Rayobyte Rebranding in 2024 – Why It Matters to You

And it all happened because of my naivety. I didn’t realize or think about the fact that ‘larger customers are more profitable’. It wasn’t a thought that ever crossed my mind. I really enjoyed providing value to the individuals – consumers (B2Cs) to small/medium businesses (SMBs) – they were the ones that typically provided the most appreciation in helping bring their great ideas to life.

B2Bs, on the other hand, typically have 3+ month-long sales cycles, that require approvals upon approvals, and at the end of closing the deal, it feels like one giant transaction. It loses the sense of the human spirit. Don’t get me wrong – the few enterprise clients, some being Fortune 500, that we work with today don’t exemplify this characteristic. They’re more friendly… more human… than the rest. But, they’re the exception, not the rule.

It is here where we’re taking a stance to go back to these ideals. The “profit person customer” is not a number we’ll be tracking anymore. Instead, our one and only important number as a company is: how many people we help bring their great ideas to life. And we want to do this in a playful, fun, and approachable way.

This is a quantity focus, not a profit-per-customer focus. What this implies is something deeper, though. It’s our commitment to you, the individuals and SMBs, that we’re here to have your back. We want you to succeed, and we’re going to do everything in our power to help you make it so. You can read more about our company’s Purpose, Vision, Mission, and BHAG here.

What does this mean?

Functionally, nothing. Our proxies and scraping products will continue to kick-ass, as we have for 9 years. The main thing that will change is a way of thinking, and how that will show itself in small, and sometimes, big ways. Here is a short list of the changes we plan to make throughout this year:

• Website Redesign: You’re looking at it! 🙂. This redesign, we believe, conveys our commitment to be the “approachable” proxy and scraping brand. Take a look at our competitors and you’ll quickly see a common theme: they’re all robotic, and ‘corporate-like’. Gross! Why can’t business be fun (as long as you have 99.999%, like we do)?! Let us make it so, starting with our website. Here’s a sneak peek into our design refresh of the website:

• Customer Success Coaching and Training: Our team has been undergoing heavy training leading up to this launch, but we’re far from perfect… and we never will be. Our standards are high for ourselves. If you need help, and give us mutual respect, we are going to be right there by your side to help you bring your idea to life 💪.

• Education: Throughout the year, we will be ramping up our efforts to educate anyone interested in web scraping. Although there is a lot of material out there on “how to scrape”, we believe more can be done to make it as easy, fun, and enjoyable as possible.

• Rayobyte Stories: Gosh, I am sooo excited for these. I had the fortunate position when I started the company that I got to interact with so many incredible people. It filled me up every day seeing the direct impact of the company’s products helping so many people succeed in bringing their ideas to life. With these Rayobyte Stories, we hope to shine a light on the super cool people out there that are bringing great ideas to life. We’ll be highlighting our customers (Like Kirstin, who is solving the unemployment problem in South Africa) who are bringing proxy and scraping ideas to life, and our awesome employees that are bringing other ideas to life. Our hope is that someone out there will be inspired to bring their own great idea to life 🚀.

• Product Strategy: Later this year, we will be adjusting how our products are consumed. Don’t worry, functionally they won’t change – a proxy will still be a proxy. What we intend to change is how you get onboarded, your dashboard experience, and better visibility into your usage. Furthermore, we intend to launch some open-source projects that will help you manage your proxies, as well as help you scrape, more easily. We will do this because we realized that we’re holding proprietary software for no reason – it doesn’t give us a competitive edge, yet, we believe it can help B2C and SMBs get started in their proxy and scraping endeavors more easily, which ultimately fulfills our purpose in helping everyone bring their great ideas to life!

Conclusion:

With all these efforts in motion, the vision we have is simple: we want to be the partner for anyone that needs help with web scraping. Our team, products, education, experience, and more, will help make this happen.

I want to thank all existing customers who have stayed with us for all these years. I was humbled going through customer data recently to find that some customers have been actively paying us for 7+ years (!!) in a row. I apologize for any missteps we’ve taken along the way in trying to be too “corporate”. This letter is my renewed commitment to you 🙏

Please feel encouraged to personally email me with any thoughts or feedback you may have, I’m an open door!

-Neil Emeigh, Founder and CEO