BI 330: How Sellgo Solves Big Data Problems for Amazon Resellers in a Unique Way

On the show with me today is Richard Prasojo - an Amazon reseller and founder of Sellgo; a very unique SaaS application for Amazon resellers.

Today's conversation with Richard comes in two parts. The first part is geared towards Amazon resellers, and in this part of the interview you are going to hear Richard and I talk about one of the greatest data-related challenges that all Amazon resellers face, and specifically, how Sellgo helps resellers to overcome this challenge in a way not offered by any other software that I'm aware of. Once you hear what Richard and his team have built, I have no doubt that you are going to want immediate access to it, and if that is the case, make sure you go to Sellgo.com/brightideas so you can take advantage of the special offer that they have created for Bright Ideas listeners.

In the second part of today's episode, Richard and I are going to talk about what it took to launch Sellgo, how they found investors and raised money, how they dialed in product/market fit, and so much more.

As always, if you have questions about today's episode, please hit me up on social media using the links on brightideas.co and we'll get you an answer.

Thank you so much for listening! Please subscribe rate and review on your favorite podcast listening app. To get to the show notes for today's episode, go to https://brightideas.co/xxx...and if you have any questions for me, you can leave me a voicemail at brightideas.co/asktrent

Episode Highlights

[04:39] — Richard introduces Sellgo

Sellgo is an e-commerce catalog tracker. It started as a wholesale tool to help Amazon sellers find profitable products to sell.
It has transitioned into an intelligent data platform to provide better catalog experience to maximize Amazon sellers' growth.

[06:04] — Sellgo’s unique selling proposition

Its core feature is automating the process of filtering and sorting out a seller's products and tracking their profit potential.
With a software like Sellgo, sellers can look into which products could work now that didn’t work before.
The goal is to help sellers grow their market dominance on and outside Amazon.

[13:04] — Other Sellgo features

Sellgo is working on presets that can filter by sales velocity, sales equity, and number of sellers.

[13:55] — Selling on Amazon is tactical

Sellgo provides automation that sellers can leverage to apply tactical strategies in their business.
They are trying to build supertargeting and “The Wholesale Formula” into their system so that sellers can find their niche product at the inventory level.
They can process millions of data, introducing a new way of doing product research.

[17:10] — Starting a SaaS company

Sellgo is a bootstrapped company.
Before Sellgo, Richard was an Amazon seller who wanted to expand his wholesale business.
Although he could have just physically expanded, he had a bigger idea of providing software that gives value to other sellers.

[18:11] — Raising capital

To get funding, he presented the idea of Sellgo to a group of angel investors. He was able to raise a million dollars.
While living in the Bay Area, Richard learned to tap into the right startup investor community.
He formed a team, built a prototype, and pitched to investors.
He found that investors tend to invest in the same company types.

[20:00] — Making the prototype

Rather than spending so much time on coding the prototype, he instead developed the business concept.
He focused on the wireframe and did little coding.
Richard says you only need to make sure the prototype works.

[21:08] — Developing the software

He has been developing the software for less than a year.
The core functionality of the app has developed since then.
Competitor analysis affects Sellgo’s positioning.
Initially, Richard was thinking big. He only wanted to build a product that can scale.
However, he realized it was better to start small and focus on a specific audience.

[22:57] — Has Sellgo achieved product–market fit?

Richard meets Amazon sellers at conferences.
He informally interviews them to ask about their problems and needs.
Through these conversations, he gets an idea of their product–market fit.

[24:14] — On tapping other audiences

The other segments of Amazon sellers are the private label sellers and those who do retail arbitrage.
Sellgo is focused on Amazon resellers first.
However, private label sellers can use Sellgo’s product tracker. They’re not serving arbitrage and dropshipping at the moment.

[25:29] — Competitor analysis

Everyone has the same solution in the market, and Sellgo wanted to come up with a different approach.
You don’t want to come to the market late and offer the same thing.
Richard can evaluate the products of competitors through the eyes of an Amazon seller.
Richard also learns about the competing team because every founder brings their DNA to the product.

[27:55] — On testing the product

The company has not aggressively launched Sellgo in public.
Sellgo is working with a core group of about 30 beta users who were selected organically from their internal network. Some were sourced from past conferences.

[28:28] — Content marketing

Sellgo has started blogging and copywriting.
They used both gut and data to compose their first few pieces of content.
Sellgo emphasizes the importance of analyzing data to make business decisions.

[31:30] — Creating a strong SOP

Richard quotes James Clear: You don't rise to the level of your goal, but you fall to the level of your systems.
Flowster provides users an easy way to manage SOPs through documentation of processes, task delegation, and KPI tracking.

[32:58] — How Flowster helps SaaS companies

Flowster aims to get SaaS users up to speed so that they get the maximum benefit of the software in the shortest period.
This allows quick revenue expansion because the companies can add other users.
Rather than sending training videos, workflows are provided to make it easy for new users to learn their software.