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Growing Our SaaS to $1M+ ARR: 7 People, 3 Years, No VC Money

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Re: Growing Our SaaS to $1M+ ARR: 7 People, 3 Years, No VC Money

#51
post #11

> CPC for the best keywords might be up to 10–15 USD. Is this for real ? 10$ per click ?!! That's really depressing, and completely shuts out all the small players.

They're selling a high-value product and competing in that space, so it makes complete sense.

In the Healthcare space, some people are paying $50+ for highly competitive, highly targeted keywords.

Re: Growing Our SaaS to $1M+ ARR: 7 People, 3 Years, No VC Money

#52
post #11

> CPC for the best keywords might be up to 10–15 USD. Is this for real ? 10$ per click ?!! That's really depressing, and completely shuts out all the small players.

Yes it is. Asbestos illness related clicks are at $800 per click. Insirance can be at $600. Thats how Google makes thier billions of dollars. And you are absolutely right - noone will help you with google ads if you dont have minimum $5,000 and they want constant six month of commitment to tweak their algorythms to be able to produce some good traffic for your brand and landing page/s. Someone says you need to be creative with keywords. Sure. But then dont expect nice chunk of leads as obviously most people searching for something will not be creative with their search keywords.

Re: Growing Our SaaS to $1M+ ARR: 7 People, 3 Years, No VC Money

#53
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd love to know the same question. We are making our way to $1mm ARR and have very low churn, but no annual billing option. Do you give a discount at all?

Not an entrepreneur, but, 12 months at 10 months of subscription fee is still more than 6 months at 6 months of subscription fee. Always offer a "loyalty discount" if it means they commit to paying for a minimal amount of time.

But our churn is really really low with an average subscription length several years long. So 12 months at 10 months fee is less than 12 at 12.

There is work to help people update info, etc. And an annual check or ACH would save card fees.

But it doesn't sound like OP offered a discount, so just curious.

Re: Growing Our SaaS to $1M+ ARR: 7 People, 3 Years, No VC Money

#54

Browser extensions are underrated, and ideal for such use cases! More people should consider it as part of their tech arsenal. Congrats!

I really hate browser extensions because the product now forces me to use a particular browser. Rarely do products like this support Safari for example. It also requires a strong level of trust as well.

Re: Growing Our SaaS to $1M+ ARR: 7 People, 3 Years, No VC Money

#55

Browser extensions are underrated, and ideal for such use cases! More people should consider it as part of their tech arsenal. Congrats!

I really hate browser extensions because the product now forces me to use a particular browser. Rarely do products like this support Safari for example. It also requires a strong level of trust as well.

Aren't extensions standardized for a years now?

Re: Growing Our SaaS to $1M+ ARR: 7 People, 3 Years, No VC Money

#56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not an easy question. I think I can write a separate blog post about it. But generally speaking, we completely redid the whole system. In the beginning, we did not understand correctly what customers really need, and our architecture did not allow us to make this "pivot". The hardest thing is that we could not learn it without failing. We got it only after we showcased the product to the market and after talking to h…

Thanks for sharing your knowledge! I noticed that one of the books that inspired you was Traction. Which growth channel worked best for you?

For us, the best growth channel was partnerships and listing on 3d party marketing pages (Asana, Basecamp, ClickUp etc.). It is not difficult and costs nothing (if you have a good integration) while the traffic quality is awesome!

Re: Growing Our SaaS to $1M+ ARR: 7 People, 3 Years, No VC Money

#57
post #2

Hey guys, My name is Mike. I'm co-founder and product at Everhour. I'd be happy to answer your questions if any. Feel free to ask here or on Medium.

FTA: > 5) The advantages of annual billing How do you encourage customers to choose annual billing?

One way is to only offer annual billing, but couple it with a 30 day trial. Hubspot operates like this and it results in a more invested user and substantially reduces churn and lowers support costs. It lowers churn because of you are going to pay for a year of something, you are going to be really sure it solves your problem. This approach only works though if you have a clear product-market fit.

Re: Growing Our SaaS to $1M+ ARR: 7 People, 3 Years, No VC Money

#58

Browser extensions are underrated, and ideal for such use cases! More people should consider it as part of their tech arsenal. Congrats!

I really hate browser extensions because the product now forces me to use a particular browser. Rarely do products like this support Safari for example. It also requires a strong level of trust as well.

Are you using Everhour?

I'm asking because we do our best to support the most popular browsers: Chrome, Firefox and Safari. We do not force you to use one. I.e. we offer same functionality in your preferred browser.

But each browser has its own features and ecosystem. Chrome is the easiest from tech perspective. Safari for example has a very strange review policies. Judge for yourself, as soon as we release a new version of our extension, Chrome releases it within an hour and does it automatically. In Safari, we need to send it for review each time and wait for a week or two. During this time we can release a few more updates.

Re: Growing Our SaaS to $1M+ ARR: 7 People, 3 Years, No VC Money

#59
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No problem. Our main tech stack is the following: PHP (Symfony), Angular, MySQL, Redis, Nginx Of course it's not an entire list, but if there are any additional questions - ask, will try to clarify.

I know PHP is really common in UKR. Can i ask what other languages/frameworks are common for web apps / dash boards ?

I think it's very important to choose the stack with which you have the most experience. In this way, you will protect yourself from the situation when something went wrong on PROD and you do not know how to fix it. I generally for reliability and predictability.

Sorry, maybe it does not answer your question?

Re: Growing Our SaaS to $1M+ ARR: 7 People, 3 Years, No VC Money

#60
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know PHP is really common in UKR. Can i ask what other languages/frameworks are common for web apps / dash boards ?

I think it's very important to choose the stack with which you have the most experience. In this way, you will protect yourself from the situation when something went wrong on PROD and you do not know how to fix it. I generally for reliability and predictability. Sorry, maybe it does not answer your question?

I meant to ask which frameworks are most used in Ukraine and makes it easier to recruit programmers ?

We cant use PHP.

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