UserScout’s Ariff Munshi reflects on rebranding and pivot, and lessons learnt along the way

Startups are like chameleons. For survival’s sake, these shifty animals can rapidly change their appearances in response to threats. So it is with startups. Unlike large corporations, startups don’t go through committees. They are sensorial in nature, constantly aware of the environment, gathering data, and shape-shifting.

Sometimes, a new iteration can be as drastic as a rebranding effort or a pivot, which is the case with Singapore-based company UserScout, formerly known as Referoll.

Started by Ariff Munshi (LinkedIn), who graduated from college two years ago, Referoll was first conceived as a recruitment service for companies in search of participants for their market research. The startup charges a recruitment fee for each participant they sign up.

While it accumulated over 1,600 participants, the business model was never going to scale. Investors were disinterested in it due to the small size of the Singapore market, revenue fluctuates easily since it was project-dependent, and the sales cycle could drag on for months.

It also expanded too quickly. “We did quite a few mistakes with hiring early on without first proving a scalable business model. Due to that we burnt too much money,” said Ariff, whose company is still in the seed stage with only USD 40K of funding from the government and another USD 20K from JFDI, a Singapore-based startup accelerator that it is a part of.

So he made a decision to transition from a more service-oriented business to a SaaS model. Instead of collecting recruitment fees, users are now charged monthly to utilize the platform, which has evolved into a comprehensive tool to manage project participants, receive sign-ups, and incentivize testers.

UserScout’s participation in JFDI played a key role in refining its business model. The team was taught to focus on one particular vertical and address the needs in that space before expanding its scope.

On 3 June, UserScout’s efforts will be unveiled on Demo Day, an event where JFDI showcases the startups under its wings to a group of venture capitalists and early-stage investors.

“JFDI’s mentors instilled in us the importance of looking at analytics, conversion funnels, A/B testing and finding the proper channels to acquire customers — something which I find local companies not doing enough of,” said Ariff.