Hello, everyone.
Me again, sharing what we've learned from developing the product: Saas, bootstrap, no VC, 4 years, 230k users, x2.5 YoY, team 5→21, Productivity & Design tool (B2B + B2C2B).
You can find the beginning in Part 1.
5/ Talk to users every day
You hear it in all the startup sources, but not everyone interprets it correctly. "Communicating with users" is often thought of as complicated UX Research, where you have to find users, make appointments, interview, transcribe the conversation. Not always.
There is a much simpler way.
People come to your therapy room on their own! Don't try to get rid of this opportunity. Founders working in support get the most valuable data there is: user behavior.
6/ Don't be afraid to ask people to test your product
We have the imposed patterns of successful companies in our heads: automated sales, conversion funnels, segmented traffic, dynamic landing pages, etc. Startups spend a lot of time and resources to create something like this but inevitably fail (it's impossible in the early stages).
Resources spent → no crowd of users → time to close the startup.
Here's the secret: to get the first 100 users, all you have to do is ask them for it.
7/ Start social & communications asap, even before launch.
The regular situation: "we've been writing code for 10 months, and now it's release day, 0 users, 0 site visitors, f*ck".
Create a landing page, let users join the waitlist starting the first day, start communicating with the audience, talk about the future product, create content, look for the right audience, create accounts on the right social networks, meet market experts, build lists for beta testing, start doing SEO (it's a long story).
This will help a lot at launch time.
8/ Support is very very very important. The fast one is a game-changer
I have already touched on this issue above. The prompt and friendly user support is a delight.
And it's also a completely unobvious promotional factor: wow effect, love, a wave of public reviews, mentions in social networks. People will appreciate your caring (and quick response).
9/ Do in-house-only product marketing
No one, ever, under any circumstances will do the marketing work for you at the level you want. Marketing is not a thing you can buy and put on the shelf. Marketing is an experience that has to be accumulated within the team. Grow the knowledge, find ways to improve, invent, test and reinvent.
Changing another freelancer/agency always means only one thing - you're back at 0.
No money for a marketer? Well, congratulations, you're a bootstrap founder, which means you have to do it yourself.
10/ Develop an A/B testing system from the beginning ("flag-function")
The ability to experiment with functionality within Saas is a critical factor in the logical development of the product. The parallel distribution of people into cohorts allows a balanced view of the value of the functionality being tested (frequency of use, usefulness, necessity, effectiveness).
———
Be patient, be brave and don't give up.
Me again, sharing what we've learned from developing the product: Saas, bootstrap, no VC, 4 years, 230k users, x2.5 YoY, team 5→21, Productivity & Design tool (B2B + B2C2B).
You can find the beginning in Part 1.
5/ Talk to users every day
You hear it in all the startup sources, but not everyone interprets it correctly. "Communicating with users" is often thought of as complicated UX Research, where you have to find users, make appointments, interview, transcribe the conversation. Not always.
There is a much simpler way.
People come to your therapy room on their own! Don't try to get rid of this opportunity. Founders working in support get the most valuable data there is: user behavior.
6/ Don't be afraid to ask people to test your product
We have the imposed patterns of successful companies in our heads: automated sales, conversion funnels, segmented traffic, dynamic landing pages, etc. Startups spend a lot of time and resources to create something like this but inevitably fail (it's impossible in the early stages).
Resources spent → no crowd of users → time to close the startup.
Here's the secret: to get the first 100 users, all you have to do is ask them for it.
7/ Start social & communications asap, even before launch.
The regular situation: "we've been writing code for 10 months, and now it's release day, 0 users, 0 site visitors, f*ck".
Create a landing page, let users join the waitlist starting the first day, start communicating with the audience, talk about the future product, create content, look for the right audience, create accounts on the right social networks, meet market experts, build lists for beta testing, start doing SEO (it's a long story).
This will help a lot at launch time.
How this worked for us: We have completely failed at this, so I want to caution you against this kind of behaviour
8/ Support is very very very important. The fast one is a game-changer
I have already touched on this issue above. The prompt and friendly user support is a delight.
And it's also a completely unobvious promotional factor: wow effect, love, a wave of public reviews, mentions in social networks. People will appreciate your caring (and quick response).
9/ Do in-house-only product marketing
No one, ever, under any circumstances will do the marketing work for you at the level you want. Marketing is not a thing you can buy and put on the shelf. Marketing is an experience that has to be accumulated within the team. Grow the knowledge, find ways to improve, invent, test and reinvent.
Changing another freelancer/agency always means only one thing - you're back at 0.
No money for a marketer? Well, congratulations, you're a bootstrap founder, which means you have to do it yourself.
How this worked for us: We have experienced several generations of marketing strategies in all areas (content, SEO, SMM, etc.), but the important thing is that all have been lived, stored in an information base (Notion) and each next step was more effective than the previous one.
Okay, okay, except SMM
10/ Develop an A/B testing system from the beginning ("flag-function")
The ability to experiment with functionality within Saas is a critical factor in the logical development of the product. The parallel distribution of people into cohorts allows a balanced view of the value of the functionality being tested (frequency of use, usefulness, necessity, effectiveness).
———
Be patient, be brave and don't give up.