2023 W15: Old media (Whitepapers)

Humberto

Every week I post about one thing that happened at Rows. We're building in public!

Last week we started sending an updated Whitepaper to larger organizations.

Whitepapers are those PDFs that have selected facts and logic arguments that build a case for organizations to use your product.

It smells a bit of old media to use PDFs, but I think it's worth it.

👉 Here's our whitepaper, and read on for some details.

Why do a whitepaper (bc of larger companies)

You should do a whitepaper if you see the pull from larger organizations. Say, companies with 500+ employees.

All organizations trade information in PDF form, but enterprises are especially keen on files. They can be used to prepare meetings where teams evaluate several products. PDFs don't go bad, can be opened on mobile and planes.

Not bad for a 30 year-old file format.

In our case, it was an investor of ours who asked for it. After our Rows 2.0 launch, we asked our board to help us get more reach in their organization pool. One of the investors has a set of LPs and affiliate organizations who might be interested, and who are big in size..

How to do it (show your product!)

You have the file of our whitepaper above, but I can tell you we created this for engagement. We didn't over invest in design, and used almost exclusively existing material.

Start out with a Summary - What is Rows and Why people should use it! Well, we're a spreadsheet, and people should use Rows bc it's the fastest way to get business data and generate reports.
Us vs. Them - Here's sheets, and why you may dislike it. (It's unlikely you're ever proud of what comes out of it, as it's ugly.) And here is Rows by comparison.
Demo - Enough of telling, show what Rows is in a 2 minute video by the founder (me!).
Details - List the features that may interest these larger orgs. Because we integrate with many datasources, that's what's more prominent.
Solutions & Testimonials - What can you solve with the product and who else is solving
Pricing - Just a bit of context.
CTA and contacts - to end on a to-do.

And that's it.

Since publishing this, I've gotten a couple of meetings and an invitation for a company-wide seminar on spreadsheet innovation and data.

It's not much yet. But this first whitepaper will probably be the first of many.

See you next week

Humberto