Sharing Community hey! “Startups Need People To Test Their Products.”

Describe hey! in 50 words or less.

hey! is a new marketplace for equipment, talents and services. We are the first sharing community to provide rental of high end equipment and the booking of professional services on a single platform.

Which real life problems is hey! solving?

We identified following issues and decided to make life easier for our clients:

1. It’s time-consuming to find trustworthy personal services and talents for private needs.
2. It’s uneconomical to buy new equipment for short term use, this led to the fact that private households often possess unused equipment.

Startups need people to test their products in order to grow and it’s expensive for small equipment rental providers to promote their services to private customers.

What sets the platform apart from others? Why should users decide for hey!?

The combination of equipment and services is unique and solves different cases and will give you a faster, richer and better user experience.

I will explain it with one example. Let’s assume you want to organize a party. With hey! it is just one click away. You want to book a photographer, catering and rent an audio equipment. But you also discover a highly rated performer, a party tent and a photo booth to book in one easy step. Imagine how surprised your guests will be with this additional services.

For startups you offer a “test & buy” option. How does it work and why is it useful to these young companies?

Our test & buy option is a great and popular feature on hey! A number of innovative startups like Vertical and Johammer are already using it. It’s an easy way for them to extend their market coverage and raise the awareness of their product and brand.

It’s that easy. You offer your product to the hey! community to test with a buying option. This removes the barrier for the customers of buying high end innovations. If the customer likes the experience and your product he or she can buy it after the test. In the first place this is valuable for startups with premium products to enter a broader target group than just early adopters.

What are your plans for the near future? Will you expand to other European cities?

Yes, sure. Our roll-out strategy is to implement hey! city by city. We are currently preparing our expansion to other Austrian cities (we’re based in Vienna at the moment) as well as Germany and Poland.

In what ways do you measure your success and how do you make sure you don’t lose track?

Currently our focus is to generate offerings and content on hey! It is important to us to have qualitative provider and products on our platform.

We are playing with different activities in social media and direct marketing. We are closely tracking the outcome of these activities and adapt or push as we need.

Bootstrapped or financed: What fuels your startup now and what will in the future?

For the moment we are completely bootstrapped but for the near future we are looking for a smart business angel or VC with focus on early stage startups. With additional funding we will develop faster in Vienna and new cities in CEE & Germany.

With ferocious competition and a booming trend to build new companies: How do you make sure you don’t get lost in the shuffle?

We have a strong team working closely together. We learn day by day. We decide quickly and adopt on the same day.

What were the biggest challenges you faced building your startup?

Building traction with limited funds is quite difficult and requires a lot of advanced on- & offline-marketing strategies. Everyday we get better but there is a lot of “trial and error” going on to find solutions that really work.

What was your most memorable moment so far?

2 Moments 😉

1. Presenting our idea at the Pioneers Festival. That was a very memorable and great experience because it was our first public appearance.
2. The moment we finally launched our public beta – we worked so hard to make it happen and instantly received a lot of positive feedback.

7 years from now: How did your startup change the world?

7 years from now we helped many unknown talents, startups and inventors in Europe to reach new customers and improve their business. Our second goal is to encourage people to share more resources. Clever sharing could be one important step to protect our environment.

What advice would you give fellow founders for their startup?

Try to enter the market as fast as possible with a “minimum viable product”. You need to know what are the real needs of your future customers and that’s only possible if you deliver them something they can try. Then test & improve until you build something your customers will love.

Want to learn more? Visit their public beta for Vienna (AT) to find out more!

_____________

Sharing is caring so please share this post. Thank you!