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case study
Decision Intelligence Startup Scores Sizable Investment Opportunity With Marketing Support from FullON Strategy
Challenge:
SignalFlare.ai is the third Data Intelligence startup founded by CEO Mike Lukianoff. The company achieved rapid success selling its services to several leading multi-unit restaurant brands. Lacking in-house marketing resources and expertise, the company looked for third-party strategic advice on, and resources for, go-to-market branding, naming, messaging, and communications.
Solution:
SignalFlare turned to FullON Strategy to develop video content for the Snowflake Startup Challenge.
FullON Services:
Marketing + brand strategy and augmentation.
FullON helped create the foundation for company naming/branding and positioning/messaging. Over months, advised senior leadership on target market and value propositions. Rebranded website and pitch deck. Created winning contest entry video + pitch content for an investment contest sponsored by technology partner Snowflake.
Results:
Exceptionally rapid sales growth in the first year, aided by marketing consulting from FullON Strategy. Selected from among thousands of entries from around the world as first prize winner in the Snowflake Startup Challenge. Stronger market position, better go-to-market efficiency, more compelling and resonant brand messaging, and more rapid growth and scaling
Signalflare.ai Quick Facts
- Snowflake Startup Challenge Winner
- Leading expert on CPI for restaurants + other industries
- Decision intelligence to address $50B loss from $1.1T restaurant market
- ~20 Employees
Situation
SignalFlare.ai Decision Intelligence platform transforms data into actionable decisions for leaders at recognizable restaurant brands. Multi-unit restaurants including rely on support and tools from SignalFlare.ai analytics for price optimization, menu optimization, competitor intelligence and consumer spend tracking. SignalFlare is the third such company founded by Mike Lukianoff, a veritable veteran in the restaurant pricing intelligence space.
Facing thin margins, restaurant operators constantly must monitor financials. With the economic climate putting the squeeze on the wallets of both restaurateurs and diners everywhere, menu pricing weighs even more heavily in people’s minds. Operators, especially, must take a proactive approach to win the hearts, stomachs, and wallets of fickle guests while facing stiff competition for hungry guests. Amid these challenges, they are looking for ways to stay profitable and to quickly and confidently make pricing decisions with a high degree of accuracy.
To serve these needs, SignalFlare.ai is leading the market by building the most accurate, comprehensive and affordable pricing solution available. Its models and platform can drive significantly more profit than conventional methods of setting restaurant menu prices including homegrown pricing and data intelligence tools. Ultimately, SignalFlare delivers insights that help restaurateurs both protect the guest experience and preserve the financial health of the business.
“We bring data science models into play to understand what parts of the menu have more sensitivity and more risk in terms of price increases,” said Jayne Strickland, Chief Customer Officer at SignalFlare.ai. “Our solution puts pricing power in the hands of hospitality operators, all the way down to item level and product level.” Pricing power is the degree to which a business can raise prices without losing customers.
SignalFlare achieved considerable rapid success in its first year of operation. The company nevertheless did not have dedicated go-to-market strategy or marketing resources. Wanting to assess company and product go-to-market messaging with target audiences, Lukianoff looked for help.
Its small team did not have much experience in marketing, making the challenge of communicating to both highly technical audiences who would use its AI-driven data solution and non-technical restaurateurs daunting at best. “We’re data geeks, not marketers. So we definitely needed help to develop messaging that was short, sweet and relevant that would resonate and break through,” said Strickland.
Solution
SignalFlare.ai hired FullON Strategy. FullON provides B2B consulting services for go-to-market, product marketing and marketing augmentation strategy, as well as planning and tactical execution to drive revenue growth. The company has extensive experience marketing products to both technical and non-technical audiences.
FullON Strategy evaluated SignalFlare’s target audiences and the company’s product positioning and messaging. SignalFlare previously went by the name Extropy 360 and named its flagship product the same. FullON recommended that the company undergo a renaming and rebranding to SignalFlare.
This name derives from the flagship product’s ability to both process the right data and analytics (Signals) and highlight what is relevant, pinpointing when and where action is necessary (the Flare).
FullON advised SignalFlare on its target market and value propositions including a messaging framework. FullON also designed the initial SignalFlare.ai website and sales deck. When SignalFlare was selected as a top 10 finalist in an investment contest sponsored by its technology provider, data platform giant, Snowflake in a ‘Shark Tank’ style contest, the company asked FullON Strategy to help develop contest entry content including two videos and pitch deck presentation slides.
The team had just more than a week to submit a five-minute video to advance from top-ten finalist to top three, the next round in the contest. “When this contest opportunity suddenly fell in our laps, we were grateful to have the highly talented team at FullON Strategy come alongside us,” said Lukianoff.
