Got zero new customers yesterday so I'm documenting my day to day struggles
Decided to document(/journal?) my daily struggles while building newCo
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The ups and downs.
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Tasks done
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Weekly goals
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Barriers
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Where I need help
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Plan for next day
Here it is: https://medium.com/@bentossell/startup-struggles-29th-august-12975dca1ce8
TLDR: Wednesday 29th August
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Zero new customers
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MRR stays at $1,555
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Total Paid Customers - 168
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Total Registered Users (incl paid) - 290
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Facebook Ads — 12 leads, £25 spent
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Quora Ads — 8 leads, $20 spent
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How I felt: 🤬😩😭
Tasks Complete
✅ Stop FB ads not working
✅ Updates ads copy and image
✅ Add the Quora pixel to the site
✅ Personal email to new free registered users (3)
✅ Watch Startup School videos
Extra things I did to make money (to help finance my company)
✅ Fix embed issue for client
✅ Finish website for client
✅ Add content to my portfolio site, switch domain, fix accordion, add content and share on Twitter
EDIT: THIS is why you build in public...
Due to feedback from people via IndieHackers Twitter, DMs etc I've tweaked the homepage to try and make it clearer
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Specify it's an online program
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Add Testimonials (yes ugly rn)
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Add How it works
Ben, get some testimonials on the landing page!
ha duh! I don't know why I've not got them added yet!
Right I've added some for now! Will improve :)
I personally do know what newCo is, but I imagine this is a perspective similar to someone who doesn't know what newCo or no-code is:
Top sentence: "Learn to build..." - Learn to build, or build?
Top sentence "...with or without code"... what? Of course it's with or without code when you build a startup, this doesn't mean anything.
Subparagraph: "An online program..." - An online program, what's that? Don't you mean a guided, online course? An online "build-your-no-code-MVP" workshop and a supportive community?
The testimonials are declaring you as holy, but unless I care enough about your content, I don't really know you personally so this feels distracting and completely separated from the value of the content.
3-block benefits, "Build in public": What if I don't want to build in public? This title makes me assume you wouldn't let me.
Featured projects have no visuals or distinctive features. I need to read all of them to get a sense of what you're offering.
Some very generic courses are distracting and are putting me off. For ex: "Building a freelance business". I'm here to "build a startup" with a no-code MVP, how's that related to "building a freelance business"?
No social proof of anyone earning revenue with a no-code MVP they made with your course(s). Your featured projects should be exactly this.
Thanks for the feedback!
Learn. I'm not building it for you 😉, if it was a coding program, you'd be learning to code. [as well as actually coding I suppose!]
Yeah this is something I added and removed now, it felt weird like a weird sentence
An online program, like a virtual accelerator, online coding bootcamp, online school. But perhaps many aren't familiar enough yet for me to use that as a throw away line.
Yep totally fair, I felt that these testimonials are ok for placeholders until I get others from my community about newCo and not just me.
Build in public: great point, will address.
Featured projets: these will be changing soon but totally get your points on these.
I'm not trying to offer courses on how to make X/month building Y, nor do I want to. So I won't be going down this route.
The product shift in the next couple weeks will hopefully make everything clearer but appreciate your comments!
Love your work on this @bentossell . In terms of Point 2 in your Medium article "Communicating what newCo is/does more effectively", this is the area where you seem so close to nailing it.
I find this area so interesting as, from my own online teaching and keyword research, it's amazing how many people are looking for heuristics and proven success strategies when branching out, being brave and launching their venture. Part of your site will be as the firestarter for these new ideas i.e. build the Airbnb for x, start a subscription business like x etc.
I'm wondering whether the stages category on the front page shows off the awesome content enough. One idea might be categorising based on utilising skills to build a side project:
Making digital products
Making digital assets
Selling physical products
Leveraging tech skills as a freelancer
Agency models
These are just some from a huge Trello board I have on categorising business ideas but I hope it may help a little.
Again, love your work and look forward to cheering on your progress 👏👏👏
I second this, I've seen you post about newCo in various places and I've always found how you described it interesting. I'm teaching Product Management in a bootcamp and there's definitely a lot of people with great ideas that need help to build a prototype or MVP.
I just browsed the website now and I wasn't sure if newCo was a consultancy (due to the founders batch), or a learning platform.
If the former I'd find it great to see some success stories from people that you've worked with. It would be in my opinion much more powerful to read something like "See how Jane got her first 10 users with no code" rather than a list of lessons as it's unlikely that any of these apply to me. But knowing that someone managed to get users and validation fast is definitely an attractive proposition.
If the latter I would suggest to follow Rich's advice to categorize differently based on industries or stages of a project. You could also have a big search bar saying "I want to build a ________" and surface content that fits.
Having MRR is a great start because it proves you have something of value, so be proud of that! Keep talking to your paying customers and see why they're doing it. Perhaps they'll give you the solution you're looking for.
Thanks! Really interesting that you said consultancy as someone else said the same to me the other day! I need to fix that.
I see this as an online school/bootcamp more than anything else. Our product release shortly will help re-jig that across the site.
