A few months ago we got accepted into 500 Startups in San Francisco and were thrilled to taste the Valley style startup life. Being a European start-up, we had decided to join an accelerator with the ambition to switch our business focus to the US. Our CEO Olivier also wanted the team to live a […]
Bill Thompson is head of Customer Happiness and was employee #3 @Olark. At Olark, Customer Success is way more than a department of a distinct function; it truly is part of the company customer success culture. Bill joined very early in Olark’s history, when the company shifted from a team of co-founders to a structured […]
I’ve always loved doing things that don’t scale. Even before knowing who Paul Graham is or what he wrote. It’s about putting a little bit of craftsmanship into an impersonal world and an impersonal internet overall. That proved very useful when we started Aircall. Obviously the product wasn’t working so well, so we had to […]
Since the first day we opened up Aircall’s beta, we’ve offered a free trial. Indeed, Aircall provides phone number and an app to manage phone calls collaboratively, so prospects want to check the quality of calls and test the collaboration features before jumping into a fully-fledged plan. Fair enough. Free trial is a common practice in […]
This article will discuss some opportunities and challenges of launching a startup: Four months ago, we launched the beta version of Aircall, an online phone system for SMBs that lets you create your phone line in 40 countries and start managing your phone calls as a team, in a few minutes. When we got the idea, […]
Like many young SaaS startups we’re thinking about ways to get visible from our potential customers. One of the most widely used tactics in our industry is the Powered by line. As you’ve probably guessed the Powered by tactic consists in leveraging your existing user base by displaying your logo or your link on a […]
There are mistakes we made selling a tool instead of a solution. When you’re a young SaaS startup everything comes back to this: We’ve seen this awesome graphic from useronboard countless time, we’ve liked it, we’ve shared it and yet we did the mistake of selling the flower instead of super mario throwing fireballs. Is your […]
Having a ‘solid’ user onboarding experience on a SaaS product is particularly important. First because most SaaS users try a new software in the hope of finding a useful tool that’ll make them more productive (usefulness vs fun). Second because they generally try it during “work” time, meaning that they cannot lose too much time […]
Pricing a product for a SaaS business is tricky. Very often, you have no variable costs and what you really do is “guessing a price” based on the time / money your users save or the incremental revenue / margin they can generate with your solution. The good thing is: you can change easily your […]
I’m Olivier, co-founder and CEO of Aircall and I am in a boring business: telephony. Worse: business telephony. Don’t stop reading 🙂 We’re in an industry which is so boring that we’re incredibly excited to build a kick-ass product. We will make people as happy to use their business phone as they are using their […]
Companies just don’t need Business Phone Systems – be it “Cloud” What happens when people try to make “better” a concept that has turned unadapted? Well…this: The 2008 iPhone killer by Nokia: a nice blend of features. FAIL Making and receiving business calls is just not happening as it did before and it’s surprising how […]
The phone system for modern business
