Launched: Beam - WE NEED YOU!

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#1

We’ve launched.

www.getbeam.co

What do we do? In a nutshell:

  1. You have software subscriptions
  2. You have employees

You currently:

  1. Don’t know which software subscriptions you are still paying for
  2. Don’t know if you employees still use those subscriptions
  3. You’ve lost count of how many software trial subscriptions you’re still paying for
  4. You don’t know the usernames/passwords for those services so its hard to even cancel

You’d like to:

  1. Monitor your software spend in one dashboard
  2. Monitor your employee’s software usage in one dashboard
  3. Cancel subscriptions in 1 click
  4. Onboard/Offboard your employees in 1 click

We need you to help us beta test. Simply sign-up here and add your bank account. We’ll do the rest.

Alpha product really only tells you your subscriptions. Something like:

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#2

I barely trust Mint with that. I have my reservations about everyone else - to the best of my knowledge, the banks still did not agree on a read-only API for third-party tools, so the credentials will be with a right to perform actions on the account.

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#3

@rfctr I respect your decision.

We use the same provider as Mint do in fact to get bank data. Plaid.com, and we’re busy integrating Yodlee as we speak.

I can only tell you that the banks themselves are starting to use Yodlee and Plaid themselves to gain access to feeds of their own bank data. Which is interesting in itself.

#4

Please correct me if I’m wrong, but I do not see how that makes you more secure? I’m giving the credentials to my account to you, and only then you pass them to that plaid.com or yodlee.com. So if your system is compromized, my credentials are leaking from your system.

And even if you do some sort of redirect where I can enter my data on plaid.com site - I do not trust them either. I never heard about them until today! :smiley:

#5

Hi Vlad,

Correcting you :slight_smile:

So when you fill out your bank details, the popup you see is provided by Plaid and not us. We don’t and are not involved with that transaction (your authentication etc) until we get a javascript callback from Plaid with all the transaction data.

We don’t physically see or have access to your credentials.

Hope that makes sense.

#6

Yeah, thanks, that’s certainly better… except as I said I never heard of Plaid either.

I remember Mint (was it Mint? doesn’t matter) had an option to upload a file which I could have downloaded from my bank first. Felt much safer option back then. May be the general trust level is different these days…

…

I wonder how you “cancel subscriptions in one click” if all you have is the bank statement?

#7

Hi @rfctr

We capture details about your subscriptions for you and offer this as a service.

I think there are always going to be some that feel uneasy about it. Personally, plaid.com and yodlee havent had any username/password leaks (like lastpass, linkedin) etc have had recently.

I am therefore comfortable letting them authenticate on my behalf.

#8

This jumped out at me too, as an immediate barrier. It is presented as throw-away trivial comment when actually it is probably going to be an enormous challenge for you to overcome user resistance. I think you need to proactively explain to people why they need to do this, how you manage it, and why, in your opinion, it is safe. Even after doing all this, you’ll probably still have a tough time convincing people to add their bank account info.

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#9

I’m curious about how you can offer 1 click cancelation to different subscription services. To the best of my knowledge there is no standard API for saas to follow, each one would require a customized solution, if they even have a way to cancel via API period.

Also sharing bank info is pretty much a no starter for most people. That would probably be the larger hurdle to get over.

#10

Hi @SteveMcLeod

Sure. its a balance between making people paranoid and just making it easy. Using Plaid/Yodlee, we are offering bank level security, Of course its going to be a resistance, but apps like Truebill.com (50K users currently, focussed in the B2C market) are doing really well and have overcome this risk, using the same technology we do(plaid/yodlee).

I get its not for everyone, but the savings we will start delivering to companies when theyre able to cancel services they don’t use, I believe will help CFO’s and CEO’s to make the step.

@dgrigg We will offer one click cancellation as well as onboarding and offboarding using a manual backend process in the next few months

Give it a try!

#11

One clock cancellation with a manual backend process? Does that mean I would need to share my saas credentials with your system to allow the ‘manual process’ to access my account and cancel it?

#12

If it is to cancel there shouldn’t be much risk to share the service credentials - except maybe the credit card info on account, but you have already gave them the bank account credentials, it is ridiculous to worry about a petty credit card at this point.

Of course, a disgruntled employee of theirs may post a number of nasty staff under your name instead of closing it. But so can do your own employee.

#13

True but it seems like a really high level of exposure and in today’s security conscious environment that’s a hard sell.

#14

Tip - you should get https setup on your site ASAP as you’re collecting bank account info. Everything should redirect to https://getbeam.co. Anthony and the DNSimple team are great at helping with this (as it’s kind of complicated and they simplify DNS), or if you use AWS you can get free https, but either way, you need https if you’re collecting info like this.

Also, is this a service that many customers run into? I’m pretty aware of all the services that we pay for and all the things my team signs up for (granted, I don’t have a huge dev team yet). Beyond that - how are you planning to monetize? Are folks paying for this service?

#15

SaaS - Subscription (and unsubscription) as a Service :smiley:

Well, if someone has this problem they can well afford to outsource it for a small management fee.

#16

Hi everyone,

This is great feedback.

@dgrigg @rfctr We store your saas credentials securely. To be honest, we all have a high level of exposure all the time. Google is tracking your every move through their mobile apps. You submit your credit card details when buying on Shopify sites? Most mobile apps are tracking your every move. Risk is everywhere. I think its all about how you position it with your clients. What is stopping one of your current employees who leaves you and within a day deletes all your data from one of your SAAS services. Or somehow negatively affects your business. Its really the same issue.

We have done some customer validation and we have found that companies of more than 20-25 employees generally don’t have their software/subscription spend under control. @Tom_Hammond, we are not quite sure how we will monetize yet. Either a percentage potential savings, or work out how much we could save our beta customers based on their company size

Gartner says the following:

Organizations can cut spending on software by as much as 30% by implementing Software Asset Management (SAM). We have the following table of data so far based on a lot of research:

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#17

@courtz - With respect I don’t think you’re listening to the feedback you’re getting. This has to be the single biggest obstacle your business will face and IMHO its a huge obstacle.

“We store your saas credentials securely” etc isn’t going to cut it with a skeptical audience.

After all every one of these websites undoubtedly claimed the same - https://haveibeenpwned.com/PwnedWebsites

We’re not talking about some tracking cookies or my facebook profile here, we’re talking about bank and SaaS credentials that could cost me real money or even absolutely destroy my business if lost. For those reasons personally I won’t even use an online password manager like LastPass.

Now the audience here may not be representative of your target audience - the only way you will know is to validate (and you may already have done some of that before building).

Having said all that - sincere good luck with your project.

#18

No. Game over.

… really? 20 characters minimum? What kind of metric is that?

#19

Thanks @Rhino. I think last i checked Lastpass had 8 million users and Truebill.com has 50k in 6 months truebill uses plaid and yodlee to grab bank details. Ah and that other small company too… Xero. Yes.

Obviously im in the wrong market by posting here… nonetheless it wont discourage us. We have had good feedback from companies and there are already some really well funded competitors in the market.

#20

Domain Suspension
This domain has expired and is now suspended.

Oh well. I suspected it would be a hard sell. But you tried.