Thanks for the kind words and the advice!!
The next phase for newCo is actually going more into this area. We are going to be allowing companies to host their own programs.
Think of it like Kaggle.
Webflow hosts a program 'build an awesome agency website in 30 days' - you apply, get the timeline, post updates, and be put in the program with others so you're accountable. There can be prizes offered for winners etc.
So in that angle, we could definitely have 'build a freelance business', 'set up a shopify store and sell 10 products in 30 days' etc :)
I like this idea as the completion rate on online courses averages in the single figures so prizes, accountability, updates etc all add to the feeling of doing it together.
Having titles that leave enough to the imagination will help. An example is people listening to an IH podcast episode like Scott's Cheap Flights and out of the 1,000 listening, you want to empower the handful of people who want to take the model (getting harder-to-find data and sharing in a non-affiliated way), not the idea, and apply it to their industry.
yeh, I'll post about it on IH when I've launched :)
newCo looks brilliant, great idea and execution. I wish I’d seen this when I was just starting out - that said, I may still sign up (although I worry i’ll spend more time engaging with your content than actually focusing on building, coding and promoting my product !)
It’s a quiet time of year, I’m only getting 2 new paying customers per week at the moment. Still nowhere near your MRR though - my goal is $1000 by the end of the year.
Hi Ben, thanks for sharing, definitely is addressing a big need. Would it be fair to describe this as "YC startup school for non-coders"? Not saying you should use that tag line but want to make sure I understand the value prop.
I think I'm sort of close to the target user -- someone with a startup idea but not much coding experience (though I have some coding experience and am launching an app), and I'm currently doing YC startup school (10 week program with group support and accountability, content, community etc) so hopefully this feedback is relevant re getting users to tell their friends about newCo
I've been doing startup school for about a week and am already telling my friends because it feels like good things are happening / going to happen. What is exciting is 1) a very active and energetic community, 2) already finding users for my product within the community, 3) very active and responsive support from the organizers (adding features based on feedback, actively moderating the forums) and 4) a defined deadline that everyone is working towards -- makes it feel like everyone's in it together. The content is probably less important as there is already so much good stuff out there.
I think the more you can get people in groups with potential users the better, and having a fixed goal people work towards (for YC SUS it's $10k grants) can be very motivating
Separately, I run a program that helps PhD students start biotech companies. What they tell their friends about is when they learn something new that helps them realize there's a whole new world of career choices for them, and when they meet with VCs who show an interest in them and provide good feedback on their projects
One suggestion. why don't u partner with the company who product u use from your video and get ur user a great deal and get a lifetime referral type fee from those companys .? Assuming your not doing this already !
Also look out for new startup whose service can be used from make website without coding, they are more likely to flex and share the revenue more plus they get initial user boost.
Think of it like how product hunt does from its ship user but u have to focus on service that doesnt need much code and which u use in the courses.
Phew... wrote this in a bust. Hope the idea help.
hey I do have deals with tools I use and will be doing more with this soon
I think it would be healthier to sit down once a week and check your analytics and dig into them a bit. The daily fluctuations are not worth your attention.
That's a fair point and I do stack them up against my weekly metrics but then when looking back I see what I did day-to-day that week to help get the paid users!
Also I want other people to know this is totally normal and happens to many of us :)
Hey Ben, thanks for sharing this update! Was going to recommend reddit but you mentioned that you had a negative experience with reddit. What happened there?
Everytime I post on r/entrepreneur people just go very negative. perhaps I'm doing it wrong ;)
Keep on grinding! 😎
Of course :)
Are you not using Stripe anymore? Wondering why it's reading $220/month MRR
Just changed it around :)... still not counting for revenue in the previous account but looking to make it all in one place. may take some time !
Yeah I am... we changed from my personal Stripe account to a company one, so it basically reset - let me see if I can fix.
Stick with it Ben. Some days are just shit. Doesn't always mean anything.
ha I know! But I'd like to publicly talk about the shit days as well as the good ones because there are others out there in the same situation!
But really, thanks for sharing. I've been trying to document daily stuff as well, but it's hard to keep up with all the work to be done and still make time to write and reflect.
Also, I wanted to let you know I really love your computer icon/logo.
When I first came across newCo, which I think was a few weeks ago on ProductHunt, I thought it was another one of those "curated tools for startups" websites like Startup Stash.
I quickly dismissed it as such, because I'd seen enough of those things.
I don't get the same impression now, but I don't know if that's because the website was updated, or that I just know a little more about newCo after revisiting it.
If I were to make one suggestion would be to try and make the paragraphs under the headline shorter. I start to get impatient after the second sentence.
Perhaps you could use some illustrations to explain how your process works. That would reduce the amount of text, while making it more interesting to look at as well.
Yeah with the next product, I'll be altering the homepage to be more of a 'this is what we do, and this is how we do it' style. This was playing around with getting people to dive straight in.
I don't understand what you did to make money. Is this consulting or what are you doing? Sorry, I'm not familiar with NewCo's business model.
ahh maybe it is confusing... They are things I'm doing to make money to enable me to continue working on newco.
newco is a paid subscription model.
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