Help with Launching a SaaS (Slack App) - checklist?

By Milan Milosevic

February 17, 2018

Next week (probably) I plan to launch a Slack app (qdochat.com).
I plan to

do ProductHunt pro launch
Medium blog post (about the trade-off between communication and productivity in teams)
Show HN
maybe ask people form Slack to do some guest blog.
IndieHackers? :)
maybe contact people I know personally (Twitter, LinkedIn, email) and ask for a feedback
maybe reddit
Do you have any other idea where (and how) to launch?

Milan Milosevic

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Congrats on the launch! I'll definitely use this with my next team.

From the landing page it seems this is a completely free product?

Is there any monetisation angle at all?

I can see this being the kind of product where referrals would work well. Direct sales is out of the question because you aren't actually selling anything.

Have you been building up a list of email addresses from interested potential users?

One strategy I'd consider is a viral-loop kind of mechanism, where you register for a waitlist to get free access in a month, or you can refer another X users now to get immediate access. I'm not usually a fan of this kind of growth-hacky approach, but seeing as the product really is free, I think it's fair to expect a bit of support from users...

Louis Nicholls

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9 years ago
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  Hi,
  
  Thanks for kind words! Currently, the product is free.
  
  RE: monetization. There are two (primary) monetization strategies I'm considering:
  
  just give it for free and hope that Slack want's to invest/buy the app if it grows very large (very small chances of this actually happening, IMO)
  
  charge per user (like $2-3 per user, + discount for large teams) - I daydream that if the app proves to be useful, it will save bunch of time for companies, that will outweigh $3 per user by far margin. :) But, at the moment, I want to get initial feedback on the app, if qdo actually saves time and improves communication in teams. What do you think, does this make sense?
  
  I don't have list of email addresses; I haven't created landing page before building the app, unfortunately. I should have done that.
  
  I'll consider this referral model you describe. Tricky part is: in order for app to make sense and provide value for the team, entire team must use the app. Otherwise, they will just end up direct messaging and @-ing each other.
  Milan Milosevic
  
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  9 years ago
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    Charge from day 1.
    
    You'll get feedback either way, but charging money will actually validate the product AND give you a responsible demand curve.
    
    kieran
    
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    9 years ago
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      That makes a lot of sense. It was my initial plan. My line of thinking was: if nobody wants to actually pay for the damn thing, it probably does not provide enough value and I shouldn't be working on that.
      
      However, the fact that I haven't worked with payment processing before and that I need to set up stuff from legal point of view (I'm in Serbia, so it's not simple to get the payments from abroad), made me rethink that.
      I really appreciate the advice and I'll probably start working on that as soon as possible. Thanks!
      
      Milan Milosevic
      
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      9 years ago
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        My go to strategy for not having payments in place is to have a x-day trial in place. Gives me time to implement while getting feedback from actual users.
        Also don’t be afraid to use something as simple and manual as PayPal in the beginning, many big service you use now probably started that way.
        
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        9 years ago
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        Thanks for the advice. I'll probably go with PayPal in the begining, it does make most sense.
        
        Milan Milosevic
        
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        9 years ago
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Just wanted to pop in and say that your product looks great Milan! Very, very well done. The landing page was clear. I feel like I know exactly what your app does. I hope you find a monetization strategy that works so you can keep working on this!

Skyler Hair

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9 years ago
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  Thanks Skyler! Support from fellow makers means a lot!
  I really put effort into making landing page as clear as possible. Glad to hear it works :)
  
  Milan Milosevic
  
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  9 years ago
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Hi Milan. Very nice idea! The way we book “busy” times is through google calendar. Is it possible to sync slack statuses with your calendar? Ideally showing something in status, like “ meeting”.

Worst thing that is happenning is when you booked yourself for meeting with client, doing screenshare, and then bang! Your team member is stalking you with some private messages.

Yuriy Gerasimov

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9 years ago
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  Hi Yuriy,
  What you described seems like it should already be part of some calendar slack integration (not sure if that's the case tough). Anyway, I'll put that on my "feature ideas" list. It would require having access to your (google?) calendar, though. That would play nicely with one other feature I plan to implement: giving subject/title to your reserved time slot.
  
  Milan Milosevic
  
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  9 years ago
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    Found article https://zapier.com/apps/google-calendar/integrations/slack/15914/update-your-slack-status-when-google-calendar-events-begin. Will try that for now
    
    Yuriy Gerasimov
    
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    9 years ago
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