a canadian startup

Well.ca is “Canada’s best Angel-backed early-stage investment opportunity”

From the 25 companies that presented at Canada’s largest gathering of Angel investors, Well.ca won the #1 spot as “Canada’s best Angel-backed early-stage investment opportunity”. The award was based on a survey of all the 120+ investors present, based on an 8-minute presentation where I talked about our business, the milestones we’ve reached, and our plans for the future. The event was organized by the National Angel Capital Organization.

Congratulations, Well.ca!

We were honoured to have been invited — the companies that were there were all vetted by a regional Angel investment group before they were allowed to present at the summit.

I am happy to announce that Well.ca was one of the few companies that won a second award that night: we won the other award for being one of the five fastest growing angel-funded companies in Ontario (based on revenue and employees).

Below are the slides from my presentation (for those of you who would like to see a real-life pitch-deck). I’ve removed most of the confidential data and numbers and added some notes in yellow. The format was as follows:

1. Told the story of our product from the customer’s perspective (i.e. product value proposition)
2. Transition to how customers have responded (based on feedback and sales)
3. Typical pitch stuff: market size, customer profile, funding, plans…

This was the first award that Well.ca has ever won as a company, and we’re all very excited internally. With the growth we’ve experienced in the last 6 months, we’ve been focused very much on handling all the increased demand — it’s nice to take a moment to step back and celebrate all that we’ve achieved.

Congratulations Well.ca team — we won this award because of the hard work you’ve all been doing!

Tough Decisions? Ask your Customers

Here is an example of using a community to help you make decisions.

Recently, we’ve been approached by shipping companies asking us to use their service instead of our current shipping partner, Canada Post.

Because our order volumes are high, the prices are all very competitive. So when UPS approached us with really amazing prices, I was thinking, hey, yeah, let’s use UPS. UPS is a courier — that should be better than regular mail, right?

Well, right before sending the “yeah, let’s sign a contract” email, I posted the following message to my friends on Twitter:

And I posted a similar question to RedFlagDeals.com — the eCommerce forum in Canada.

Within days, I had dozens of answers from people that buy online frequently and have experienced both UPS and Canada Post.

Check out some of the responses:

1) UPS pick up centres are in the middle of nowhere. 2) They charge crazy brokerage fees when you ship across the border.

-funkaoshi (via twitter)

And RedFlagDeals offered this feedback:

I loathe UPS and much prefer Canada Post.

I actively *avoid* retailers that use UPS actually, so keep that in mind.

And:

I hate UPS and won’t buy anything if that’s the only option. [...] Hatehatehate UPS

Or:

If a company only offers UPS as a shipping option, I always go a with a competitor (all other things being equal).

Do not use UPS

And:

Why yes… I DO hate UPS.

Companies that use UPS are guilty about caring more about themselves and less about their customers.

And most convincingly:

UPS sux b___s.

Long story short, customers really, really, really hate UPS and we’re not going to use them. You can read the whole forum here. I had no idea – but it’s easy to make a decision now! Here’s the email I sent to UPS telling them that we cannot use their service.

If there is an engaged community around the product that you develop, why not participate and ask them for advice? To some this looks unprofessional. For me, speaking directly to our audience, minus the corporate messaging, is the best way to connect.

This example alone may have saved us a great deal of money. Thanks community!