Startup Spotlight - Scribe Up

All Things Venture #047

Hey Everyone! Dez here from All Things Venture. Let me get something off my chest - I love LinkedIn. I think it’s the world’s best social network. It can help you stay informed on what’s going on in the business world, it can help you find your next job. I love LinkedIn so much, that at certain points in my career, I’ve signed up for the professional paid versions just to take advantage of all of the additional features. Have I ever actually paid for that premium subscription? No. Well, at least not intentionally. I have definitely forgotten that I signed up, missed the deadline to cancel, had a smooth $55.99 charged to my credit card, and then called LinkedIn up to complain and get my money back. I share that story because A) I think it’s kind of funny and B) because it ties back to today’s startup spotlight on ScribeUp. ScribeUp is a B2C digital browser plug-in that automates the management of free trials and maintains a ledger of personal subscriptions. ScribeUp was started by a founding team of 4 MIT MBAs Cinar Fidan, Yohei Oka, Erica Chiang and Jordan Mackler. They’re working to make sure that I can live in a world where I can periodically sign up for LinkedIn premium with impunity, and I am ALL here for it. Like always everyone, let’s dive right in.

What is ScribeUp?

ScribeUp is a B2C digital browser plug-in that automates the management of free trials and maintains a ledger of personal subscriptions. Through a system of virtual cards and automated funding levels, we have built a product that allows consumers to freely explore digital services (e.g. Hulu, Spotify, Evernote), without the fear of an unwanted bill.

We are helping millennials who frequently sign up for and use digital services for entertainment, productivity, and personal purposes. One big pain point we encountered is the fear of forgetting a free trial. We discovered that people shy away from signing up for new services because they are already tired from all of the hassle of subscription management. A recent research shows that people waste on average $348 per year on subscriptions they aren’t using. As a result of this, more than two-thirds of people say the inconvenience of managing free trials and subscriptions has stopped them from signing up for new ones.

ScribeUp takes this pain away. We solve this issue of forgetting free trials and subscriptions with a Chrome extension. By generating virtual cards via Stripe, ScribeUp manages your free trials and gives you some peace of mind. At the end of the trial, you get a reminder, so you can decide to keep or cancel your free trial. Even if you forget to take action, you still won’t get charged. Your personal credit card stays safe. Finally, it’s all free. 

We have hundreds of people on the waitlist. Our product is currently in beta, where we are working with our user champions. Moreover, we are currently in MassChallenge Accelerator’s 2021 cohort. We have been getting financial support from MIT’s Sandbox Innovation Fund. Finally, we are pre-revenue, aiming to make money in the future by helping service providers find their ideal users.

What led you to build ScribeUp?

During the first weeks of our MBA, we realized how hard it was to sign up for new subscription services. We were transitioning from working life to a student life, and so, we needed to cancel a bunch of subscriptions (WSJ, HBOMax etc.), as well as sign up for new ones (Evernote, BlueBikes etc.). 

Yohei, our CTO and co-founder, in particular, joined a school fantasy football league. New to fantasy football, he tried out a number of services to learn and test the right product for him, but ended up getting stuck with a laundry list of unwanted subscription bills. He vowed to the team to “never sign-up for a subscription free trial again.” However, the idea of shutting off the powerful world of digital services didn’t sit right with us all, so we started brainstorming.

Our founding team realized millennials, well, in general everybody, hate getting caught with unwanted subscription bills. Everyone is interested in saving money, naturally. However, forgetting to cancel a subscription and getting caught or getting stuck is such a powerful motivator that people actually claim they hate subscriptions.

We wanted to fix this problem. We asked ourselves, how do we ensure that a user won’t get caught with a subscription bill, even if they forget to cancel their subscription? The answer was a subscription management system. We wanted to build a product that would help signing up for subscriptions and provide safety to the user even if they forget to cancel. We pulled this off by using virtual cards and building a Chrome extension. This only limits us to desktop, however we plan to be on mobile later. 

Yohei quickly coded a basic Chrome extension that detects if a user is on a subscription service’s website (a database of 80+ services) and our extension pops up. We prompt the user to “activate a free trial” of that service and generate a virtual card via Stripe. This way, our user doesn’t have to use their own personal credit card. At the end of the free trial, we block the payment charge to the user’s account. When the user clicks on “Keep”, our backend system dynamically changes the charging limits on the virtual card so the payment goes through. This was our very first MVP. We have designed all user interfaces and the UX ourselves, based on our experiences as a user of other services. 

Who do you believe ScribeUp is best positioned for?

ScribeUp is best positioned for tech-savvy millennials that have a plethora of digital subscriptions. We believe that we can help these individuals with managing their subscription bills.

What are some of the challenges that you face at the current stage for ScribeUp?

We have succumbed to several pitfalls along the way. We developed software without validating the idea behind it. Classic! That was a costly experiment when we first started. A couple of months later, we realized that we are not talking to our users enough. When we started talking with them again, we noticed how some of our assumptions were baseless. We had talked over some user problems a hundred times, so they became oft-told stories within the company. You don’t want that. You need new data (in this case user sentiment or feedback) funneling in the company and the product at all times.

A more recent challenge is finding the right balance between time analyzing and executing. As MBA students, we love, and frankly were taught, to analyze before executing. However, we find ourselves not taking the bets and leaning into the unknown and thus losing time to experiment and test. We recently came to terms with the unknown and that failure in experiments with learnings is far more productive than analyzing to the core of a problem but missing opportunities.

What defines success for ScribeUp over the next few months?

We have several hundred people on our waitlist and this number keeps growing at a reasonable rate. Our goal is to keep building the waitlist for a couple of more months and launch the product to the public once we reach a certain satisfaction level. Launching to the public in the next three months would be a huge success for us.

Early metrics from the closed beta are promising. Our users are signing up for more free trials than they did before. In return, they are converting to paid plans at a higher rate than we were expecting. This will allow us in the upcoming weeks to start generating revenue. Initially, we will get in contact with affiliate networks. Our estimations are breaking even on a user in several months. 

What advice do you have for any aspiring entrepreneur?

Lean into action and execution! We could have spent months discussing ideas until we discovered the “right” one. It’s so easy to lose yourself in that stage. Once you start talking to people and testing some of your hypotheses, you quickly realize what you don’t know. Over index on execution -- the learnings from failures are more valuable than striving for perfection.

Do you have an idea? Start talking to people of whom you think your idea will solve the problems. If it’s relevant, maybe even offer your time replicating the product to give people value. You will find what works and what’s missing from the market faster than listening to a million podcasts. 

What is your wildly ambitious vision for ScribeUp?

We would love to be the integrator between consumers and providers to not only help consumers manage their subscriptions (whether that means managing bills, signing up or cancelling subscriptions seamlessly, or finding subscriptions based on needs), but also service providers by helping them convert more quality users. This is our long-term vision.