When I started my consulting business in January, 2009, one of my first clients was WineAlign. Created by Bryan McCaw, WineAlign is an online service that makes it easier to make smart buying decisions at the LCBO (the place where consumers in Ontario have to buy their wine and beer).

Bryan is a dyed-in-the-wool entrepreneur who has bootstrapped WineAlign and been patient and persistent in convincing the rest of the world that WineAlign is a better way to buy wine. In recent months, WineAlign has seen strong growth, suggesting it has started to see hockey stick-like growth. I asked Bryan to provide an update.

Since WA launched, what are some of the biggest start-ups lessons that you have learned?

That’s an interesting question. People assume that start-ups are different than regular businesses, but at the end of the day they are like any other business. The lessons that I have learned over my career are still applicable to WineAlign. Primarily they remain providing a high level of value, service and responsiveness to customers. Staying focused on priorities and applying resource effectively. Creating effective metrics to measure your progress and staying on top of them. Closely managing cash and cash flow, I’ve had to say no more than few times to nice to haves.

With respect to a start-up in the Internet domain, I have learned the following:
- There is no silver bullet for growth. Things don’t go viral. You don’t have 10,000 users on day two. You have to keep plugging away.
- Understanding your customer conversion rates and customer acquisitions costs are critical. If you know it takes $X to acquire a customer you can use that number to make a lot of decisions.
- Google has an amazing suite of free products: Analytics, AdWords, AdManager and Webmaster tools. Use them to manage your business.
- You will always have lots of feedback, as you mature the feedback, while important, is less important than at the beginning of the process. Learn to say no more often as the product matures.
- There are two great government programs available: SR&ED and the relatively new Ontario Interactive Digital Media Tax Credit.

If you had to go back and change anything, what would top your list?

Two things: Software startups are generally run by developers (I am a reformed one myself), who want to incorporate more and more features. These tend to address Wants not Needs and deliver little additional value to 90% of users. Once the core functionality is there, start spending more on marketing. However, when spending on marketing we have found that print ads in traditional media are a waste of money. People have to remember you and then type you in later. When the time is right, a PR program makes more sense.

Can you talk about how WA has powered its marketing efforts? What role does social media play?

We’ve taken a multi-prong approach. Google AdWords has been a great source of customers. Bing is now gaining traction and providing sign ups. By knowing our conversion costs we’ve been able to pay for leads from partners. We use promo codes to entice and track new signups. We also reward members who invite new users.

We’ve done some pretty unique things with Twitter using their search tools and API. We’ve been able reach out to thousands of people in Ontario and let them know about WineAlign. Responses to this out reach have been 99% positive. We have integrated the Facebook LIKE into our site and we automatically forward wine reviews to user’s Twitter streams.

What has subscriber growth been? Has it met your expectations?

Growth has been steady and well below my expectations. Before launch, I was confident that we would have 10,000 users in the first month. With the viral nature of the Internet and the ability to invite friends to a cool new service with a single click, we’d have thousands of users in days. Despite glowing accolades from users it took us 21 months to reach 10,000 users (about 2% of our target market). Growth remains steady at around 7% per month so the number of new users we are adding per month is significant and growing. In fact, we’ve added over a 1,000 users in the last 30 days and have over 11,000.

What’s next for WA? Can you talk about any new features in the pipeline?

We have recently completed support for wines that are NOT carried by the LCBO. This will open up a new world to wine consumers. Only a small portion of the wines available in Ontario are distributed through the LCBO. Mobile is the future. While only 7% of our users have used our mobile website we will be committing more resources to it. Natives apps, barcodes & images are in our future. We want to expand nationally and hope to add another province (or two) in the near future. Expect to see more meet-ups and exclusive events for our community members.