JetJaw

JetJaw is a web-based software service that helps retailers, restaurants, hotels, medical professionals, and other brick-and-mortar businesses proactively manage their reputation.  Effectively, we are the aspirin for review sites like Yelp! and TripAdvisor.

Businesses pay a monthly subscription fee to use JetJaw.  They log into JetJaw to setup their campaign, which includes a short survey.  They define how JetJaw should automatically handle customers based on sentiment.  JetJaw then provides the business with a URL, a QR code, and a text message code that their customers can use to easily and quickly provide feedback.  The business requests feedback from their customers on point-of-sale signage, a receipt, or a business card.  Customers use their own phone or tablet to provide feedback while still on site or immediately after patronizing the business.  Giving feedback is fast and simple, resulting in high engagement rates.  Happy customers can easily and quickly leave a positive review on social media (Facebook, Twitter, Google+, etc.) and review sites (Google Places, Yelp!, TripAdvisor, etc.).  Unhappy customers are given the opportunity to vent and allow the business to follow up with them directly.  JetJaw can text or email the business to alert them of a dissatisfied customer.

Our team is heavy with successful startup and mobile industry experience.  Mark Salsberry, CEO and co-founder, has 15 years of experience in wireless and mobile technology, and working with medium and large retailers.  James Gardner (CTO and co-founder) and Betsy Fonfara (VP of Business Development and Sales) played instrumental roles in software development and sales, respectively, at a SaaS company called SchoolFusion (acquired by EdLine in 2010).  Beyond that, 2 members of JetJaw’s engineering team formerly worked together at Google, one of whom just finished up a stint with startup LocalMotors.  We also have 4 contract salespeople with experience, contacts and warm leads in the verticals we are pursuing.  In total, there are 4 full-time employees and 9 part-time contractors and we are currently hiring another engineer and bringing on a marketing intern.

Our advisory team consists of: 1. Mike Stemple, CEO of Mosoro and founder of 14 companies, including Original Wraps (acquired by 3M), Odojo (acquired by SafetyWeb), and SkinIt (recently raised $60M); 2. Chad Mulder, who has held several marketing positions at Kraft and founded mobile payment MVent, which was acquired by Singapore Technologies Electronics. He also serves as an adviser to Vipani.org and Rise Intl.; 3. Dan Gish, who was co-founder and CTO at SchoolFusion, which was acquired in 2010 by Edline.; 4. Dirk Van Slyke, who serves as VP of Marketing at Verecloud, a publicly-held technology company, and is the founder at Sweat Equity Partners.

We are targeting a very large addressable market:  brick and mortar businesses.  We are approaching these businesses in a strategic, phased approach:

Phase 1 - medium-sized retailer, restaurant, and hotel chains

Phase 2 - self-serve model to reach small businesses

Phase 3 - large retail, restaurant, and hotel chains, and large healthcare groups and hospitals

We’ve found that medium-sized chains are the right initial target as they have the budget, understand the need for JetJaw, and we can close them faster.  The self-serve model will allow us to penetrate the small business market and scale even faster.

Our target customers’ budget for JetJaw is broadly in the marketing budget, and specifically falls under social media and customer service.  According to a survey by Borrell Associates, SMBs (small and medium businesses) are expected to spend $2B on social media in 2012, up from $1.1B in 2011.  This spend will increase to $7.8B by 2016.  Forrester Research predicts that social media marketing spend will grow at a compound annual rate of 34% over the next 5 years (2010 statistic).

Some of the warm opportunities that we are currently pursuing in our target market include Dick’s Sporting Goods, Famous Footwear, Dazbog Coffee, McDonald’s, Schlotzsky’s Deli, Moe’s Southwestern Grill, and Tokyo Joe’s.  We are also pursuing strategic partnerships with POS software and payment providers (MocaPay, First Data, Radiant Systems, etc) and loyalty and booking providers (Fishbowl, Opentable, etc).

We leapfrog the competition by making reputation management proactive rather than trying to clean up a company’s image after the damage is done.  JetJaw is different from competition in that it delivers immediate value in 3 key ways:

1. allows businesses to proactively address unhappy customers, resulting in less negative feedback and reviews, both online and offline

2. provides happy customers with 1-touch access to social media (including API integration with Facebook and Twitter) and online review sites, resulting in more positive online reviews

3. collects in-the-moment consumer insights and presents them graphically to the business owner, making it faster and easier to make important decisions

We’ve filed a provisional patent to protect our intellectual property.