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How I’ve Attracted the First 500 Paid Users for My SaaS

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Re: How I’ve Attracted the First 500 Paid Users for My SaaS

#91

Post by bszupnick »

noname120 wrote: post #67

This story strikes me as (at least partly) survivorship bias. It's great that they were able to acquire 600 paid customers without advertizing their product on blogs, and ignoring their competitors. I don't have hard numbers to back me up, but I doubt that this is a successful strategy in general. This story is a data point that proves that it's possible , not that this gives you a better (or even good) chance at suc…

Do you think there's a philosophical difference that the author did here? They specifically write "Don’t hurry. It’s not a startup rushing to an exit.".

The lack of pressure and the slow cultivation was something that struck me in this article, as opposed to the stereotypical rush of the startup lifecycle.

Re: How I’ve Attracted the First 500 Paid Users for My SaaS

#94

Post by joncrane »

weliketocode wrote: post #4
joncrane wrote: post #2

This seems like good advice to maximize personal satisfaction on a side project. Many of the tidbits are the exact opposite of advice for startups that are trying to maximize value.

Which tidbits did you feel that way about? It seemed to me that most of the advice is pretty in-line with that given to value-maximizing startups.

The "ignore your competitors" bit is the part I struggled with the most.

Re: How I’ve Attracted the First 500 Paid Users for My SaaS

#95

Post by MrEfficiency »

bszupnick wrote: post #91
noname120 wrote: post #67

This story strikes me as (at least partly) survivorship bias. It's great that they were able to acquire 600 paid customers without advertizing their product on blogs, and ignoring their competitors. I don't have hard numbers to back me up, but I doubt that this is a successful strategy in general. This story is a data point that proves that it's possible , not that this gives you a better (or even good) chance at suc…

Do you think there's a philosophical difference that the author did here? They specifically write "Don’t hurry. It’s not a startup rushing to an exit.". The lack of pressure and the slow cultivation was something that struck me in this article, as opposed to the stereotypical rush of the startup lifecycle.

The whole 'Lean Startup' trend was such a feel good gimmick.

Sure if you arent sure about your product and havent done any market tests, a minimum viable product is fine.

However, I had/have a service that was already popular and my circle of friends were obsessed with MVP and Lean Startup. They pressured me and when I began mainstream marketing the response was that my service was low quality.

Those people were wrong, but minimal HTML/css bugs was all it took for people to question me.

Re: How I’ve Attracted the First 500 Paid Users for My SaaS

#96

Post by Brockenstein »

bszupnick wrote: post #91
noname120 wrote: post #67

This story strikes me as (at least partly) survivorship bias. It's great that they were able to acquire 600 paid customers without advertizing their product on blogs, and ignoring their competitors. I don't have hard numbers to back me up, but I doubt that this is a successful strategy in general. This story is a data point that proves that it's possible , not that this gives you a better (or even good) chance at suc…

Do you think there's a philosophical difference that the author did here? They specifically write "Don’t hurry. It’s not a startup rushing to an exit.". The lack of pressure and the slow cultivation was something that struck me in this article, as opposed to the stereotypical rush of the startup lifecycle.

It seems like I did this thing and it worked, it will work for you too. When the reality is if the guy was to try this again 19 more times with new startups, chances are he'd have 18-19 more failures under his belt..

Re: How I’ve Attracted the First 500 Paid Users for My SaaS

#98

Post by gregwebs »

On the product: this seems like SimpleNote except that it is actually being developed with features. I have been happy enough with SimpleNote for over a year now, but trying this out now as an upgrade.

For both of these I like that its just markdown files that I can export if I decide to use something else.

Edit: there is a plugin for vim keybindings, and a solarized light theme. I am sold!

Re: How I’ve Attracted the First 500 Paid Users for My SaaS

#99

Post by yathern »

MrEfficiency wrote: post #95
bszupnick wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think there's a philosophical difference that the author did here? They specifically write "Don’t hurry. It’s not a startup rushing to an exit.". The lack of pressure and the slow cultivation was something that struck me in this article, as opposed to the stereotypical rush of the startup lifecycle.

The whole 'Lean Startup' trend was such a feel good gimmick. Sure if you arent sure about your product and havent done any market tests, a minimum viable product is fine. However, I had/have a service that was already popular and my circle of friends were obsessed with MVP and Lean Startup. They pressured me and when I began mainstream marketing the response was that my service was low quality. Those people were wron…

I think the "Lean Startup" trend is very useful for a large amount of entrepreneurs, who suffer similar issues. Primarily being afraid of launching their product until it's "perfect".

It's very, very easy to just keep working on things indefinitely, never quite being perfect - a backlog that adds two new items for every one you finish. And the longer you work on something, the more pressure there is for it to be "perfect" at launch. Additionally, if in all this time, you're not getting feedback - you may be developing something that is not quite what people want. Feedback is crucial, and launching your project is a surefire way to get real, useful feedback.

Getting something out there is half the battle for a lot of people. Myself included. It's a very large psychological barrier to launching something. And the more work you put in, the larger that barrier grows - which is paradoxical sounding, but true. With a smaller, proof-of-concept launch, you can change your product direction more easily - if it turns out the feedback isn't great. With a larger more polished product, you have already invested so much into the current direction. There's momentum and emotional attachment (for people like me, that is) which makes it unwise to proceed like that.

But if you don't suffer from these problems of seeking false perfection before launch, and you get feedback throughout development from non-launch sources - you don't need to subscribe to the "lean" mentality.

Re: How I’ve Attracted the First 500 Paid Users for My SaaS

#100

Post by rythie »

_kxbd wrote: post #22

> "You don’t have to care about competitors. It’s a waste of time. Because you know where to go. You can ignore even if they stole features your product has. Because you are the person who most understands your product, how it works and why it works." I enjoyed this article, but this bit I'm not entirely convinced by. The saying does go that competition leads to innovation. Instagram Stories were a great business mov…

If you have 500 customers and your competitor has 500 customers. You are in a market of over 10,000 potential users.

What do you do? go after your competitor's 500 customers, many of which are only going to consider switching if their product lets them down or go after the other 10,000 potential customers that don't use either product?

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