First paying customers, and $1.1K MRR

[khan1123]

After 9 long months, we finally got our first two paying customers, one for $100/m, and another one for $1000/m.

I made a post previously that was very popular, and this is a follow-up: reddit post .

The short story of that post was that we had a lot of meetings, 9K visitors, around ~700 users, but no paid users.

Here's what we did: we closed the registrations - we're not allowing anyone to join our platform. Instead of signing up right away, the customers have to sign a form, have a chat with us, and only after that, we're allowing them to sign up.

Maybe this is something that you can try as well, if you're in the same spot as we were.

Cheers, and good luck with your projects!

 

[halle]

@khan1123 The fact that half the comment section is confused on why this works is why 99% of SaaS fails. Time to go learn some basic marketing and human psychology

 

[khan1123]

@halle Yes, a lot of things in startups are counterintuitive

 

[happychristian738]

@khan1123

Here's what we did: we closed the registrations - we're not allowing anyone to join our platform. Instead of signing up right away, the customers have to sign a form, have a chat with us, and only after that, we're allowing them to sign up.

To me, it sounds exactly the opposite of what should be done :\ Why make the process of signing soooo hard? Honestly, it doesn't make any sense, even for not-so-cheap products.

 

[deepdiciples86]

@happychristian738 It works for some corporate stuff, some like to feel special so spending half an hour on a call saying they want this and that gets em over the line, also adds exclusivity to the platform, another thing people like.

It wont work for all but with high mrr, it's worth having that face to face first as a refund of 1k+ when your new would hurt your rep with your payment processor.

Again, doesn't work for all, I'd add a qualifier personally, ask for expected usage, if its under x amount then let them register. If its over then book a call back.

 

[happychristian738]

@deepdiciples86 Yeah, you are right, I forgot about the corporate, they are weird monkeys, with no easy ways to do anything )))

 

[khan1123]

That's the thing - your first customers are people that really need your product and they have the problem you're solving.

By creating this "obstacle", you filter out the users so that you can get the users that really need that problem to work for them.

You also have get lot of feedback when you discuss with them.

All in all - we went for 8 months with 700 free users and almost no feedback to having a lot of calls, getting a ton of feedback, two paying customers and $1100 MRR.

We'll probably reopen the registrations so that we can onboard more users.

I know that it sounds "unnatural", but I'm sharing what worked for us.

 

[maxfromcapetown]

@khan1123 Do you have tips for balancing discovery with letting them in to a solution that doesn't yet do what they just explained they want?

 

[613jono]

@khan1123 You could open regstration but remove the free plan

 

[khan1123]

@613jono This is what we plan to do.

Not sure whether to offer a free 7-day trial or not.

 

[happychristian738]

@khan1123 The first question is why filter the users? The second thing is I'm not sure if this obstacle will appeal to paying users. The fact you had 2 users when you added this "obstacle" is not statistically significant and may be the result of other factors (for example, that you've been already running the business for 9 months).

 

[searchfor1]

@khan1123

By creating this "obstacle", you filter out the users so that you can get the users that really need that problem to work for them.

This was my big takeaway.

Might try this for my next product which is B2B.

If you get no calls booked in, then I can guess you can assume you haven't hit a strong enough pain point.

 

[thomass]

@khan1123 Amazing. I love it when startups look at their funnel, test changes and get results. This goes against most best practices and is not product led growth BUT best practices and PLG be damned, you got the results.

How many calls/ sign ups are you getting now that you've closed the registrations?

 

[khan1123]

@thomass I said that we have to get the customers one way or another. We will "force" them to use it if necessary.

We're getting now around 4-5 calls a week, which means around 20 demos, we've got ~13 free trials, and 2 conversions.

We needed this to make sure that the product solves a problem, and if we found 2 paying customers, we'll find more.

It's also a B2B product, were sales are still extremely important, so maybe this is why it worked for us.

Just as an example, here's what the Collison brothers did: "While at Y Combinator — the famous startup accelerator — The brothers went to their fellow founders, many of which were also building internet companies and asked (told) if they needed payments infrastructure. After the other developers/founders agreed (more like mid-ask/tell), the brothers would sit down at their fellow founder's laptop, and integrate the payment system themselves. Essentially doing the 'work' for their customer, and setting it up for them. The brothers repeated this tactic, and went outside the accelerator too. Founders who used Stripe started talking about the payments platform because "everything else was so bad and so painful to work with that people actually were selling this to their friends"."

 

[thomass]

@khan1123 How do I follow your journey from here?

 

[khan1123]

@thomass I'll try to post some updates here, but keep it confidential because only in this way I can share the real numbers.

 

[thegirlwithnousername]

@khan1123 Sounds like Cartmanland.

Goodluck.

 

[wpage]

@khan1123 This is exactly what I have seen so many startups do. All of them solve deeper problem for their ICP.

be it Equals, Support Genie or most of the YC companies.

Talking to the customers is the way to go (pre PMF!)

 

[brendaischristfollower]

@khan1123 What’s the product?

 

[davey1867]

@khan1123 I was looking at 2 sided marketplace SAAS products and one of them was cheaper but didn't have a self signup option and asked me to fill up a form.

The other one was slightly more expensive but I would recommend the more expensive one to my client and use it myself because I could signup by myself and test drive it.

The only time I would go for a gated product is if there was absolutely no other product that provided a feature I needed.

Try asking for credit card before sign-ups, then charge them after the trial period if they don't cancel. This is a smaller hurdle compared to having to contact the company to sign up.