We’ve been working quite closely with some of the tertiary trainers already.
The National Institute of Dramatic Arts has come on board as a founding member and an early bird licensee, so their students are going to start using it when the next version comes out.
Queensland University of Technology has also bought a license for their students to start using it, and a couple of others have started the wheels in motion on that front.
I’ve had quite a bit of interest from trainers overseas too, so we’re going to be really focusing on that education sector.
The other thing is we’ve been developing really good relationships with a lot of the top end companies. For example, Opera Australia is one of our founding members too.
The idea behind the founding members is that even though StageBitz isn’t actually up to the level that they need yet, they believe it is what the industry needs.
They’ve effectively paid a deposit for the subscription they think they’re likely to want. That’s been a really great show of support.
We’re really looking for more contacts and networks in the film and TV industry because that’s an area that this has got a lot of application for. Our experience is predominantly in theatre and events so we’re trying to broaden our networks there.
At the moment, it’s me. I’ve got a team of two people working on the technology – predominantly one at the moment, with somebody in a part-time, sort of supervisor role.
Pollenizer’s doing the marketing and web strategy and capital raising side of things, so that’s probably the equivalent of another person.
Most of the time, people don’t think that a product like this exists. We’re not doing a new type of an existing product – it’s a brand new thing.
It’s not so much brand awareness but solution awareness, if you like, so that’s the biggest challenge.
At the moment, if you go and do a search for prop software or something like that in Google, what you get is real estate and propellers.
We’ve got to do some basic customer development. On the plus side, I am yet to have anybody say, that’s not quite what I’m after.
So if I’m able to get in front of people, the conversion rates and the interest rate are very, very high. We’ve just got to make sure we establish those networks and those channels, and build awareness of what we’re doing.
A lot of it is tied up with Production Genie; there are certainly a lot of lessons that I’ve learnt with StageBitz that I wish I’d been able to apply a lot earlier to Production Genie.
I think making sure that you keep track of every single lead and making sure that you’ve got a very systematic way of keeping hold of the information [is important].
I think if I’d known all the information that I need now, I would’ve set it up differently so that it was easier to get hold of that information.
It’s not that I’ve lost any information, but now I need to spend more time putting it all into the right kind of framework.
But if you ask me that question in another six months, it could be a very different answer.
