Tech Check: This CEO Spends Too Much Time Online Trying to Find Customers

(This post originally appeared on Forbes)

Is your company’s technology up to speed or out of date? What’s hot and what’s not? What technologies are other businesses using that you should be considering?

That’s the purpose of the Tech Check. Each week, we’ll do a quick survey of a small businesses to see what technology they’re using because we’re all interested in keeping up with the Joneses, right? How do you compare?

This week, we’re doing a Tech Check with Alvaro Vaselli, Founder and CEO of Nuvanna. Founded in 2016, Nuvanna is a mattress company that sells supremely comfortable foam mattresses built for customers with an active lifestyle. It has 4 employees and is located in Philadelphia, PA.

Primary laptop:  MacBook Pro

Primary tablet:  iPad

Smartphone:  iPhone

Company phone system: N/A

Primary company applications:  Mattress in a box (e-commerce)

Favorite mobile applications:  Gaia

Email provider: Gmail

Accounting software: QuickBooks

What is your biggest technology frustration?

Having to spend too much on Facebook and Google to find customers profitably. A cost-effective technology to allow for hyper-segmentation is greatly needed these days.

What are you doing to solve this problem?

We are managing our funnel more rigorously with specific KPIs at each part of the funnel (TOF, MOF, and BOF). We scale up the campaigns when KPIs are met. This approach has allowed us to reduce CPA materially over the last 2-3 months.

How has the technology in your business changed in the last 5 years?

Certain material technologies in foam have advanced to more closely meet customer needs (i.e., phase change materials, botanically derived fibers, etc.).

Where do you plan to spend your technology dollars in 2018?

We are more focused on investing in marketing to let the Nuvanna brand be known. We have a product that people love and tell their friends about. We now need to scale up and let the brand be known.

What application is most valuable for your business and why?

Google Analytics – it lets us know what’s working and what’s not and it’s free!

What has been your 1 business technology mistake since you started your business?

Not developing a more predictable path to lower the cost of customer acquisition before increasing spending to ramp up sales.

What are you doing to protect your data?

It’s never enough.

What’s the biggest thing you’ve learned about technology since you started?

It’s better to go slow first and then go fast. Trying to go fast too early can be costly.