Ask HN: Sales advice for a bootstrapping founder needed

I am a solo founder bootstrapping (as a side-project) a SaaS web app for team managers at mid-sized companies.

It is a note-taking app exclusively for 1:1 meetings [0]. It allows to better register meeting notes, long-term goals and short-term commitments (the last two are shareable with the team members for better accountability).

I have a fundamental doubt in my sales strategy: should I target the individual managers that would use my product themselves or should I target HR executives that could buy my product and implement it to all managers at the company at once?

I am at a very early stage, with 2 paying customers that hired it themselves for individual use; and 5 colleagues at my day-job employer on a free-trial before I try to sell it to our HR director for the whole company.

The pros for individual managers: shorter sales cycles; direct feedback on the product; easier to find the contacts; more people to contact (guessing here).

The pros for HR executives: more revenue per sale; if successful - I assume - more retention.

[0] https://www.oneonemeeting.com

I bootstrapped my current company to several million in revenue. Both are valid strategies, but require very different skills and tactics. If you have another source of income right now, I would implement a product driven growth strategy [0].

Give your product away for free for individuals. You'll remove all barriers to adoption and be able to grow your user base quickly. If your product is valuable, your product will grow virally inside a company as managers see other managers using it. Once you have a few managers at Company X using your product, that's when you call up the HR department and offer them a paid company subscription for features like teams/user management, single sign on, sharing one on one results up the chain, whatever. Your users at the company become your champions. You can also provide an upgrade path in app if companies decide they want access to those features before you realize it.

Use a tool like Intercom to track how many users you have within a company.

It will delay revenue for a while, but give you a chance to refine the product from user feedback. It's also a much more scalable sales/marketing strategy for solo founders.

[0] https://expand.openviewpartners.com/your-product-is-your-go-... https://mattermark.com/product-led-approach-sales/

Wow, that's gold, thanks a lot!!

I have thought about this "individual managers as user/champions in company" before, but the path was not very clear in my head. Thanks for laying it out for me.

I do have a day-job, so this is a totally valid strategy for me.

Nice! It wasn't available when I first registered it (a year ago). At least I think it wasn't, as it was my first choice, as it is exactly the term that people search.

Already bought it cheap on Namecheap :)

Thanks a lot for taking the time to research it after my reply!

I think @rsweeney nailed it. Your product is one that _should_ sell itself.

You only needs a complicated sales cycle if you're selling deep infrastructure or where high degrees of trust are required. But in your case, users can look at your website and immediately determine if they need your product and how much they're willing to trust you.

Re: your product --- It looks super cool. It's not something I need at this point in my career, but maybe down the road. Good luck!