What's your single most important goal for your side project?
I read few articles saying that it's really important to have a single measurable goal for a startup to have a clear focus on product development.
Of course, it should not be about revenue or profit.
If you dont want to tie it to revenue I'd argue that DAU (daily active users) is one of the important candidates for your primary KPI
With the requirement that an active user is not Just a visitor but somebody who got his problem solved with your product that day.
= Count of people who you could help, who are happy and better off due to your product
Making money while working on something I like, the SAAS I invented. Definitly my #1 goal for my new project.
I want to reach 10 fanatical customers. Ten customers that would rather lose a finger than have my product disappear.
I'm specifically saying customers in this case, because I care that I'm continuing to provide value that people pay for. Free users are fine, but they can certainly be distractions, especially when they're vocal.
Love this Andrew. How have you been going about it? Of course, talking to customers is essential but has anything worked a lot better than expected or better than most other things you've tried?
At the scale of 10, I can provide mega hands-on customer support. Philosophically, my products exist to help someone solve a specific problem or gain a specific super power. For 10 customers, I work to understand their unique situation and how I can tailor the product to help them get there.
Fanatical customers require a mindset of fanatical customer support. Phone calls, video chats, in-person walkthroughs (if they're in my area), email response, etc. For 10, I do what it takes. Their success is mine!
A tool I'll use every day.
Depends on the side project, but the reason I started to do a lot of side projects was to build my network and get my name out there, for future work.
Definitely revenue for us (we're bootstrapping), but value received for our users.
Value is a bit harder to evaluate right now since we haven't yet figured out our 'value metric'. Net Promoter Score (customer satisfaction) will do the trick for now. :-)
Have you spoken to your users about your value metric? It’s of course you wouldn’t ask them like that.
Try to find out what feature is most important to them. Is it being able to collaborate with team members? Is it the number of x they can make etc.
So, naturally, as they grow they move into higher tiers.
But you already know this.
Good luck pinning down the value metric.