Just got our First Paying customer!!!

[faithmotion]

Hey, Entrepreneurs!

My co-founder and I got our first lemonsqueezy sale notification yesterday since we launched our product (EarlyAccessHQ .com) in February. Sooo encouraging!

For context and insights, I started this product a year and a half ago (ish), as a solo founder, and sold a couple of lifetime deals, but I couldn’t focus on marketing (I’m a software developer!), this led me to become discouraged and demotivated… the lack of motivation made me lazy and didn’t want to continue, was about to shut it down and quit.

By no means, I’m a SaaS expert (I’m learning!)

• Getting a cofounder can bring motivation

Since I brought a cofounder, I feel more motivated and encouraged to keep shipping and grinding, like never before. I wanted somebody good at content marketing and customer success, while I would be coding and working on other tasks since I’m technical (I wanted new skills and potential).

• Newsletter works (unexpectedly)

Every week, we publish a newsletter made of product updates, articles, tips, and offers. It feels like a routine, but we noticed that people started to open our email with time… but not subscription ($0!)... until yesterday, one of the subscribers opened the offer (in the email) and subscribed. Something unexpected… Email Marketing worked!

We’ll keep working on it since it just started working… (let me know if this is a good decision ).

• Keeping the cost cheap

We started working on Slack (for business meetings, updates, weekly goals, etc.), but we didn’t want to pay (we’re too small, a team of 2). So, we opted for Telegram Group (with sub-groups) and we loved it; since then, we have used Telegram (it’s free!). We try our best to keep our services low… this is to reduce the cost since we have to break even (cost - revenue = $0) and start making a profit…

• Asynchronous meetings

Instead of scheduling regular meetings (once or twice), we communicate and collaborate on our own time (using telegram!). It allows us to focus on our tasks without interruptions and still stay connected. This flexibility has boosted our productivity and made us more efficient as a team. (We now only meet online, using Google Meet, if necessary).

Fun fact: we met online, never met in real life, and have around 6-7 hours of time differences.

• The art of showing up every day

That’s it. We’re not giving up, we’re working on making the product better every day and acquiring our second customer… one customer after another, until we make it.

 

[suns]

@faithmotion Congratulations to you!

 

[faithmotion]

@suns Thank you !!!

 

[johnjarvis]

@faithmotion Interesting

 

[marlenedean]

@faithmotion Congratulations!

 

[faithmotion]

@marlenedean Thanks!

 

[rayar]

@faithmotion Congratulations

 

[faithmotion]

@rayar Thanks!

 

[remysheppard]

@faithmotion

Thanks!

You're welcome!

 

[norman70]

@faithmotion Keep Going!

 

[faithmotion]

@norman70 Thanks!!!

 

[remysheppard]

@faithmotion

Thanks!!!

You're welcome!

 

[delivered2019]

@faithmotion Very good, the second customer soon appears!

 

[faithmotion]

@delivered2019 YES!!!

 

[mzglass]

@faithmotion Glad to hear this. If you ask a successful startup founder the single most important quality for success, about 7 times out of 10 they'll say "grit". For me, the hardest part of building any of my products was always those early days marketing it.. those times you feel like you're pretty much shouting into an empty room.. sticking with that for 6 months (or more) is really tough.

What's your stack out of curiosity? I've been toying with building a site builder product for a niche vertical... thinking about using Go for the backend and vue.js for the front, but never built a site generator before.