Tivan Amour, Founder and CEO - Text Like a Human

<p><strong><span style="color: #e67e23;">Join Sal's Investment Syndicate:</span> <a href= "https://www.angelinvestboston.com/our-syndicates">Link to Syndicate Page</a></strong></p> <p>Trying to create a bike startup, repeat founder Tivan Amour builds a texting tool that quickly outgrows the original business and is then launched as an independent company. Listen to the founding story of Tone (tonemessaging.com) and how it’s allowing brands to speak directly to customers.</p> <p>A great chat with one of my favorite founders.</p> <p>Highlights include:</p> <ul> <li>Sal Daher Introduces Tivan Amour, Founder of Tone</li> <li>How Tone / Save My Sales Was Born Out of Fortified Bike</li> <li>The Story of Kyle the Super Bike Salesman</li> <li>Kyle Stumbles Upon the Idea of Texting Bike Clients Who Don’t Complete the Sale</li> <li>Texting Proves Out as a Massive Driver of Sales</li> <li>“…so, we turned that potential lost sale that would have been $750 into an actual conversion within a couple of days that was worth 50% more, right?”</li> <li>Friends in e-Commerce Urged Tivan to Turn the Texting Platform into a Business</li> <li>“In Techstars, one of the mantras that I think was drilled into us was to sort of be open to serendipity and do things that don't scale…”</li> <li>“Lo and behold, in the first month we started getting our first couple thousand-dollar paychecks from brands that we were making tens of thousands of dollars for.”</li> <li>The Texting Platform Starts Becoming More Scalable</li> <li>Tivan Decides to Sell the Still-Growing and Profitable Bike Business and Focus Just on the Texting Platform</li> <li>“…from those initial 50 beta customers to about 10x, so we have just under 600 customers that we do this for.”</li> <li>“You have to have customers who tend to like being texted, which from what we can tell seems to be most brands that we've talked to. There's very few where customers don't enjoy the instant communication.”</li> <li>“We figured out how to automate our first 25% of all messages in the platform