Hi, weâre pclark, bweitz and anilsevim, the founders of Journey (https://journey.io). We want to make buying and selling software a better experience. We do this by allowing sellers and marketers to combine all sorts of contentâslides, videos, forms, calendars, textâinto one sharable webpage, which they can then easily personalize for specific prospects. Think of it like a website that is specifically designed for a specific individual to take a specific action, which answers any questions or objections they may have.
For example, I took one of our standard demos and made a "personalized" version for HN here: https://jny.journey.io/p/3bbb55f82a224e399aafd2dc04f4f32b?pr.... To customize it, I simply added the YC logo at the top, and a "Welcome HN" video to intro the demoâbut you can customize these things as much as you like, as your sales process moves forward.
Edit: here's a further example on top of that one: https://jny.journey.io/p/3bbb55f82a224e399aafd2dc04f4f32b?em.... In response to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27235504, I made a new version of the "Welcome HN" demo by adding a personalized intro video, changing the logo at the top (I just picked a different one arbitrarily), and restricting it to a specific person (note the "only visible to [email address]" text on the right). Of course it's not really restricted, because we want you all to see it, but it's an example of how you can evolve these demos in response to specific people's questions.
Back in 2012 I launched a B2B email marketing startup called Userfox on Hacker News (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4715237), and as that company grew I repeatedly found that it was really hard to create an email that performed wellâbecause if an email is too long users will skim over it, and if it has more than one link theyâll never come back to click them all. Our hope is that Journey helps fix such interactions by allowing you to send users a specific page that has all the content you want them to read, including answers to their specific questions about your product.
Sales people have a hard job, and we donât think their tools help them enoughâthey have to rely on live meetings and phone calls. Which is annoying because a live phone call is pretty much the last thing I want to do when I want to actually use a product. You have to talk to a sales person because there isnât a good way to communicate complexity today in an asynchronous manner.
Sales and marketing is actually âjustâ storytelling. You build something and then you tell people why they want it. We often think that the latter part is the easy partâbut it isnât! Itâs really hard to introduce your product to someone, even when you know they would benefit from it.
If Journey can provide a superior storytelling experience it stands to reason that humans will require fewer live meetings. You donât need to telephone for a taxi because you have the Uber app.... You wonât need to talk to a human to buy software because youâll have JourneyâŚ
Journey specifically is a web app where you can embed and sequence various pieces of content (videos, slides, forms, calendars, âŚ) and then share that sequence (a âJourneyâ). You can then take a Journey and personalize it for a specific recipient. Once youâve shared a Journey, you get insights on where theyâre spending time, and any comments they may have. Over time, you and your prospect can build up an entire sales conversation this way, focused around what they specifically need from your product. And you can reuse any bits that worked particularly well in your future conversations with other prospects.
Weâd love to know what HN thinks of Journey, here's a link again to our HN demo mentioned above: https://jny.journey.io/p/3bbb55f82a224e399aafd2dc04f4f32b?pr.... From there youâll be able to sign up, request an onboarding call, view case studies, and learn more. Thank you!!
9 hours ago by codingdave
> You have to talk to a sales person because there isnât a good way to communicate complexity today in an asynchronous manner. A salesperson would much rather work asynchronously if they could be equally as successful -- but they canât!
Sales is more effective when direct in real-time because it lets the salesperson drive the conversation to an action.
Marketing is storytelling... sales is driving actions after the story has been told. Understanding that difference, and the different skills and approaches needed because of that difference is what helps drive success.
9 hours ago by pclark
Jessica Livingston had a good quote about how sales was making a few people love you and marketing was making a lot of people know about you.
I agree with you regarding sales and why its effective in real-time, but it doesn't have to be that way â technology is rapidly changing that, software is getting so good you can now just signup for products you'd typically previous have to talk to a human to use.
I think this trend will continue, and with Journey my belief is we can accelerate that even more with powerful marketing tools.
I would add that sales is absolutely also storytelling - a great example is fundraising! I joined a B2B technology company (AdRoll) and worked there for 4 years and saw first hand how effective sales people sell - by telling stories, not reading from slides.
3 hours ago by pwillia7
I agree with both of you. You're absolutely right that effective salespeople are fantastic story tellers. They are also fantastic at reacting to the subtle and overt signals the buyer is giving off. I struggle to see an Enterprise sales person (or buyer honestly) going for something like this today. So much of sales is relationship building and non real time communication methods will never be that.
I'm not even sure you can ever replace salespeople flying out visit people, even with 50 years future VR tech, because part of the value of flying out is the sacrifice of time, money and focus that helps build that trust and relationship.
