Time management is important while running any business Small or big, it is this efficiency that can determine if we become successful or not. If we work with the right tool that can help you with that, it can prove beneficial. That’s when startup ‘Timely’ kicks in. Timely is about giving small business owners more of their day, because as a business owner, time is something you never have enough of. Funnily enough many booking-based businesses completely revolve around time – appointments are scheduled in time blocks, so the more time-blocks are sold, the more successful these small businesses are.
People behind Timely
Ryan and Andrew met in Dunedin, New Zealand in their early 20’s and created a company called BookIt, which sold enterprise-grade booking software to many of the large travel and tourism websites. This business was acquired by New Zealand’s largest e-commerce company, Trade Me, in 2010. Not long afterward, Ryan and Andrew began seeing a distinct need in the market for cloud booking software for small businesses, as there was no solution that really filled small business’s needs in terms of cost, design, features, and functionality.
In 2012 they launched Timely and brought on Will Berger as a co-founder to help with design. In just two years since the launch, the company has grown to 22 staff and over 8,000 users in 50 countries.
Their goal was to make it easy for customers to be in control of their day, by automating much of their admin work and preventing disruptive events in their day like customer no-shows.
“We arrived the long way! Through our previous business, over a 10 year period, we had become experts in booking software for small businesses. When we looked at what to do next after that company was acquired, it made sense to stick to what we knew. When looking at the market, globally, there are hundreds of providers building cheap and cheerful online scheduling systems for SMEs. There are very few who are building robust, scalable, fully featured platforms that are cloud-based “Ryan Baker says.
They believe that it’s the people within the company that make the business and they are giving their customers the best possible experience by recruiting people who want to give their customers that experience.
How do they work?
Timely has a distributed team of people who all work from their homes, at shared startup spaces, or in the offices of some of our partners. They use tools like Slack, Google Hangouts, and Sqwiggle to keep in touch every day and develop company culture. They get together for a lunch or to celebrate milestones every two weeks or so, but everyone on the team is close because they’re constantly in touch.
“For SME’s that provide services like salons, clinics, trainers tutors and so on, time is money. Wasting time with booking admin, missed appointments and empty schedules, is wasting money. Not being available to be booked 24/7, from anywhere, on any device, is losing business with today’s connected consumer. Timely is like another staff member that only costs you from $19/month. It tells you which clients are coming, which should be coming but haven’t booked. It sends SMS & emails reminders to your clients to make sure they show up on the right time and in the right place. It gets you new customers, by making it easy to find you online and book instantly. It’s right with you every step of the way, on your front desk, in your pocket, on your tablet. It’s beautiful to look at, easy to use and slots in seamlessly to your business” he says.
Timely’s competitors are companies that sell booking software to salons, personal trainers, clinics, massage centres, and any other booking-based businesses.
“We’re growing fast already, so expansion is happening as we speak. We have big plans to keep making Timely the best solution in this space. This year the Timely team grew from 7 staff in 1 country, to 22 staff in 3 countries. Our expansion plans see that tripling of the size of the business, every year for the next few years!” he adds.
Their target audience is anyone who owns or manages a business that revolves around appointments. They often own salons, spas, clinics, health clinics, and fitness businesses, they’ve also had different people use it from dentists to Lyft driver mentors. They have customers in 50 countries, so they’ve been global from day one.
“We don’t just plan to monetize it, we have from day one. We love unsexy B2B SaaS, for it’s old-school mindset to just make some money off every customer. Our customers see the value easily and are happy to pay for it. They also know that their support allows us to keep growing the business, which is good for everyone” Ryan says.
Timely charges our users a monthly fee for their Timely account. Plans start at $19 / month for a single user. Additional users are $9 / month, until there are 10 total staffs. Then it’s $100 / month for unlimited staff.
As a special offer for our readers
If you activate your Timely account before Xmas, we’re offering 50% off for 3 months. Use the promo code ‘2014TIMELYXMAS’ when you activate.
For more details, visit: http://gettimely.com/