Thumbsup has a great?opportunity?to interview the CEO who is the startup and establish Pagemodo (now it owns by Webs.com already). He is also in the list of 650?The Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC). And “Splashpost” is the current product helping the brand and company who need to promote on Facebook. Our guest is?Thomas Kjeldgaar – CEO SplashPost
thumbsup?Kindly share your opinion since young have you ever dreamed to be an entrepreneur, instead of climbing up the career path as an executive in the big organizations?
Thomas?Working in big organizations is a great way to learn and get prepared for the day you will do a startup. I always knew that i wanted to be an entrepreneur at some point in life but i did have a few jobs in the past in Denmark where i mostly took care of the marketing and sales being in the Audio and Visual space. At the same time i also had a recording studio which you can say was my first “trial” startup.
Funny enough i never worked in a big Tech organization before i Co-Founded Pagemodo, so the way i learned before we started Pagemodo was by a lot of online self studying. After we sold Pagemodo to?Webs.com?we worked closely with them for 1.5 years and man in those 1.5 year i REALLY learned a lot and i’m very grateful that i had that opportunity.
After having build and sold Pagemodo i don’t see myself having a “real” job again as i feel i have enough experience and a good enough network to either be a Founder/Co-Founder or Partner of coming projects. That’s why i decided to start my current second startup SplashPost. SplashPost is a service that let’s Brands and businesses interact with their Facebook Fans directly in the News Feed using Multimedia News Feed posts.
thumbsup What is your working concept that leads Pagemodo to success?
Thomas?Keep going! We had bumps on the way as everyone will have but it’s important to believe in what you’re doing and stay focused all the time. Pagemodo also had the right timing which means a lot when you’re doing a new startup. If you’re too early the market isn’t ready yet and you might ran out of money before the market is ready. If you’re too late there’s a chance someone else already became the market leader, but if you launch just at the right time before the market is starting to pickup then your’e in a really good position. Bottom line the right timing really means a lot when doing a startup.
thumbsup Please explain what is the newly established Splashpost Startup and where did the idea com from?
Thomas SplashPost is my new startup which is a online tool that let Facebook page owners such as Brands and businesses, create Multi-media News Feed posts without any technical or design skills needed. Now they can interact with their Facebook Fans directly in the News Feed and don’t have to send users any where else than where they already are. This let’s them collect their Fans Emails, offer coupons, video widgets with integrated buttons and more directly in the Facebook News Feed.
They get access to in depth analytics on how many clicks their posts got and what countries and cities those people who engaged with them are from, so they know exactly where to spend their marketing budget (Facebook does not offer this analytics). In addition SplashPost is the first company in the world that ever developed such a tool.
The idea for SplashPost came slowly when i worked in the Facebook field for businesses and exactly as when we did Pagemodo, i saw a problem and a need for Brands and businesses that someone should solve so i thought why not me?
By solving the current problem of no way to create highly engaging Facebook News Feed content SplashPost gives Brands and businesses a quick and easy way to engage with their Facebook Fans, so they can benefit from the huge potential Facebook has for marketing and sales. The secret when doing marketing on Facebook is you have to know how to do it “the right way” as it’s very different from traditional marketing. That’s what SplashPost and our training will help Brands and businesses to archive!
thumbsup What is our key features and barrier to entry?
Thomas SplashPost is extremely easy and fast to use and let’s you engage and interact with your Facebook fans in less than 10 seconds, directly in the News Feed using Multi-media posts.
You get in depth analytics on all your posts and activity. You can also choose to schedule your Multimedia posts to find out the best time of the day where you get most response to your posts.
There is really no barrier to try out SplashPost as we have a free plan and there is no technical or design skills needed to create the posts.
We will also offer Facebook marketing training videos as well as i will be doing some private training sessions for bigger brands.
thumbsup What is your business model? How do you monetize your service?
Thomas The business model is based on a monthly subscription and a freemium model. So everyone can use it for as long as they want, but free users have less features and branding vs. paying users get more features and no branding. The current prices are $24 a month and $97 a month.
Currently we are looking into offering bigger brands a premium White Label customized solution on top of our current model which will stay untouched.
thumbsup Would you please share your marketing plan? How do you promote your service in Global level?
Thomas We’re trying to spread as viral as possible by include our branding on all posts done by free users that have links back to SplashPost. Then we try to get into as many medias as possible, writing articles, participate in interviews etc. In the future we have some plans using YouTube and Linkedin as well, which is something i can cover later on when we got some results to share.
We are planning a big marketing campaign in the coming weeks using only Facebook ads with sales videos and highly targeted landing pages and email follow up sequences. Facebook is a really good platform to advertise on if you just know how to do it right. The campaign will go live in the beginning of January and later on i will be happy to share some of the results we get.
thumbsup Would you please also share the way of your funding?
Thomas Until now i’ve paid everything my self out of my own pocket so bootstrapping all the way. I’m currently looking for investors to speed up the growth of SplashPost.
thumbsup Having learned that you are ranked among the 650 young entrepreneur of?http://
Thomas I’m very happy to be in the YEC as it gives a lot of opportunities to meet other successful entrepreneurs from all around the world and also some awesome media publication options.
Scott Gerber who’s the founder of YEC send me an email asked for a Skype call. So we did the call and he told me that some of the members of the YEC has recommended them to look at me as a potential member. I then learned that they had more than 11.000 applies but only 649 people got in and i then got the spot 650.
thumbsup Would you please share your experience, what was the biggest?problem that you had faced since establishment and how can you?overcome it?
Thomas That’s a hard one 🙂 There has already been a lot of problems and a lot more to come. One big issue i have is not to have a technical business partner. As my strength are in marketing, business, product development and UI i have to take care of the technical parts as well. This can be hard as i could spend my energy where my actual strength are but until i get a really good tech business partner i will continue doing both. So if anyone read this and believe they can fit that spot as a CTO and Partner in SplashPost don’t hesitate to contact me, and i will be happy to hear from you.
thumbsup How did you encourage yourself while facing obstacles in business?
thumbsup Since having involved in Thai startup community, what would you like to convey to the Thai Startups?