You need to be 10 times as good as your competitors

You should aim to be 10 times as good when entering a market with many competitors. With Dinero, my ambition is to make accounting far easier for small businesses and freelancers, so they feel the difference in their everyday lives.

Otherwise you need to spend 10 times as much on marketing… Stop making invoices in Excel and Word – Use free Dinero

Be 10 times as good when the market is already crowded

Many people have asked why we want to build Dinero when there are already so many accounting systems. These are shark-infested waters. There are big suppliers, smaller programs and several services offering free invoicing. Why enter it?

This is my view of the market in April 2013, just after we have launched Dinero’s invoicing module. I mention SAP, Visma, Microsoft C5, e-conomic, Billy’s Billing and SummaSummarum, among others, and for invoicing there are services such as Tradeshift and Sproom. Several new programs have also appeared. Even so, I believe there is room because a particular target group is not being served well enough.

The large systems solve different problems

In my view, many of the larger systems are made for businesses with complex needs. That might include inventory management, integration with other IT systems, sales tools or solutions that must work with the company’s production and packing.

There is nothing wrong with that. On the contrary, it is an interesting, lucrative market requiring flexibility and advanced integration options. A completely simple online service cannot just take it over. I think that market is already well covered.

At the other end are programs installed on your computer. They can be cheap or free and work well once you have learned to use them. I do not always find them particularly user-friendly, but you can get a long way for little money.

On the other hand, you need to manage your own backups. If the accounts only live on your computer and it disappears, you could have a problem. Working with a bookkeeper or accountant can also become awkward when you need to hand over the computer or send a copy of the database and coordinate who is working in it.

I also describe Billy’s Billing as an excellent product covering several of the same needs as Dinero. But I experience a complexity that takes the smallest businesses time to learn. I also consider what international expansion means for the pace of development. From SpamFighter, I know translating and adapting to many languages takes time. That was my assessment and concern at the time, not a measurement of other companies’ development speed.

I want to make everyday life easier for freelancers on the move

The gap I see is the modern freelancer who works at clients’ premises and wants to handle administration on the move. You should be able to write a quote or send an invoice from your iPhone, iPad or Android phone without it becoming a project in itself.

I use a public speaker as an example. You are sitting on the train home after a good talk and want to check whether customers have paid. You want to record payments in the accounts, chase those who have not paid and perhaps send an SMS if another follow-up is needed. It should be easy and simple.

Another part of the vision is photographing a receipt on your phone and getting it straight into the accounts. Then you do not need to send a shoebox of receipts to the bookkeeper. I imagine the bookkeeper creating a free account and accessing the system whenever it suits them, so you can work with the same material.

Receipts should be collected together and backed up. If you are in a shop and need to find the receipt for a computer you bought previously, you should be able to find it on your phone. Those are the kinds of situations in customers’ everyday lives I want to make easier.

The invoicing module is ready; the rest is our plan

Several things I talk about here are not yet finished in April 2013. We have launched the invoicing module. Among other things, you can see whether the recipient has viewed, downloaded or printed an invoice. That part is running.

In the video, I expect the next major version in July. The phone functions, receipts and full accounting should therefore be read as our vision and plans at this point, not a list of features already available.

I call it a third-generation tool because I want to create a different experience. The difference should not just be ticking boxes for more features. Customers should feel it is intuitive and that things flow without constantly having to read help text.

My ambition is for many people to do more themselves because things become easier and clearer. People should spend their energy giving talks, building houses, making websites and running their businesses. The accounting system should help them move forward.

Ten per cent better is not my ambition

When entering a market with existing competitors, I do not think being ten per cent better is enough. You should aim for a difference people really feel.

I use Google and AltaVista as an illustration: in my eyes, Google was not just slightly better. The experience was in a completely different league. That was the ambition with SpamFighter too, and it is also the ambition with Dinero. When I say ten times as good, that is my way of describing how high we must set the bar. It is not an objective measurement of the products.

Ask where the market is today and what could move it significantly forward. Can your product become much faster, more attractive or more effective? Could it save customers far more time or money? There must be something that makes people stop and say: wow.

At this point, we have received around 200 comments on Facebook, the Amino blog and Thorborg TV. My impression is that the vast majority are very enthusiastic. In the video, I describe it as around 90 per cent. That is my impression of the reactions, not a representative survey of all users.

The product and marketing must work together

A significantly better product takes time to make. If you are not ready to go all out, it will be difficult in a market with many competitors, all wanting a share.

I put it rather bluntly: if you are not ten times as good, you must spend ten times as much on marketing or be ten times as clever with your viral strategy. The point is that a small difference in the product can require a big effort to convince customers. The numbers are my way of emphasising the ambition.

With Dinero, I want to work on product quality, ease of use, marketing and the way users help spread the word. I am betting we can do significantly better in several areas. Whether we succeed remains to be seen.

When we started SpamFighter, there were around 300 competitors worldwide. In the video, I explain that we have still reached almost 70 million in revenue. Now we are trying to create something again, this time in the Danish market. It will be exciting and take a lot of work. That is how I like it.

Read also Iværksætter til jeg dør for more of my experiences with products, customers and competition.