I really really like this product and I feel it could have a sweet spot in that upper SMB space where it's still fairly short sales cycles with fairly short close times. Those buyers are not getting any personal attention today and something like this would probably feel more akin to 'flying out' than they'll get otherwise.
I hope there's a bunch of analytics in there too because that would be another awesome part of this. Seeing engagement through a set of materials would be pretty interesting. Nice work!
2 hours ago by bweitz
Thanks for the comments. Weâre still figuring out the ideal target market from a b2b sales perspective (as you probably can see :)). However, on one side, we have enterprise sellers with ACVs above $1mm willing to put time into the journey creation as well as SMB sellers creating journeys âat scaleâ with light personalization via templates. We think its been powerful that a Journey typically gets shared with 3+ people inside an org so it helps with async stakeholder management instead of getting a 10 person buying committee on a zoom call (but the next zoom call will be more impactful due to the context shared in the Journey!). Lastly, we have detailed viewer insights/analytics on Journeys as well as the ability to email gate or password protect!
8 hours ago by notahacker
I'd refine that slightly: marketing is telling an interesting enough story to get an enquiry, sales is telling a relevant enough story to get the action.
Communicating the complexity of the product is only part of that. It's the "so based on what you've told me about needing to replace x that takes y hours per week, this z minute process I'm walking you through will generate u more v". For simple, universal value propositions you might be able to turn that into a calculator on a product page, but a lot of value propositions involving salespeople aren't simple or universal. (Also there's the navigating large organizations bit and the outbound bit, but they aren't competing with or complimenting this product)
Ironically one of pclark's comments elsewhere about Journey's value proposition being "so meta" makes me think that's exactly the bit a good salesperson solves for you: figuring out the gap in the specific client's marketing capabilities that Journey can fill
7 hours ago by pclark
Great comment!
I don't think Journey is gonna replace humans for selling all software, I just think some interactions are better async. A friend of mine, Sahil (CEO of Gumroad) once told me that "live meetings should be used for closing" and that maps to how I feel too.
For example I believe over time discovery can actually be made superior async than live, since with async we can do all kinds of crazy personalisation - rather than expecting a sales person to know all the questions to ask on a live meandering phone call.
BTW we actually sell Journey by simply building a custom Journey for the prospect we're selling to. For example for calixa.com (a killer new CRM) I sent them a Journey of me "selling" Calixa so they could imagine how Journey could be used to sell Calixa to prospects. IMHO this is how selling should be, not generic materials or even sales speak â real world use cases!
7 hours ago by notahacker
Oh yeah, I'm not saying there isn't a use case for this sort of thing. I think you'd need human level AGI to do the sort of real world use case personalization I did on sales demos, but there's definitely plenty of sales processes and parts of sales process where the generic product copy/video isn't enough and yet another demo/call isn't good time management. Not to mention jazzing up final proposals with reminders of things clients should have already seen.
9 hours ago by huhtenberg
Do I get it right that it's basically a tool for making (interactive?) pitches and/or presentations? Presumably with a focus on ease of creation.
If so, you'd probably want to explain it like that. Because the presentation on the site and your description here are pretty dense and take an effort to parse. If only there were a good tool for efficient pitch crafting... :)
9 hours ago by pclark
Haha, yup...
My biggest challenge right now is Journey is so meta when discussing Journey. It's why we're trying to lean into success stories: https://www.journey.io/success â but yes.
Like if you're describing Journey in isolation, without discussing how someone uses it, you sound like a crazy person:
Journey is a builder that lets you embed all sorts of content (slides, video, forms) into a sharable site. These sites can be used for when you want to convey complex ideas in an accessible way.
Maybe that is pretty good actually! I had actually always wanted to post on HN with "how would you describe Journey?" :)
2 hours ago by bberenberg
Sounds like you need a meta journey.
10 hours ago by an_opabinia
> "Userfox"
That memorable era when names were just things plus animals.
> really hard to create an email that performed really well because if an email is too long users will skim over it
On the other hand, how do you know, really, that videos convert more? They too can be tedious.
> choose your own adventure sales story
This is a phenomenal concept. Is it really this interface in your demo? My feeling is your leaning into the TurboTax wizard - that the kind of person too stupid to read in order to help themselves benefits immensely by reframing their problem as a chore with a deadline and these nice people will do it for you for $100 - is "choose your own adventure sales story."
9 hours ago by pclark
Haha, thanks. I remember coming up with the userfox name pretty much solely because I really like foxes and we had an awesome logo :)
Itâs worth noting Journeys can be much more than just videos - interactive slides and charts for example.
