Member Info for Likeitornot

I have to say, hats off to the Blackbird team for securing this fundraise, opening it up for private investors and above all for keeping it simple.

OK, we'd all like more, sooner and the share price to be a lot higher. But they are doing an amazing job at sticking to their mission and not deviating from doing a proper job. It will pay dividends I am sure. Amazing focus and self belief in the approach being demonstrated here from the team.

Their refusal to play to the investor crowd is infuriating a lot of the time, but what a wonderful position the company is now in to take advantage of what lies in front of them.

Different product, Over a year ago, No hint of how it will make money for either party or how much over what period.

Pretty much sums it up.

Features, schmeatures. Show me the partnerships, marketplace participants and integrations.

Maybe they will surprise us but probably they won’t.

A welcome update this morning. It is good news that they are engaging investors ahead of the AGM, and I am glad to see they are continuing with the video format. Nice to hear the reconfirming of the features pipeline and confidence in their approach.

In a near future update, it would be nice if they could announce one or more partnerships with third parties with whom they have agreed contractually will place services/products into the marketplace - even if actual roll out might be a few quarters off. This might be the kind of thing (along with some detail on the revenue model) that would help build momentum again and give investors encouragement that the Company can dominate this space in the years to come.

Despite the company’s announcements, which for some reason I have frequently misinterpreted as milestones (product launch, paywall installed, google ads commenced, user number announcements etc) on a traditional marketing led approach, the team is aiming to deliver a product led growth strategy.

Ok, they have said this many times before, but I had either forgotten or not wanted to hear. This is possibly one reason why I and some others haven’t been able to understand fully what’s going on.

From what I can determine, within PLG, the product IS the growth engine. Some of the key attributes enabling this are:

Seamless “self service” onboarding and use

Customers getting quick wins and value before encountering paywall

Giving users access to core editing tools / basic AI capabilities early to give productivity gains before prompting upgrades

Data-driven product optimization, with usage data guiding UI, onboarding, and feature refinement.

Built-in virality: video sharing and collaboration features to spread awareness. AI-generated highlights, captions, branded templates that facilitate shareable output.

Creation and nurturing of a user community

Educational and product focused content (tutorials/how-tos to show real-world use cases) with current tools and with soon-to-launch features

The posterchild (Figma) has apparently built massive adoption by following this approach:

• Instant value via the browser: No downloads, no friction. Quick onboarding and spontaneous collaboration

• Built-in collaboration as a feature: Every user session is a potential viral growth loop

• Freemium model with upgrade triggers. Full creative access for free, but teams have to upgrade for more control, versioning, and admin features.

• Community and ecosystem growth: Templates, plugins, and community contributors, creating network effects well before its marketplace matured.

• Content that teaches the product: Their blog, design systems guides, and live streams taught users how to use the tool while also showcasing its power.

Must be time for detailed research note or two which cover where they are to date, what the business model is, how they can act as a hub to give other video tech companies access to the customer , and what their aspirations are for building ARPU.

Long term, current price is a snip I feel. Hang in there.

I am seeing this as a chance consider the strengths/weaknesses of the board and the skills needed for the next phase where the objectives are to:

- Deliver strategic sales and technology partnerships

- Build out marketplace and integrations

- Find a couple of significant strategic tech investors

- Grow user numbers

I really think we all deserve the hoodies now, or at least the baseball caps. Bought 100k yesterday, crazy prices ;-)

Agreed. There are differences as well as parallels but swap over the names, replace a few industry terms….

Xero’s emphasis is on their sales and partner strategy and explaining why they are confident user numbers will increase (it’s not all about the features or patents). If Bird have identified the growth drivers effectively and have started to set up relationships in the background I don’t think we will need to wait that long to see user numbers increase. The reverse is also true however. I was hoping for announcements of partners or at least a better peek into their thinking by now. The fact that we haven’t is not helping me sleep.

MTD has contributed to their growth, but there is also a case that Xero enabled MTD. The Xero product created a win-win for everyone: users right through to regulators.

The requirements for accounting are different to video production, but fundamentally the successful cloud platforms all meet common underlying goals of solving a problem faster, cheaper and more accessibly, whether it be Xero, Atlassian tools or whatever. I believe they also created new markets for their products and a lot of customers that were not users of systems before.

The roll out and success of Xero accounting software continues to be a useful reference here I feel.

Xero’s customer and partner numbers in the months following general release in August 2007 were:

September 2007 – 204 customers and 52 accounting partners

January 2008 – Over 500 customers

March 2008 – Over 950 customers and 111 accounting partners

May 2008 – Over 1,400 customers

Looking at extracts of the Chairman’s statement from the 2008 Results for Xero is also revealing. ….

