Time to Reply Focuses on Email Productivity
How long does your team take to respond to emails? The answer may give you a glimpse into your company’s efficiency and productivity. In fact, that idea is exactly what Time To Reply helps businesses with.
Read about the startup and its unique approach to productivity in this week’s Small Business Spotlight.
What the Business Does
Offers email productivity solutions.
Marketing Manager Tarah Darge told Small Business Trends, “We’re A SaaS startup located on the tip of Africa: Cape Town. Our product: timetoreply Remote is a tool that measures business email volumes and reply times. It’s ideal for managers who need a quick snapshot of their team’s workload and productivity, without disrupting their current workflow or onboarding any new tools.”
Business Niche
Providing a tool that works with all email providers.
Darge says, “No other tool like ours works with any email provider – they are all specific to certain email providers like Gmail, or Outlook.”
How the Business Got Started
As a lead generation solution.
Darge explains, “Our founder, Dane Spear, started a lead generation business in the early 2000s. He quickly realised that the companies who closed the most leads were the ones who responded to them in the shortest amount of time, and who remained very responsive via email. So he built timetoreply as a widget to live on websites, where companies could accurately display their email reply times to their customers. That evolved with time, and now we have two products, both of which give managers huge insights into their staff’s communication habits, without invading privacy or changing workflow.”
Biggest Win
Obtaining capital.
Darge says, “In 2019 we secured our first round of VC funding. Our board of investors are formidable, and it was a long journey.”
Biggest Risk
Investing in a new program.
Darge explains, “We’re currently funneling a large portion of our funds into launching a reseller program in the US. It’s a big risk as we’ve had to use all of our marketing spend to fund it. We really hope it yields the fruit we need it to!”
How They’d Spend an Extra $100,000
Growing the team.
Darge says, “We’d hire some US-based staff as we’re based in South Africa which makes our time-zone problematic for our target customers. We’d also invest in attending some impactful conferences in order to firm up connections in industries we feel we can best serve.”
Team Tradition
Wearing wigs.
Darge explains, “We hold ‘WIG’ meetings (WILDLY IMPORTANT GOALS) on a weekly basis and wear wigs when we attend them online. It really helps to offset any tension and gives us something to chuckle about together while we’re physically apart.”
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