of time, money
| and focus that helps build that trust and relationship.
|
| I really really like this product and I feel it could have a
| sweet spot in that upper SMB space where it's still fairly
| short sales cycles with fairly short close times. Those
| buyers are not getting any personal attention today and
| something like this would probably feel more akin to 'flying
| out' than they'll get otherwise.
|
| I hope there's a bunch of analytics in there too because that
| would be another awesome part of this. Seeing engagement
| through a set of materials would be pretty interesting. Nice
| work!
| notahacker wrote:
| I'd refine that slightly: marketing is telling an interesting
| enough story to get an enquiry, sales is telling a _relevant_
| enough story to get the action.
|
| Communicating the complexity of the product is only part of
| that. It's the "so based on what you've told me about needing
| to replace x that takes y hours per week, this z minute process
| I'm walking you through will generate u more v". For simple,
| universal value propositions you might be able to turn that
| into a calculator on a product page, but a lot of value
| propositions involving salespeople aren't simple or universal.
| (Also there's the _navigating large organizations_ bit and the
| _outbound_ bit, but they aren 't competing with or
| complimenting this product)
|
| Ironically one of pclark's comments elsewhere about Journey's
| value proposition being "so meta" makes me think _that 's
| exactly the bit a good salesperson solves for you: figuring out
| the gap in the specific client's marketing capabilities that
| Journey can fill_
| pclark wrote:
| Great comment!
|
| I don't think Journey is gonna replace humans for selling all
| software, I just think some interactions are better async. A
| friend of mine, Sahil (CEO of Gumroad) once told me that
| "live meetings should be used for closing" and that maps to
| how I feel too.
|
| For example I believe over time discovery can actually be
| made superior async than live, since with async we can do all
| kinds of crazy personalisation - rather than expecting a
| sales person to know all the questions to ask on a live
| meandering phone call.
|
| BTW we actually sell Journey by simply building a custom
| Journey for the prospect we're selling to. For example for
| calixa.com (a killer new CRM) I sent them a Journey of me
| "selling" Calixa so they could imagine how Journey could be
| used to sell Calixa to prospects. IMHO this is how selling
| should be, not generic materials or even sales speak -- real
| world use cases!
| notahacker wrote:
| Oh yeah, I'm not saying there isn't a use case for this
| sort of thing. I think you'd need human level AGI to do the
| sort of real world use case personalization I did on sales
| demos, but there's definitely plenty of sales processes and
| parts of sales process where the generic product copy/video
| isn't enough and yet another demo/call isn't good time
| management. Not to mention jazzing up final proposals with
| reminders of things clients should have already seen.
| pclark wrote:
| Yeah - for mature sales teams, sales follow up is
| actually more of a use case for us than cold outreach.
|
| Bit different for founder sales though.
| ahstilde wrote:
| I can see this being useful for customer support, too. Just
| signed up!
| bweitz wrote:
| Yes, we're seeing Journeys be used pretty horizontally (which
| clearly makes our messaging a challenge!) and CS being one of
| those use cases - interested to learn more about how you see
| Journey fitting in for you.
| pclark wrote:
| Yes! I have a lot of scar tissue from running Growth alongside
| Customer Success teams who were struggling to get users to take
| actions ("Just login, click this URL, then when the lightbox
| appears, enter 'moof123' thank you good day!")
| vtuulos wrote:
| I love the idea! The Journey team has a great founder-market fit
| too :) I am looking forward to using the product by myself.
|
| Congrats for the launch!
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