Founded in 2007, Compassites stands strong with a big clientele roster. It has built amazing software products for global companies and entrepreneurs. Whether it is a small, medium or large enterprise, Compassites has always delivered innovative best-in-class business solutions, employing the appropriate technologies and ensuring customer satisfaction.Compassites very efficiently handled the challenge of customer acquisition by getting the word out about the business and finding the right people to scale the organization to new heights.
When Compassites started, the strategy was to look for technologically challenging projects which otherwise was not available for bigger companies or too small for a large company to take up. We focused on building software products for entrepreneurial ventures. Entrepreneurial ventures had lot of ideas for technical implementation out of which Compassites could zero in on interesting ideas. One of our first projects was on Ruby On Rails, which was completely unknown in India at that time. Navigators had to develop, understand and appreciate the language and then pitch for the project. By establishing a hold on the ROR language, we were able get our first customer. Based on the first project, the second project, which followed, was also on ROR.
Since the primary focus was on product development for entrepreneurs, numerous people reached out to us. We had to evaluate which idea had business potential and which unique idea had the potential to grow big. We chose quality projects rather than running to bag whatever comes our way. We were associated with a lot of startup forums and accelerators, which were the channels to reach out to potential customers. A lot of prospects also came through the board members who were highly networked people. Simple emails and pure networking worked in reaching out to prospects.
We looked for large-to-medium sized product development projects for continuous revenue streams. Since we worked on product development for entrepreneurs, it was a huge market especially in the US, which is the land of startups. The market was huge and so was the competition! There were very few players in the market who focused on product development for entrepreneurs. Also we managed to stay ahead in the game by investing significant time and effort.
When we started out, we had a business model called “Cost++ Model”. This model made sure that entrepreneurs are not spending too much ahead of time and as a technology partner, we were not investing more than the bare minimum money. In this model, “cost” represented the actual cost of the resource and “plus” represented for stake of the company or cost of the build. The second “plus” represented a small overhead that entrepreneurs had to pay to cover the rest of the expenses. This was restricted until the beta version of the product after which it will be a fully paid engagement.
Through this model, we transparently showcased things and rightly bridged the gap between cost and entrepreneurs. This model ensured the equity margin that Compassites had with the company and project was taken care. This was a new model that we had evolved for our first few customers. Customers who otherwise spent $4000 would spend $1500/$2000 for a build by partnering with us. They were able pay for the actual cost of the resource and not the fully loaded cost. So they could hire two resources at the cost of one. They were able to see more features at less cost, which is important in the entrepreneurial phase. This kept them hooked to Compassites.
The initial problem that we faced during client acquisition was the cost factor associated with pitching the right solutions. The technology challenge was to find experienced people for the project. All these were overcome with some deft planning. The risk perspective was taken care by hiring the right people. A lot was spent in terms of time and effort on grooming the new hires.
In terms of delivery, we used cloud to roll out products. We leveraged cloud and managed lot of things remotely. Since cloud was also evolving then, we brought in some good practices and also evolved few processes and gave it back to the cloud community.
In the initial days, sales and marketing was always through reference. The excellence with which wed did projects, drew a lot of traction for getting clients. Thus Compassites has evolved as a trusted technology partner to many global companies. It has accelerated startup businesses by developing next generation applications. It has helped in launching new business initiatives by taking ideas from concept to reality.