“……We deliberately set out to build relationships with the accounting community in New Zealand. With over 100 accounting firms signing on as Xero partners, they have become important endorsers of the product to small business owners.

We have successfully developed unique partnerships with all trading banks in New Zealand whereby bank transaction data can be automatically imported into Xero each day. This is a major point of difference from our competitors.

Xero has the potential to become the accounting engine for a wide variety of industry applications, and this has driven a number of vertical market sales initiatives and the creation of the Xero Network designed to attract and support many market collaborations…

…Growth will also be driven through the addition of new modules in the Xero product suite, such as job costing and time recording, and new features in the core accounting offering, for example, multi-currency capability. These will push up the potential revenue available from each customer and grow our addressable market.

…. we will vigorously pursue new customers through partnering arrangements with banks, Internet service providers and similar organisations, vertical market sales initiatives, relationships with the accounting community and a strong focus on the development of a Xero-networked small business ecosystem.”

source: https://www.annualreports.co.uk/HostedData/AnnualReportArchive/x/ASX_XRO_2008.pdf

I can't help thinking that investor sentiment will continue to be tested between now and the AGM in June if there is to be little or no news flow aside from product updates. I hope I am wrong.

If you can look past the investor communication issues and the slightly long faces, the company is actually round about where it was expected to be. Perhaps even slightly ahead looking at the reported cash figure. They still have plenty of runway and so time to build momentum ahead of any raise.

We should be very pleased that the team has very much delivered what they said they would, plus they have not spent stupidly on sales/marketing ahead of the product being ready.

I would prefer them to improve their delivery to investors (and yes it would be a shame to fail because of it) over changing their steady and considered approach to development and market launch. There will be a time to go big on the marketing, and if they feel its not now, then I am happy to believe them.

It would be doubly disappointing if tomorrow's online meeting is simply a repeat of today's messaging. Hopefully they will be able to offer us some insight into their strategic plans for delivering mass adoption. The value of the company is largely dependent on an assumption they can successfully build up the subscriber numbers and the statements today were a missed opportunity to convince investors that their team has the wherewithal to get it started let alone done.

Well. If they set out to persuade the competition that they have nothing to fear, then they have for now succeeded. Hopefully tomorrow's presentation will be an opportunity for the sales/marketing team to demonstrate they aren't actually clueless.

I didn't expect loads of paying users as we are deliberately not doing any marketing but at least use the annual report as an opportunity to inspire confidence and set out the strategic vision.

It feels a bit tough being a Bird shareholder at the moment but there is a lot to like in how they are now positioned. Their big picture business model for Elevate looks really strong and I think that when they choose to put the pedal down there is a good prospect that we will see significant revenue growth. It will be interesting to see the quality of partners we attract into (and permit to be part of ) the marketplace – but my assumption is that if we can bring customers to them they will be falling over themselves to integrate with us.

The website and editor look brilliant – so clear and uncomplicated – attributes that are as important as the tech itself in democratising the task (just as Xero did for accounting).

For a company that has been around a long time, their corporate and share structure remains remarkably simple, testament to what I see as a team that play straight and believe that things done properly will enable them to build something worthwhile.

BTW Something needs to be done with their legacy Blackbird business if it is not contributing, but that can wait probably.

Their approach of ‘our tech is the best’ and standing behind the speed, simplicity and ease of use whilst reaching out to customers on new product direction is a good one IMO. But I feel they must not overplay this with investors. We want to see that they can boss the marketing and commercialisation of their asset and we need absolute confidence that they are capable of getting to $100m revenues within the next 3 years. Calling people who have responded to a GoogleAd and provided an email address ‘users’ for example is a bit rich; they are paid-for leads no more. Lets hope the language gets tightened up and they can soon demonstrate they can be the complete marketing animal.

This is true also.

I think they’ve been pretty clear by reference to other companies they are trying to emulate that they will raise money down the line (later in 2025 and beyond) but I expect them to be able to show some signs of significant traction first.

But don’t be afraid. This is going to be a watershed year for the Bird.

What shareholding qualifies me for a free sweatshirt?

...sounds like the old strategy with a different catch phrase. I don't get it.

This is welcome news. It's hard to see otherwise where the change in fortunes is going to come from. At the moment, a large part of the strategy seems to be out of the last few chapters of 'The History of WHSmith'. It will also be interesting if they can give some indication as to why they have reason to believe this new strategy will be a success or whether it is yet to be tested at all.

I am hopeful that this will be a turning point. Fingers crossed.