Emily Chang - eHub Interviews

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June 26, 2006
eHub Interviews Pipeline

Thanks to Nick Bertolino of Pipeline for this email interview.

eHub: What is your web application/service about?

Pipeline: Organizing your deals. Pipeline is a sales tool for small businesses to manage their deals.  Sales personnel can organize their deals and keep all of their contacts, files, documents, notes, maps, and directions for a deal in one place. 

Minimize risk and protect your business data. Storing all critical pieces of information for a deal in one place minimizes business risk in case of personnel turnover or a changing of duties. The amount of time businesses lose each year in getting new employees “up to speed” is very high. When someone new comes in to manage a deal and/or relationship, normally the contacts are in the previous person’s Outlook. Related files are on the intranet ‘somewhere’ and ‘organized logically’ according to the last person. Notes are equally hard to find or gone.

Pipeline puts it all in one place and provides today’s business with a safe and secure way to protect the most vital aspect of their business - their revenue-driving business deals.

Improve sales visibility and productivity.  Pipeline provides simple dashboard and status reports of business development activities focusing a sales team on the most important deals. You can also improve productivity by creating simple to-do lists for deals. Finally, you can leverage the power of your contacts with tags.

In short, Pipeline will help a sales agent and sales team get organized and focused on closing business and managing your prospects more efficiently.

eHub: Why did you start this project?

Pipeline: We believe this market is underserved with current solutions that are overly complex, gluttoned with features that make no sense to smaller businesses.  We also think they are often out of reach from a pricing standpoint for a small business. 

eHub: How much time do you devote to its growth?  Do you have a day job?

Pipeline: We are working full time on Pipeline and our other startup ventures.

eHub: How large is your team and what are your backgrounds?

Pipeline: We have a small team of experienced Internet professionals.  Our backgrounds include expertise in ecommerce and online businesses, online marketing, and operations.

eHub: What is your design philosophy?

Pipeline: Our design philosophy is built on simplicity and KISS principles. 

eHub: What technologies are you currently using?

Pipeline: We are using Ruby on Rails and mysql as our db.

eHub: What are the most requested features from your users/community?

Pipeline: We are still in a beta, and are currently analyzing feature requests.

eHub: Does your user base reside in a primary geographic location or is it distributed?

Pipeline: Our user base is international, evenly split between Americas, Europe and Asia.

eHub: Where do you see the project heading in the next 6 months?  The next 2 years?

Pipeline: Our plans are to improve the product quickly and aggressively based on user feedback.  This doesn’t mean we are going to be adding features left and right.  It means we are going to optimize the experience and consistently make the product and service better.

In the next 2 years, we plan to evolve the product to serve even small niches of our current target markets.

eHub: What is the greatest challenge to your success?

Pipeline: Our greatest challenge is not getting lost in the CRM space.  Our product is not positioned as a CRM tool.  CRM products typically include broad feature sets to solve numerous business problems across sales, marketing, and call center functions.

We are focused on doing 1 thing - providing a simple tool for sales agents to get there deals organized and provide visibility into business development and sales pipeline activity for a small business.

eHub: What is the one thing you need to get to the next phase of the project?

Pipeline: We need to integrate our user base more closely into our product development processes.  We believe there is nothing more valuable than watching someone use your product and getting feedback real-time on the product.

eHub: Do you have a business model?  If so, what is it?

Pipeline: Our business model is straightforward.  Users pay a monthly subscription fee to use the product.  We offer a free plan for a limited number of deals, and other plans to support all levels of a small and medium sized businesses.  We do not display ads for any of the service plans.

eHub: If you’re able to disclose this information, how much traffic or usage do you see on an average day?

Pipeline: We cannot disclose traffic figure or usage information right now.  I will say we are very encouraged by the early indicators and positive response from our user base.

eHub: What is the one thing you’re most proud of about the project?

Pipeline: Our ability to resist the tempation to put everything including the kitchen sink into the product.

eHub: How would you describe the shift that’s occurring with the web right now to future generations?

Pipeline: The shift right now is interesting.  There are a number of different trends going on: 1) Leverage the power of the network which you see in a lot of the social networking and tagging sites and 2) Replacing desktop applications with web based applications which today offer user experiences that are nearly equivalent.

eHub: What site(s) do you visit everyday other than your own?

Pipeline: Wall Street Journal, New York Times
Guy Kawaski’s Blog, Techcrunch, Line56.com

eHub: How many hours of sleep do you get a night?

Pipeline: About 6-7 hours.

Thanks to Nick Bertolino of Pipeline for this email interview.

Visit Pipeline
Originally added to eHub on Mar 17, 06

» More eHub Interviews

eHub Interviews is a series with the creators of Web 2.0 applications and services by Emily Chang, author of eHub, designer, and co-founder and principal of Ideacodes, a strategic web consultancy in San Francisco that she co-founded with Max Kiesler.

Also see eHub Interviews in Japanese at CNET Japan