SignalFlare was selected as a top three finalist and, next, needed to produce a 90-second ‘sizzle reel’ video in 10 days’ time, along with a pitch deck. The challenge? Giving a cohesive overview of the company and its culture in video format despite the fact that its team members are scattered across two continents and seven time zones.
FullON worked with SignalFlare to plan a video that would combine clips captured by individual team members eating at local restaurants and sharing various facets of the sizzle reel pitch. FullON also helped the team refine the messaging of its pitch and presentation slides. “FullON came to us with extensive experience in technology and restaurants. This, combined with their smart, creative minds and nimble flexibility helped us knock it out of the park,” said Strickland. “The FullON team brought strategic thinking related to our audiences, what they really care about, keeping in mind the final objective, and helped us distill everything down to the most ideal message working within a tight deadline, with winning results.”
Both the video and the presentation were to be delivered live, on stage, Shark-Tank-style, at the annual Snowflake conference. Prestigious contest judges included the President of NYSE Group and executives at leading brands including Altimeter, as well as the Snowflake President and CMO.
From thousands of entries submitted from companies around the world, SignalFlare.ai won first prize. Winnings include an opportunity for a sizable investment and business development coaching from Snowflake and NYSE.
Outcomes + Benefits
The services provided by FullON Strategy have helped SignalFlare establish a stronger market position, improve its go-to-market efficiency, and accelerate its business growth and scaling, ultimately leading to long-term sustainable success. In addition, marketing support from FullON helped SignalFlare win a six-figure investment from a data platform powerhouse that solidifies the company’s financial position and powers its future growth. In total, SignalFlare is poised for growth, including preparing for a round of seed investment and hiring team members to launch the company into its next phase.
“FullON made our challenge their mission, and that made all the difference,” said CEO, Mike Lukianoff. “The FullON team delivered stellar results that speak for themselves.”
Winning Credibility with an Important Buyer Audience
Winning the Snowflake challenge has elevated SignalFlare’s credibility among Chief Technology Officers. “We’ve long been known and recognized by CFOs, CMOs, and private equity firms,” said Lukianoff. “Despite what we are doing with data and machine learning, the insights we derive, and the value we deliver, we haven’t been as well known among the CTO crowd. Winning the Snowflake Startup Challenge has changed that for us. It’s opened a door for us to a very influential buyer persona in the restaurant C-suite.”
Improved Go-to-Market Efficiency and Effectiveness
The strategic advice on target market and value propositions helps SignalFlare focus its sales and marketing efforts on the most promising segments, leading to higher conversion rates and faster customer acquisition. The initial website and pitch deck designed and developed by FullON provides a solid foundation for SignalFlare's sales and marketing collateral, streamlining the go-to-market process and enabling the team to be more agile and responsive to customer needs.
The high-quality contest entry content that helped SignalFlare win a significant investment demonstrates FullON’s ability to craft compelling narratives and presentations, which can be leveraged for future funding, partnership, and customer acquisition efforts. Winning the Snowflake contest gave SignalFlare further validity in the minds of prospects. “We’ve gotten sales conversations because of the Snowflake win,” said Strickland.
Accelerated Business Growth and Scaling
The strengthened brand equity and go-to-market capabilities enable SignalFlare to more effectively penetrate the multi-unit restaurant market, leading to increased sales and revenue growth. The Snowflake investment and business development coaching augments the financial resources and strategic guidance to help SignalFlare scale operationally and expand its customer base.
“The videos that FullON produced were amazing. They started with some pretty rough raw footage on short notice and turned out quality videos that were nothing short of terrific,” said Lukianoff.
In addition, Snowflake is helping with introductions to new opportunities and potential partnerships, and is helping SignalFlare convert some of its software into Snowflake apps. This presents a huge opportunity for SignalFlare, because anyone who uses Snowflake can download the native SignalFlare app into their own database within Snowflake. “The benefit is mutual because it expands the Snowflake ecosystem with net-new functionality powered by SignalFlare and grows SignalFlare’s opportunities and potential reach,” concluded Lukianoff.
About SignalFlare
SignalFlare.ai’s Decision Intelligence powers smart decision-making systems for human decision-makers. SignalFlare.ai’s clients improve speed to value by harnessing the power of statistics, data science and artificial intelligence in collaboration with industry experts. SignalFlare.ai has worked with more than 60% of the top 200 U.S. restaurant chains, and our list of clients includes large,recognizable, multi-unit restaurant operations. As of 2024, our pricing systems are responsible for more than 30 million item price recommendations.
To learn more about SignalFlare, visit https://www.signalflare.ai/
About FullON Strategy
FullON provides B2B consulting services for go-to-market strategy, product marketing and marketing augmentation services, as well as planning and tactical execution to drive revenue growth for a range of companies including those that are startups and/or VC-backed, public or privately held, and mature, large corporations. Click Here to learn more about FullON Strategy,
