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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

#51

Post by rawoke083600 »

brucen wrote: post #49
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…

Have you tried Google Keep? It's quite good for keeping random notes and sync'd across devices.

Nope - goign to give it a go ! :)

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

#52

Post by jakobegger »

_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…

Regarding customer feedback: As soon as you reach a certain scale, it gets really hard.

For my app, I have hundreds of feature requests, and for 95% of them all I can say is, that's a nice idea, but I don't have time to do it.

For the remaining 5% it'll take me a year or longer to implement them.

For customers this looks like I'm unresponsive.

When I started out, I often added features in a few days, and customers were thrilled, but that low-hanging fruit is mostly gone now.

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

#53

Post by user3359 »

solatic wrote: post #48
_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 they hadn't paid attention to Snapchat, would they have come up with it? There's a big difference between large established players and new startups. Established players can't just grow, they need to protect what they have so that their base doesn't drop out from underneath them. New startups are default-dead and don't have anything to protect yet. Furthermore: oftentimes, big players offer customers a boatload…

Agreed.

The advice to ignore competitors and focus on customer feedback is great when you're small and a solo Dev. As the company grows and you can dedicate other resources, you can start monitoring and selectively copying competitors. I'd still say that internal iteration is a better path though.

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

#54

Post by alexchamberlain »

jakobegger wrote: post #52
_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…

Regarding customer feedback: As soon as you reach a certain scale, it gets really hard. For my app, I have hundreds of feature requests, and for 95% of them all I can say is, that's a nice idea, but I don't have time to do it. For the remaining 5% it'll take me a year or longer to implement them. For customers this looks like I'm unresponsive. When I started out, I often added features in a few days, and customers we…

I don't think customers need to see every feature they request actioned, or even actioned quickly. As long as you're shipping new features and communicate both your roadmap and with individual feature requests, I think people understand.

I do, however, think you need to balance big featured with quick wins that make a subset of your clients significantly more happy.

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

#55

Post by jakobegger »

enraged_camel wrote: post #40

Roadmaps are really important to me. When I'm evaluating a new service, I first look for a published roadmap. Specifically: * When the next version will be released (specific date, not just bullshit stuff like "Q1 2019") * What new features it will have If I can't find anything like this, I'm less likely to sign up.

But why is it important what features the app will have in the future? Why not focus on what it does right now?

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

#56

Post by _pmf_ »

_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…

As I understand it, "not caring" about competitors is used in the sense of "not worrying about them".

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

#59

Post by blinky1456 »

smdz wrote: post #13

This is amazing! I've built more than a couple of product prototypes equivalent to the size of this app and ended up with the questions "what is the USP other than cheaper pricing? what is your marketing budget?" - And was discouraged to a point where I never did launch the product to acquire paid users. And did launch it for free and has decent number of users. But it is not fun working on a product that does not pa…

For me, one aspect is releasing a useful app, and users immediately screaming 'why isn't it free?' + 'anyone could have made that, I don't see why you should charge'.

And losing all momentum on launch.

People have been spoiled by large companies releasing apps that costs tens of thousands/hundreds of thousands to develop. And have huge server and maintenance costs for free(lets just say you don't pay with money..)

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

#60

Post by GoToRO »

keithnz wrote: post #41

I think I'm too cynical to do these kinds of side businesses... I look at this and am confused why anyone is paying for it. I often find it hard to step away from what I would do compared to what others will do.

People pay also for convenience. Also, if you are really busy making $$$ a month then there is no problem to pay 5$ a month for something that is saving you some time, some stress and so on. I was thinking the same as you...
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