(1) Describe your startup.
TryDonna.com is a virtual receptionist company that helps people grow their businesses while taking back their life. Most people didn’t get in business to answer the phones. They started a business to help their customers, to build new tech, or to change the world. You can’t do that if you’re fielding calls from telemarketers. Our professional virtual receptionists are just like having a receptionist right there in the office with you, at 1/5th the cost. We handle all your inbound calls, schedule appointments, and capture any leads that might call in to give you the peace of mind that your business is growing while you take back your life.
(2) What inspired the creation of the startup?
My wife and I were searching for a good real estate agent to help us in buying our first land-based home (we currently live on a houseboat!) and were becoming more and more frustrated that all of the agents that we called either didn’t pick up the phone in the first place, or never returned our call back requests.
As I thought about it, I couldn’t get away from the simple fact that if SOMEONE just answered the phone when I called, that person would have won my business – even if all they did was take a message and promise to call back later.
In the United States, the median home value is right around $200,000, which means that the average commission for a real estate agent on a single sale is going to be somewhere around $6,000. If an agent made just a single sale each month, representing just one side of the transaction per sale, they would gross around $72,000 per year.
What would it take for an agent to get just one sale each month? Honestly, as long as they are doing even a little good marketing for leads, just picking up the phone every time it rings would produce those kinds of numbers.
From there, I set out to figure out the right solution.
(3) What differentiates your startup from the competition?
TryDonna.com is different in three primary ways:
1) We are the only virtual receptionist service on the market that exclusively serves the financial and professional industry. With any other service your receptionist may be on the phone with a plumber’s client to schedule a clogged toilet just before answering for your HNW client or investor. So, who would you trust to know your business better?
2) We are the only call answering service (that we know of!) that uses a subscription pricing model. All other services charge a flat monthly fee PLUS a per-minute cost and overage fees. With Donna you can rest assured that your monthly cost will always be the same from one month to the next.
3) Donna provides a premium answering service for clients who care about how their phones are answered. Many services compete on being the lowest cost which leads to a lower-quality receptionist team with high churn. We take care of our staff and provide generous benefits to ensure that we can retain the highest quality team members.
(4) Who is the target market?
Founders and executives of financial or professional businesses. We have early clients that range from hedge funds and VCs, to a supply chain analytics startup. Basically, if you need to have a phone in your business, and you are tired of answering it yourself, drop us a line.
(5) How did you grow your presence in your target market?
We are officially launching Feb 1st, so as of writing this in mid-January I’ve focused on reaching out to my personal network, cold email to target clients, and paid ads promoting a lead magnet I wrote. Starting late January, I will be ramping up our content marketing and diving into cold calling.
(6) What stage are you at?
Pre-launch as of writing this, we should have just launched when this is published.
(7) What are some of the biggest challenges that your startup have had to overcome?
Lots of competition in the marketplace. There are numerous virtual receptionist companies out there, but very few that target specific industries or that effectively leverage technology. We aim to be the most efficient in terms of resource use, and the most advanced in terms of our marketing once we launch.
(8) What is next for the startup?
Launch! Once we officially launch, we’ll be pressing hard to reach profitability. We anticipate hitting that number within just the first two to three months and then plan to put every penny back into the business to scale from there.
(9) Where would you like to be in the next 5 years?
I want to build a company with an amazing culture that provides incredible opportunities for my team. My big ‘why’, the reason for why I do this, is that I want to look back and know that I helped countless other people reach their dreams by providing good jobs that pay well and provide opportunities that those individuals would not have otherwise had.
(10) If you had to give one piece of advice to an up and coming startup what would it be?
Build your resourcefulness. Give your team and partners opportunities to shine. And network as much as possible – you never know where a helping hand may come from.
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