Product demos are a huge part of selling software products. But it’s not always easy to create these experiences. Luckily, Reprise offers a solution built by serial entrepreneurs. Read about the company’s story and what sets it apart in this week’s Small Business Spotlight.
What the Business Does
Sells a demo creation platform.
Co-founder and Co-CEO Sam Clemens told Small Business Trends, “Software companies use our platform to make demo versions of their software for sales or marketing. Typical use cases are customizable demos used live on a sales call, or guided demos used in marketing campaigns.”
Business Niche
Providing a complete solution.
Clemens says, “Only Reprise can do both live “simulation” type demos, as well as self-guided “product tour” demos. Every other solution in the market does just one of these two products. This becomes a problem because sales and marketing teams often share assets and thus any solution that can only satisfy one side will be limiting to an organization.”
How the Business Got Started
To solve a common issue.
Clemens and co-founders Bryan Stevenson and Evan Powell were all serial entrepreneurs in B2B software. They noticed how difficult product demos were.
Clemens adds, “For example at HubSpot, sales reps all shared a single demo environment and had the resulting collision issues. At InsightSquared we had an engineering-maintained demo cluster and it was expensive to maintain. At Catalant, the sales team demoed using primarily PowerPoint. So we have been very familiar with this as a pain point and thus our excitement to finally solve it.”
Biggest Win
Helping software companies at a large event.
Clemens adds, “Two weeks ago, a Fortune 50 software company hosted their annual user conference and had 150 physical demo booths on the conference floor that attendees could visit to try out the company’s new software products. The demos in each of those booths were created, customized, and hosted by Reprise.”
Biggest Risk
Entering a competitive segment.
Clemens explains, “There are already over a dozen competitors in the category. While it was risky to grow ourselves so fast, it would have been even riskier to not grow and lose leadership of the category.”
Lesson Learned
Find additional help as your company scales.
Clemens says, “We were slow to recognize when we had outgrown people’s comfortable company size. Some people are best suited for very early stage when there’s much less process; others are better when it comes to organizing and scaling. The business gets very different as it scales from 1 to 10 to 100 to 1000 people.”
How They’d Spend an Extra $100,000
Hiring another sales rep.
Fun Fact
The team is full of serial startup founders/employees.
Clemens says, “For several of our employees this is the third time we’ve done a startup together.”
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Image: Reprise; Sam Clemens, Bryan Stevenson, and Evan Powell
