Lessons to be learned from one company that changed the direction of their business

Has your company had an ah-ha moment of sudden inspiration and insight? You know, a realization that your product, business model, or market strategy needed a change in direction.

If not, think how a pivot might make sense -- the payoff could be huge!

Consider what happened to Feathr.

Feathr has a unique digital marketing platform for events and conferences. But, I’m getting ahead of myself because that’s not what the company started off its life doing. The original idea was a digital business card exchange application for smartphones.

The vision was to transform the business contact exchange process. Feathr’s mobile app could easily and seamlessly transmit phone numbers, email addresses, and social media information from one smartphone to another. Paper business cards would be eliminated!

That was 2011. The company ramped up over the next couple of years and nothing much happened.

As the ‘ol saying goes, you don’t know what you don’t know. It turned out that others had the same idea and none had gained any traction. But the real problem was that they never spoke with the “market” to find out what problems potential customers had that needed solving.

Then the first pivot happened. Co-founder and CEO Aleksander Levental told me, “The initial company transition happened in late 2013 when a TedX conference in Gainesville approached us and asked for a custom version of our app. The idea was to allow attendees to connect with each other before, during, and after the conference.”

Levental and his co-founder Aidan Augustin immediately recognized the opportunity. Levental said, “We ended up with a much more practical app and realized that selling to businesses in the event space was the way to go.”

Feathr was now renewed. They became a mobile event software company and sold around 300 apps to conference and exhibition businesses over the next two years.

Yet, another pivot was about to happen. Levental and Augustin were convinced of two things -- the over half of trillion dollars spent on business-to-business events every year made that the right target market for them, yet it was crowded with providers offering little differentiation.

“Then we had a major ah-ha moment and shifted our thinking to all the stuff and activities that happen around the event. What if we helped event management companies generate more revenue?” said Levental.

After several months of industry research and speaking with customer, the idea of creating the Event Marketing Cloud was born.

Then things started happening fast. They won a tech pitch contest based on the new business model that gave them $100,000 along with other investment resources. That allowed Feathr to reboot and pursue the development of the new software.

In the fall of 2014 Levental and Augustin spent a week in New York City presenting to trade show companies. Their goal, to get five events to sign up for a pilot turned out to be modest -- instead, they came away with twelve!

Their vision became a solid reality when the world’s leading event organizer, Reed Exhibitions, agreed to bring Feathr’s Event Marketing Cloud to more than one hundred of their events around the globe. That was mid 2015.

Since then, Feathr raised two million dollars in venture capital funding to continue their evolution. Plus, they now work with conferences, trade shows, and associations around the globe, including Reed’s well-known New York Comic Con. All of which use Feathr’s monetization features to sell and deliver millions of digital impressions.

And as you might expect, Feathr outgrew their facilities at the Florida Innovation Hub in Gainesville and moved its headquarters to a larger office space in the nearby Innovation Square.

This all happened because they listened, asked, questions, and listened some more. And because of that, Feathr is now rocking!

These are lessons for all of us. Leaving where we are and pushing existing beliefs and products to the side is not the most pleasant idea to consider. Still, it just may be possible that your pre-conceived views of your company, products, and its market is outdated.

From its simple beginnings, Feathr has emerged to become the market leader for behavioral marketing and monetization in the event industry. Levental and Augustin now know all the critical things businesses must do to ensure success.

That starts with solving a big problem the market has and making sure the solution and business model fits.

For Feathr, the result was a digital marketing platform focused only on single, but very large market, to help customers boost ticket sales and unlock new sponsorship revenue by engaging audiences throughout the year.

But first you have to ask.

Does your business model need tweaking?

Ron Stein is founder of More Customers Academy, helping business leaders build strategic messaging and positioning that cuts through the competitive noise to grow revenue. Ron has developed his own highly successful 5-step Stand Out & Sell More approach to winning new customers as a result of his twenty-five years of business development, marketing, and selling experiences. He works with a range of businesses, from startups to large corporations across industries including technology and healthcare, manufacturing, and financial services and banking. Ron conducts workshops, leads company meetings, offers keynote talks, and consults. He can be reached at 727-398-1855 or by email.