Subscribe Technologies CEO Paul Dickson talks to Cantech Letter

Software as a service.

It seems like it wasn’t that long ago that SaaS models were a novelty, today many sell-side technology analysts simply won’t look at a software company that doesn’t have such a game plan.

The reasons are easy to understand, SaaS offers flexibility on price and customization for clients, as well as scalability. For the company’s that offer software as a service, it provides an ever-important level of predictability in its revenue stream.

If SaaS sounds like a win-win it is, with one exception. Many small businesses can be left out of the equation, with solutions designed for much larger firms requiring an output of time and/or money that simply doesn’t make sense for them.

Vancouver-based Subscribe Technologies (Subscribe Technologies Stock Quote, Chart, News: CSE:SAAS) is looking to fill the gap in the market by providing popular SaaS applications to businesses at the smaller end of the spectrum. Cantech Letter talked to CEO Paul Dickson about the company’s plan.

Paul, can you tell us how SubscribeTech came together?
Subscribe Technologies and its cloud based Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications were created to service the demand of business owners in search of competitively priced, simpler to use business utilities that help run and effectively maintain their business.

What gap in the market are you trying to fill?
Subscribe Technologies is developing or acquiring SaaS applications that compete with other already highly popular applications that are unable to service a large demographic of users. The gap being filled includes both established small businesses and startups that require a less expensive with low learning curve business productivity tool.

There are ample dissatisfied users that don’t want forty hours of video tutorials to use the product, bContact is different, it’s more than a CRM…

Aren’t small businesses being serviced by the likes of Salesforce.com or Oracle On Demand?
There are certainly competitors in each of the application markets we’re in; Salesforce has the dominant position with small and medium sized businesses while Oracle has the medium and large business segment. SubscribeTech doesn’t need a million subscribers to be highly profitable. There are ample dissatisfied users that don’t want forty hours of video tutorials to use the product, bContact is different, it’s more than a CRM, managing contacts is just one component, also integrated is a complete bookkeeping, invoicing, quotation and payment processing system. It’s very easy to use, a company can be up and running in minutes sending out invoices, tracking expenses, payment processing, etc.

What size and type of customer is perfect for SubscribeTech?
bContact has a demographic of typically age 30 and up with a business that has 5 to 50 employees. FileQ has a younger audience of 18 to 35. Startup companies are inclined to use bContact, it’s cost effective and can scale with the company as it expands.

It’s in your name and your ticker symbol. What do your subscription prices look like?
Basic accounts are free on most of our services, it’s the SaaS way, prices generally range from $9.95 to $59.95 per month.

We wanted the ability to cross-promote our services which in turn reduces advertising spends, each of the services are in demand by business people…

There are three parts to your business. How do they fit together?
We currently offer three SaaS applications, bContact, FileQ and ServerHawk. What they have in common is they are primarily business related tools. We wanted the ability to cross-promote our services which in turn reduces advertising spends, each of the services are in demand by business people. Each of our applications have an API which can be utilized in many different ways, either by pushing and pulling data from our servers to legacy applications or updating web pages with live data.

How will FileQ compete against the likes of Dropbox and Google Drive?
I think we can agree there’s no competing there, however, there is certainly a large body of users who use more than one file storage service. FileQ is more of a multi-media sharing service that does more than simply host files for backup. Users can specify whether to makes files public, password protect files, stream audio and video or embed media files in web pages and applications.

How do you go about acquiring new business?
It is our plan to engage in a highly targeted marketing campaign that includes social marketing, seo, adwords, radio, television and telesales. Additionally, part of our bContact promotional campaign will include reaching out to students in small business and business management programs.

What does your balance sheet look like?
We haven’t begun our marketing program; however, we’ve raised over $300k in January and have a very low overhead.

What do you hope to accomplish in the next 12 months?
We are pushing to meet our target of 7500 registered users between our three services by year end.

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