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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

#111

Post by JoeAltmaier »

canadapups wrote: post #110
MrEfficiency wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 run an online business with my wife. Her background is in marketing. When I explained the MVP idea to her, she thought it was the dumbest idea ever. In her eyes spending expensive marketing dollars to bring people to see anything but a full featured product is a disaster. You only have 1 shot and 5 seconds of their attention so you better make sure they like what they see. Any pivoting in the business strategy mean…

But we're not talking about rebranding dog food. We're talking about creating a new way of leveraging technology to {something internet}. Maybe the old Detroit way of marketing cars isn't quite applicable?

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

#112

Post by CPLX »

yathern wrote: post #99
MrEfficiency wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 "per…

I disagree, though what you're saying is true I don't think it's the primary reason for why the lean startup model was so effective.

The lean startup mentality was fundamentally a product of the era of entrepreneurship that birthed it, and the market environment for software.

About 10-15 years ago the web was clearly here to stay and maturing, but literally huge problem spaces had been very lightly explored with software. So it made sense to do something, anything, to solve a problem that software was good at, because the alternative was almost always a legacy approach. Which means even an MVP was likely useful for customers. The only real danger was moving too slow.

It's the equivalent of buying up residential real estate in Brooklyn or San Francisco 20 years ago. Or whatever metaphor you prefer, where a market is growing so quickly that nearly all entrants have the ability to thrive if they are at least somewhat aligned with a consumer problem and willingness to pay.

Thing are different now. There's a software solution for almost everything, maybe not a great one but there's something out there. People are overwhelmed and exhausted by their options, have subscription fatigue, and likely have the experience of adopting a fledgling poorly supported MVP type solution that didn't live very long and regretting it.

People are pretty much the same. But the market environment has shifted.

Nobody gives a fuck about your landing page with two sentences and an email capture box any more. The world has moved on from this model.

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

#113

Post by canadapups »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #111
canadapups wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I run an online business with my wife. Her background is in marketing. When I explained the MVP idea to her, she thought it was the dumbest idea ever. In her eyes spending expensive marketing dollars to bring people to see anything but a full featured product is a disaster. You only have 1 shot and 5 seconds of their attention so you better make sure they like what they see. Any pivoting in the business strategy mean…

But we're not talking about rebranding dog food. We're talking about creating a new way of leveraging technology to {something internet}. Maybe the old Detroit way of marketing cars isn't quite applicable?

I guess, but he's doing a note-taking app. I think that niche is as old as Detroit.

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

#114

Post by mamcx »

_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…

Look at it as a factor of size.

Google MUST be worried for Apple. Because them are figthing for big amount of users.

But when you are solo, or a small team, and your goal/real chance is have a small number of customers, what other do is close to irrelevant.

You will find a lot of competition and your idea will be already in the open for long time. But that is not important. As long you care for your small(ish) customer base you will be ok.

Is like sell hamburgers in the street. The street seller not need to worry at all with Mc-Donald. IF have a tasty product and can provide a better service, it will be ok

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

#115

Post by PebblesRox »

canadapups wrote: post #110
MrEfficiency wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 run an online business with my wife. Her background is in marketing. When I explained the MVP idea to her, she thought it was the dumbest idea ever. In her eyes spending expensive marketing dollars to bring people to see anything but a full featured product is a disaster. You only have 1 shot and 5 seconds of their attention so you better make sure they like what they see. Any pivoting in the business strategy mean…

Reminds me of Joel Spolsky’s “Marimba Phenomenon” concept. His argument is that the amount of marketing and PR you do has to stay in proportion to the amount of polish and sophistication in your product, so you don’t end up giving everyone a bad first impression that they never revise.

“The Marimba Phenomenon is very hard to avoid when you spend too much money trying to launch a new product. It’s easy to spend on marketing and PR, since that just takes cash, but it’s hard to spend on software development, because that actually takes time and talent.”

“By contrast, small companies that don’t have great marketing budgets are in a great position to launch early and often.”

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2005/11/02/massive-frontal-pr...

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

#116

Post by tomnipotent »

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…

I fail to understand the point of your post. The author was simply sharing his personal experience on what appears to be launching his first paid app and how it allowed him to stop freelancing thanks to the profit. It isn't a "they", it's a he.

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

#117

Post by canadapups »

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…

There may be survivorship bias because his slower, low-cost strategy is a good way to survive! The longer he survives, the greater chance his product takes off. If you go guns blazing, you effectively put death in the business plan and success is only a contingency.

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

#118

Post by efreak »

rawoke083600 wrote: post #47

I hope the author sees this as "good feedback".. My notes taking system is terrible (lots of TXT files on my desktop) :/ Its terrible and only slightly better than NOT having a system at all. So I downloaded your app(congrats looks very polished) but maybe I just had too many coffees but I couldn't figure out how to make a new note within 30 seconds or 15 clicks :S. Maybe I'm just dumb? I would put first and foremost…

Try notepad++ or other workspace-supporting software if you already have such installed. It doesn't have to be primarily aimed at note-taking to work. This method doesn't help with sync, multi-device, etc tho.

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

#119

Post by mindcrime »

canadapups wrote: post #110
MrEfficiency wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 run an online business with my wife. Her background is in marketing. When I explained the MVP idea to her, she thought it was the dumbest idea ever. In her eyes spending expensive marketing dollars to bring people to see anything but a full featured product is a disaster. You only have 1 shot and 5 seconds of their attention so you better make sure they like what they see. Any pivoting in the business strategy mean…

In her eyes spending expensive marketing dollars to bring people to see anything but a full featured product is a disaster.

The lean startup approach doesn't advocate spending a lot of marketing dollars showing people your MVP. It advocates being, well, lean, until you have a good reason to believe that you have "product/market fit". It's then that you crank up the marketing/promotion stuff.

After all, wouldn't it be a disaster to spend a lot of expensive marketing dollars showing people a product that they don't want or need?

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