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Tell HN: My Web App has 13 Users

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Re: Tell HN: My Web App has 13 Users

#41

Post by joelg87 »

shortformblog wrote: post #33
joelg87 wrote: post #23

In the whole first month of Buffer, we had less than 100 signups. For comparison, we now have 560,000 users (2.5 years later). We now sign up 100 people within a couple hours. It amazes me to think about it. I had a previous startup that also started slow, but never really changed. The key difference between the two, was retention. So I would highly recommend anyone who's getting started to closely watch retention. D…

I think what really helped you guys is that you've always been earnest and have done a good job becoming thought leaders as bloggers. People could learn a lot from the way the Buffer team grew out its product. You guys created a really good template for slow-growth. Props.

Thanks! That means a lot, really appreciate you mentioning it.

Re: Tell HN: My Web App has 13 Users

#42

Post by vict »

My startup in 2008 spent 3 years in development limbo and never launched. My next one in 2011 launched with similar numbers to what you described here and we eventually scrapped it because we had no way to effectively promote it. We launched a new site in 2012 and we now have over 7 million unique visitors a month to our site and hundreds of partnerships with other services. The biggest change we made was focusing on building partnerships in the industry. We never went to any conferences or sales trips, everything was via email introductions. Try to find a way to make yourself useful to people who have distribution channels, at least that worked for our individual case anyhow.

Re: Tell HN: My Web App has 13 Users

#43

Post by dps »

xur17 wrote: post #13

I'm getting an application error. :(

It's back up now.

Useful service, I would use it assuming availability is good (I have jerryrigged something similar myself in the past and it was a real pain in the ass to get working smoothly). Suggested pricing seems way off though (I know it's free right now) - how did you figure out what was reasonable?

Re: Tell HN: My Web App has 13 Users

#44

Post by joelg87 »

chaddeshon wrote: post #40
joelg87 wrote: post #23

In the whole first month of Buffer, we had less than 100 signups. For comparison, we now have 560,000 users (2.5 years later). We now sign up 100 people within a couple hours. It amazes me to think about it. I had a previous startup that also started slow, but never really changed. The key difference between the two, was retention. So I would highly recommend anyone who's getting started to closely watch retention. D…

Thanks for this helpful and encouraging post. As I was right this the main question I had was how do I know the difference between "Nobody wants what your selling" and "You need to do a better job marketing"? Retention is a great answer to the question.

Indeed, that's exactly right!

I think for us, as soon as we saw that people were sticking around we knew we had to switch to "do a better job marketing". With retention, that was validation that there must be many more people out there who would find Buffer super useful, just like the people who were staying active. In essence, we needed to make more people aware of the value we were providing.

Re: Tell HN: My Web App has 13 Users

#46

Post by charliepark »

joelg87 wrote: post #39
adambenayoun wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey Joel, I'm interested to know if the first 100 users stuck with your product over time or you had to figure out how to do retention over time.

What an awesome question Adam. Just had a look at our cohort analysis. Happy to let you know that 16% of the December 2010 cohort (those 100 people) are still using Buffer today (27 months later). It's actually fairly representative of what our retention stabilizes to after 4-5 months for almost every cohort, though 100 is not an ideal sample size! We've certainly worked to improve retention over time, but in additio…

Joel, what are you using for your cohort analysis? An internally-built tool? A third-party service?

Re: Tell HN: My Web App has 13 Users

#47

Post by paf31 »

I'm in a similar situation and it's encouraging to read that this seems to be commonplace. I'm just about on the cusp of having one satisfied customer willing to participate in the develop-deliver-discuss cycle, which makes me very excited, but I'm not sure where to go from there.

Re: Tell HN: My Web App has 13 Users

#48

Post by switz »

joelg87 wrote: post #23

In the whole first month of Buffer, we had less than 100 signups. For comparison, we now have 560,000 users (2.5 years later). We now sign up 100 people within a couple hours. It amazes me to think about it. I had a previous startup that also started slow, but never really changed. The key difference between the two, was retention. So I would highly recommend anyone who's getting started to closely watch retention. D…

I recently hacked together a product that aligns with buffer's philosophy, but is inherently different. I have about 70 users, but zero paid users and not much activity. I've been ignoring it from a development standpoint in favor of other projects. Meanwhile I still use the site daily. I hope I can put some more time into it, but for now I'm just letting it scratch a personal itch. If anyone is interested: https://tweezer.io

Re: Tell HN: My Web App has 13 Users

#49

Post by pd_drawexpress »

nate wrote: post #20

I know how hard this can be. I've been doing startup stuff for 7 years. And it's still awfully painful. I'd encourage teaching to find an audience. I've been blogging and blogging and blogging. I ended up giving that up at one point. I thought I had more important things to do. I thought it wasn't growing enough. But that was foolish. The biggest thing that's changed a lot of things for me in the last year is simply…

Seven years is a long time. I am pretty on the same timeframe as well. I took a chance to redo everything over and this time with 5 months I have already launched my new product. My HN launch is kinda depressing as it just gave me 6 visits LOL. That traffic graph is my new motivation factor. I love to improve my writing to write blog like you but for now I am sticking to similar goal and that is to release an upgrade to my product every week.

Re: Tell HN: My Web App has 13 Users

#50

Post by chaddeshon »

dps wrote: post #43
xur17 wrote: post #13

I'm getting an application error. :(

It's back up now. Useful service, I would use it assuming availability is good (I have jerryrigged something similar myself in the past and it was a real pain in the ass to get working smoothly). Suggested pricing seems way off though (I know it's free right now) - how did you figure out what was reasonable?

Pricing is tough. Part of setting a price is getting feedback from potential customers. Can I ask why it seems way off to you?
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