@grandsentral We surveyed and spoke to 127 people to test our hypotheses Spoke with students, designers, small business owners, and nonprofits 87.5% of respondents said that mail merge was very difficult
@grandsentral Total Email Marketing $1.5BN Target Market $5MM A large market opportunity Email Personalization $350MM Small firms (20-99 employees) have only seen 20% email marketing penetration Even smaller firms (0-19 employees), which make up 27.8MM (95%) of all firms, have only 4% email marketing penetration 67% of B2B/B2C organizations plan on increasing their email budgets in 2012 by 10-30% Does not include dormant market of college student groups, personal users, etc. *Data from Forrester Research (2011), MarketingSherpa LLC (2011), and Marketing Growth Strategies (2010)
@grandsentral How we’re different All-in-one email tools Newsletter customization Large-scale email marketing GrandSentral Optimized for standard text emails Simple interface without extraneous features Complete focus on personalization
@grandsentral Marketing and distribution Start with student groups and school orgs Direct outreach to industry events, tech demos, trade shows, and media outlets/PR Branded footer in free account emails
@grandsentral Individuals & Power Users Everyone Free Basic Account Free Paid $1 Per 100 recipients Send Limit 10 max recipients 2 times / day 20 max recipients 4 times / day No Limit Features GrandSentral logo in footer Authenticated email Saved contacts Import CSV + Basic Account Analytics
@grandsentral Businesses Bronze Business $200 Per Month Silver Business $500 Per Month Gold Business $800 Per Month Send Limit 100K 300K 500k Features Premium Analytics Over limit $0.008/email +Bronze Over limit $0.006/email +Bronze Over limit $0.004/email
@grandsentral Funding Bootstrapping: total monthly fixed costs ~$300 (web and email servers) + living expenses Accelerators, incubators, business plan competitions Long term: raise money from investors with relevant portfolio companies and expertise
@grandsentral Launch results 200 Emails Sent Live for 4 days “Keep it simple, I love it” ~ Tim Lee, Sequoia “This is great for post-event followups” ~ Enrique Allen, Designer Fund
@grandsentral Founding Team Ellen Le @ellenthuyle B.S. ChemE 2013 Wesley Leung @wesleyleung B.S. CS 2013 Michael Liu @mikesholiu B.S. MS&E 2013 Kevin Xu @imkevinxu B.S. CS 2013