You make a good point about people being too laissez-faire but what we know is: a) people already do a ton of research before being compelled to talk to a human - Journey allows companies to slide into that research process without being annoying
b) we fundamentally believe youâll get more sales if you empower people to think for themselves rather than forcing them on to a call. Lead submission forms convert at approx 1.5% â- there must be more users out there that are intrigued but not yet willing to talk to a sales person (and btw we donât cannibalise those that want calls, if anything we make it easier to coordinate since we embed meeting booking right there)
⌠and yeah our UI is a bit Turbotax right now and that isnât the desired first impression, we want people to think we are Nethack (well actually a more accessible and beautiful video game) or something equally fun and interactive.
One of the fun but hard things about building this product is we have to dogfood aggressively - but then we are only as good as our product, not our sales slides. Which is how it should be! But it makes you have to be very intellectually honest about where youâre at todayâŚ
Lots to doâŚ
4 hours ago by raldu
> Think of it like a website that is specifically designed for a specific individual to take a specific action, which answers any questions or objections they may have.
OK thatâs quite a philosophical description for a platform to conveniently share sales pitches.
3 hours ago by pclark
My hope is that people will use Journey for:
* HVAC quotes
* Concierge shopping
* How-to guides
etc etc! Stories can be all sorts of things!
9 hours ago by mwcampbell
Congrats on the launch.
I checked out the demo, and I have some feedback on the accessibility of the page with a screen reader. It appears that there are some clickable text elements that aren't marked up as links or buttons. I suggest using actual HTML links or buttons if you can. Failing that, you should use the role attribute to give them the proper ARIA role, and use tabindex="0" to make them keyboard focusable.
But overall, I like what you're doing. HTML-based slides or other forms of interactive presentation have the potential to be much more accessible than either a static video or a typical screen sharing session.
9 hours ago by pclark
Thanks! to be clear I believe accessibility is hugely important but also that such accessibility is beneficial to everyone. I am super excited to allow videos to have transcripts for example. I think the lack of investment in accessibility is a miss for everyone, not just those that require it.
(Seems like we have some short term basic tech stuff to improve too!)
9 hours ago by mwcampbell
I'm happy to answer questions about the tech stuff. My email is in my HN profile.
9 hours ago by leerobert
This is a nifty idea. Some thoughts:
1. B2B is as much about product fit as it is with the sales contact / company fit. People buy other people's stuff. There is a ton of potential here in humanizing the person pitching.
2. Absolutely love the UX. Clean and all the relevant links are succinctly put next to the content (videos).
3. It's not clear through the demo but what tooling/processes are in place to enable me selling to be able to personalize the pitch to the client? It would be nifty to have video editing tooling where I can add a personalized pitch to the end of the standard video.
9 hours ago by pclark
Sorry for the delay, I was walking my dog.
Re: 1, I would also add that I think Journey may win because of our virality. If I send you a Journey, its a conveniently packaged experience that you can then share with your co-workers or boss for feedback and approval. Suddenly the buyer is empowered to properly sell the tool.
Re: 2, thanks! We're working on it and I think there is much more we can do generally though. It's a super hard problem to make something obviously interactive + compelling without adding friction for creator.
Re: 3, here you go :) https://jny.journey.io/p/3bbb55f82a224e399aafd2dc04f4f32b?em...
This is the same HN Journey but I've personalised it for you with a brief video message at the start (users can record these from within Gmail with our browser extension) - I also added LambaSchool's logo at the top (I just picked that one arbitrarily) as an example of hopefully making it feel even more personal.
8 hours ago by sixQuarks
The link you provided in #3 finally showed me the unique value of your product. The web site left me confused on how this product was different than just recording videos.
I think you need more examples of real-world journeys on the site, not just videos of people telling me how they find it useful.
8 hours ago by pclark
Thanks, this is great feedback.
We actually tried making some hypothetical Journeys (for example a fundraising deck for Webvan!) but then people got confused at the content.
But yes we are investing heavily in examples! https://journey.io/success as a start.
7 hours ago by vtuulos
I love the idea! The Journey team has a great founder-market fit too :) I am looking forward to using the product by myself.
Congrats for the launch!
9 hours ago by n-exploit
I had the opportunity to talk with the Journey team a few weeks ago, and I really appreciate their product and approach.
We're going to be using Journey as an augmentation to our pitch process for investors who want tailored/detailed data than is usually available in your standard pitch deck.
Keep up the great work, Journey Team!
9 hours ago by bweitz
Thanks -- lots of interesting "fundraising Journeys" in the wild now. Here to help if you need anything or email us if you would like to chat with other founders using Journey similar use cases for any inspiration.
Daily digest email
Get a daily email with the the top stories from Hacker News. No spam, unsubscribe at any time.