How I got my first 5 customers without a landing page

[beaverpond]

2.5 months after the first commit and 1.5 months after getting my first customer, I'm finally at $100 MRR with 5 customers for my Twitter DM tool.

Although I have a landing page now, all of my customers came through DMs. Some of them contacted me, but I found and contacted most of them myself using the same tool I'm selling.

Every customer has unique requirements. For example, the last one wants English-speaking leads with the Gumroad link in the bio, but not those who sell adult content. Another one needs 3 different audiences with 3 different generated DM styles. For now, I have 5 scripts that I run every day. This is because when I asked them to pay for an unfinished product, I promised that I would add any feature that they would request.

As a result, I'm creating the most flexible Twitter DM tool. It's easy to generate a DM using GPT, but the most interesting part is how to find relevant leads. I don't know how to make automated onboarding that would cover all these diverse requirements but I hope that ChatGPT will be helpful here, too.

Here's a brief story, step by step:

• Started using automated scripts to DM people about my previous project.
• Added GPT3-generated messages because I wasn't happy with the lack of personal touch.
• Mentioned it in a comment on Twitter (I think someone asked "what you're working on").
• Someone DM-ed me and said they wanted it too. When asked how much they would pay for it, they said $100-$200/mo for full automation. But they wanted to see it first.
• So I built a Web-based prototype in 2 weeks.
• This person disappeared but after a week or two I found another person who tried my awful prototype and agreed to buy a subscription.
• Since then, it was all about DM-ing new niches, having conversations, convincing them to become a customer, and making them happy.

I must say that, although it looks like an overnight success, it's just the last of many projects that I tried to sell. My advice, as usual, is:

• Put an absurd amount of effort into initial validation (unless you're doing it for fun).
• If the people "kinda like it" but not asking you for a payment link, it's time to move to the next idea.
• (This is why it's important to not get too attached to your idea.)
• Ask open questions ("how much would you pay for this?").
• Start with something small, something that you can prototype quickly.
• Only build a prototype when someone really wants to use it ("Let me use it for free in exchange for feedback" doesn't count -- you need feedback from paying users).
• You probably don't need a domain or a landing page to get your first couple of customers.

 

[acquanette]

@beaverpond Are you planning on niching down on any of the five unique requirements or are you still staying fairly generic at this point?

 

[beaverpond]

@acquanette The idea, so far, is to become the most advanced search engine for Twitter leads. On the other hand, I want to make it simple for the absolute beginners -- ideally, they should describe their audience to ChatGPT and it would convert it to a search query.

So I'm not niching down on a particular requirement, rather, it's either beginners who don't know how to search for leads or start a conversation, or advanced users with specific requirements.

Or beginners with advanced requirements. Dunno.

 

[johnlik]

@beaverpond So how do you test different ideas? Isn't it difficult to tweet that you are working on X today then Y tomorrow?

 

[beaverpond]

@johnlik Tweeting about it is not enough -- not for me, because I don't have a big audience. Yes, there's always a chance that you get noticed, but I didn't want to rely on chances. No, for every idea, I was brainstorming a few potential audiences and then contacted them.

It is a very time-consuming process so I built twool to speed it up.

Most people build something and then try to get noticed. It's a bit of a lottery. First, you waste your time building it, and then you waste much more time waiting for customers to come. But if you start by talking to people, you can see if it's a good idea right away. And if you get the first few customers, you are much more confident and can invest more effort and money into your project.

 

[johnlik]

@beaverpond So Twitter is your only acquisition channel?

 

[beaverpond]

@johnlik For now, yes. Since I'm onboarding everyone manually and spending a lot of time implementing basic features, I can't scale yet.

But for a Twitter tool, Twitter seems to be the most sensible acquisition channel. I'm tweeting about my tool and about early-stage marketing, and everyone can check my profile.