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Startup Growth Lessons #3
Startup Growth Lessons #3Lessons from Empiraa, a beautiful.ai review + growth reads Have you ever written a newsletter on an early flight from Auckland to Adelaide using nothing but the Notes app on your phone and sheer startup energy? 😅 No? That’s okay, you can read the result right now. Because we were determined to share this latest instalment of startup marketing stories and tools despite being swept up in the delights of _SOUTHSTART last week (snapshot evidence below). But back to business and we have news to share – new team members ahoy! Welcome to fractional CMO Paloma Newton and Designer/Marketer Bec Crawley – two seriously good humans who care deeply about using their skills and experience to support startups. ✨ In this issue, you’ll find the story of how B2B SaaS startup Empiraa evolved their positioning and pricing since launching – two particularly tricky areas for startups. You’ll also find our verdict on growth tool, beautiful.ai, and good reads to level up your growth game. Let’s go! 👇️
Positioning + pricing lessons from B2B SaaS startup, Empiraa 👀One of the hardest things for startups is how to position your product in the market. Whether you’re a challenger or creating a new category, you need to know who cares most about your product and why so you can position it as the obvious choice for them. Easier said than done (though we happen to love doing it!) as B2B SaaS startup, Empiraa, found after launching in 2022. Empiraa Marketing Manager, Ash McVea, kindly shared their experience in our latest Startup Marketing Series story so others can learn from their positioning and pricing evolution.
Pssst… our Startup Marketing Stories section is growing. Dive in to any you’ve missed! Growth Tool Review 🛠️AI and MarTech are evolving FAST so we’re reviewing one tool for you in each edition. Unless stated otherwise, these are not sponsored. This week’s tool is… beautiful.ai WHAT IS IT? 👇️ Generative AI presentation software. WHO IS IT FOR? 💁♀️ People creating presentations for work – anything you’d usually make a slide deck for, including pitch decks. WHAT DID WE TEST? 🧪 We tried it when working on a presentation for a top-secret project (coming later this year!). We needed a simple but compelling presentation to introduce the project to potential partners. THE EXPERIENCE We found it easy to get started, take a quick virtual tour and dive in. But the experience quickly plateaued, largely because we normally use Canva to create presentations and beautiful.ai didn’t seem much different. In more detail: 🆗 The standard of templates and tools was high but the pool of templates and stock imagery didn’t seem as deep or diverse as what we’re used to on Canva. ⚡️ Standout design feature = auto formatting of design elements. e.g If you want to add an extra pic + bio to a team slide, it automatically rearranges the design so you don’t have to drag and drop everything to accommodate your addition. Magic! 🆗 From an AI point of view: It created a 10-slide deck within a minute – professional clean design with headings and content suggestions. However, it didn’t reflect our project much. It would’ve been a good start for a pitch deck although branding and visuals would need to be applied. Not to mention the hard work of actually writing a compelling pitch deck that clearly articulates what investors want to know – but that’s another story. COMPETITORS 🪖 There’s no shortage of AI-powered presentation tools out there. Like any software, once you get used to using it, you’ll likely stick with it for a while. The main competitors in beautiful.ai’s league are:
PRICING 💰️
THE VERDICT There doesn’t seem much difference between beautiful.ai and the competitors listed above in terms of what you can do with the tools (except Slidebean, which is specifically for pitch decks) and their cost. So here’s our verdict: 👎️ If you’re happily using a tool like Canva, we don’t recommend switching – at least not yet. 👍️ If you’re using PowerPoint, definitely try it and some of the other options too. Like any tool, it will take a while to learn but persevere and you’ll see results. And remember: in design, clear space is your friend. Resist the urge to fill it! Good reads to level up your growth game 💥
This newsletter is from the team at Stella Startups 👋ICYMI, we’re Stella Startups – a true marketing partner for AU and NZ startups from early stage to scale up. We bring you marketing strategy, brand expertise and hands-on execution, all with a commitment to innovation so you can make an impact bigger than your budget. Head to our website to find out more and if you’d like help, book some time to chat (we don’t bite!). See you next time,
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Startup Growth Lessons
Get insider tips, case studies + tech tool reviews that are actually relevant to you.