Friday, November 1, 2024

Raleigh’s Atlas Simplifies Custom Billing Infrastructure For Businesses

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Former Pendo co-workers Michael Hoy and Clay Miner co-founded Atlas to make it easier for companies to manage billing infrastructure.

Michael Hoy and Clay Miner first met at Raleigh software giant Pendo, where Hoy was most recently AVP of commercial sales, and Miner, Global VP of sales engineering.

Over the course of their nearly seven years working together, they grew frustrated with the complex process of creating good pricing models. 

“We pulled our hair out over not being able to price and package our product the way that we wanted to,” Hoy said.

He said it can take around six months to develop and engineer something as simple as a paywall inside of a product. He also noted that the billing infrastructure he’d encountered was not flexible, which invites a range of potential secondary issues. These challenges were painful; they effectively had to leave money on the table. 

“We couldn’t convert customers the way we wanted to because we couldn’t test and iterate and meet them where they were in terms of that value exchange,” he added.

From this struggle, Atlas was born.

This new startup enables non-technical users to create their own billing systems. Atlas consolidates multiple features like product analytics, feature flagging and subscription management into one manageable, simple-to-use platform. 

Atlas went through its share of early growing pains. Hoy said he and Miner initially developed a different product centered around international money transfer. But after testing with a small beta cohort, they realized this wasn’t a product they would be able to scale to any great degree. 

Instead, they pivoted to focus on addressing their own frustrations in the field.

“If nothing changed with the billing infrastructure, it would only get harder for companies to win,” Hoy said.

Currently, the biggest struggle for Atlas and its five-person team is that they are selling into a market that utilizes a large number of legacy processes. Hoy also said the way Atlas prices and packages products can initially be intimidating for some as the platform focuses on the psychology of customers rather than just the operations of a business. It takes effort and intention to make use of the platform.

Nevertheless, Hoy indicated that data has shown that currently, the best growth lever for a business is differentiating itself by deploying unique billing and pricing models. Educating potential customers about this benefit is key for Atlas.

Standing Out

While Atlas has targeted an underserved space, it still has competitors (like Metronome and Orb) that offer usage-based pricing infrastructure for businesses that want more flexibility.

Hoy said Atlas brings two key differences to the market: more flexibility than the traditional model and the removal of developers from the process.

Atlas provides a combination of insights and actions so customers have the information they need to change strategies and deploy new measures if necessary. Businesses can forecast the impact of changes before implementation.

Hoy added that their competitors are also more focused on selling and building products for developers.

“For the longest time, developers have not owned monetization but have been forced to instrument it,” Hoy said. 

Engineers, he strongly believes, should spend their time building products and making them more secure instead of instrumenting third-party applications. Atlas aims to put the ability to test and change monetization into the hands of the people who actually own the decision-making. 

What’s Next For Atlas

The platform became available to the public on October 8th, and the team is still assessing revenue models. Currently, the plan is to allow customers to choose between a per-transaction cost or a platform fee of $500 each month.

QUICK BITS
Startup: Atlas
Co-Founders: Michael Hoy (CEO), Clay Miner
Founded: 2024
Location: Raleigh, NC
Website: runonatlas.com

Looking toward the future of Atlas, Hoy said the mission is to increase the amount of profitable business in the world. From an admin and operational perspective, he said many of the costs for businesses right now come from converting new customers.

He hopes that continuing to build solutions for each part of this process will help optimize businesses—not only creating fair pricing solutions that retain customers but also increasing profits because customers are staying with them longer.

“We very much view a world where every software company dynamically prices their product,” he said.

Atlas is currently seeking investors for its next seed round. Those interested should contact Hoy at hoy@runonatlas.com.

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