10
12 Comments

$1 Software for Indie Hackers

Hello Indie Hacker Fam 👋🏻

hello

My name is Spencer and back in December, I bought a screen share software company call Median off of MicroAcquire.com.
(thanks @microacquire 🤜🏻💥🤛🏻)

I would describe Median as the love child of HotJar and Zoom.

It's a technology called Cobrowsing (collaborative browsing) and it allows you to see everyone on your website in real-time and with 1 click you can join their browsing experience, put your mouse on their screen, and even take over.

No invites or downloads needed. Honesty, it's kinda creepy.

With that being said, Median is used by over 10,000 support agents around the world including some LARGE publicly traded companies.

AND....

I want to give it to YOU for $1

Why?

Great question!

Here comes the honesty. I have let myself down.

When I bought Median I was an idiot. Might still be...

I HONESTLY thought that, if I could acquire the company I would be able to scale it to $1 Million in Revenue in 12 months or less.

Do I think the software is dope? YES
Have I EVER scaled a business to $1 Mil in revenue? NO
Did I have a plan? Yes... Kinda
Why did I think this was possible? No Clue

Here are the facts...
1.) I am not @noahkagan, @harrydry, or @vonwilpert
2.) It has been 6 months and the company has marginally gown.
3.) Have dabbled in direct email, paid advertising, SEO, and partnerships.
4.) It feels like nothing is working.

Why do I feel let down?

Because the company is doing less than $100k in revenue 😞

Not really boarding the rocket 🚀 to the moon 🌚 like I thought I would be.
(NOTE: I would be PUMPED if we hit $250k. The $1 mil is a stretch goal)

It doesn't make sense considering we have customers like ClickFunnels, WPEngine, Natures Sunshine, Doxy.me, BuilderTrend, and a few other mega ones I can't name due to NDA.

We also have chat integrations with 12 chat of the most popular chat tools including LiveChat, Drift, Intercom, Tawk.to, Olark, Belco, and more.

Now, do you see why I am down? haha

So here is my new plan...

I would love your help!

Please check out HelloMedian.com and leave me your honest feedback below. Any marketing, SEO, email tips, etc are encouraged. I need help!

If you like what you see and are interested in using our product long term

USE CODE indiehacker AT CHECKOUT

To unlock our $50 per month plan for only $1.

My thought process here is...
1.) Your feedback is priceless
2.) If you like our product maybe you will tell a friend 🤞🏻
3.) I want to support the IH community in any way I can

In Conclusion

I am NOT giving up!

I am in this for the long haul! I plan to grow Median to be a $10 million dollar plus company.

This might sound crazy, but I predict that in the next 5-years cobrowsing software will become a standard and will be installed on almost EVERY site on the internet. (think partnership with wordpress, wix, shopify, etc.)

Let's just hope it is our software 🙏🏻 haha

Not to sound like a psycho, but I vision a world where Customer Service becomes a priority and major companies like Wal-Mart and Amazon offer instore like shopping experiences.

Imagine going to Wal-Mart's website and a Live customer service rep pops up (with video) and asks you if you need any help. With cobrowsing, they would be able to show you around the site, show you other products you might like, and even check you out.

Anyways, that's all the nonsense I have for now.

I am excited to hear what you guys say about Median and if you have any issues at all, feel free to email me at [email protected].

Talk soon fam!

Cheers,

  1. 2

    Congrats on Median Spencer. I wouldn't get down about Median doing <100k revenue.

    For perspective watch this YouTube video to see how many years it took Noah to make his first $100k: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoaCCeEv1Jg&t

    Software early on can be difficult to ramp up as you get feedback and improve it.

    From looking at your site briefly, it's not really clear who your target customer is. If you can work on making this narrower in the beginning it will be easier for you to sell, because you will have clarity on exactly who to be marketing it to.

    Take a look at your current customer base and calculate which customers have the highest customer lifetime value, then find the segment you need to double down on in your marketing.

    1. 1

      @vonwilpert in a couple of short sentences you found my largest insecurities and shoved them back in my face. HAHA. That is why you are the man.

      Short story
      My plan (that I mentioned before) was to build this company what I called "the hard way". I have been in sales my whole life so naturally I went back to my roots and decided to focus on direct outreach.

      This was my plan
      Step 1.) **Understand the product **
      Most customers use us via a chat tool. Median integrates with 12 chat tools.

      Step 2.) Find the perfect customer
      Since we have success with chat tools I used BuitWith.com to pull lists of companies using Intercom.com, LiveChat.com, and Drift.com.

      Step 3.) Find customer contacts
      Most of our customers use us for support. I used Apollo.io to sort the BuitWith.com list by "head, vp, director" or "customer" at "company" from Buitwith.com.
      The goal being, find customer success, customer experience, and customer support people that can make decisions.

      Step 4.) Email them
      For this, I decided to use Lemlist by @guillaume_lemlist and I even joined his Masterclass.

      The Results?

      • 636 sent
      • 58% open
      • 6.6% clicked (link only in signature)
      • 4% replied
      • 0.8% interested

      NOT GREAT

      Lessons
      1.) Use an email validation software like NeverBounce. Had a 7% bounce rate.
      2.) Personalize the SHIT of out the emails.

      'Here was my email...
      Hey {{firstName}}, I was on your website and noticed that you guys appear to be heavy Intercom users.

      I hope you don't mind, but I found your profile via LinkedIn then used Hunter.io to snag your email in order to reach out.

      {{firstName}} do you offer live support via Intercom's chat tool?
      ---
      Sincerely,
      Spencer Scott
      Intercom Partner Engagement @ Median'

      Long story short, I didn't get 1 customer. I got close on a few but no luck. Now I am going through @guillaume_lemlist's Masterclass to see what I am missing. I think I know the answer. Personalization.

      Lastly, @vonwilpert I love your emails. They are a Masterclass all on their own. If you are ever looking to scale another startup please email me!! ([email protected])

      Would love to work with you!

  2. 1

    Hi Spencer,
    I think you're on to something! I mean, the idea is pretty great -- I have no idea what happens behind the scenes, but I have a feel that it will not work with every site.
    Do you know for sure what sites it works with? What JS frameworks, and the like?
    Maybe start there...
    (note: I'm just babbling here, the software I'm working on is desktop only)

    1. 1

      Hey @johnt2021 good questions. Our software is a simple cut and paste JS application. It should work on every website.

      The only time it doesn't work is when someone is running some sort of JS or cookie blocker. That's when the app acts up.

      The previous owners built an SDK so the app could be installed on desktop, IOS, and Android devices, but that was not part of the asset agreement. 🤷🏻‍♂️

      1. 1

        Hi @Squb,

        Got it, as I said, it's a pretty awesome idea for websites.

        The previous owners built an SDK so the app could be installed on desktop, IOS, and Android devices, but that was not part of the asset agreement

        Don't worry about it -- I can vouch 99.99% it wouldn't work on desktop. I've tried implementing this myself in c#/windows, and it's far from easy, so doing this in JS -- very likely not.

        Best,
        John

        1. 1

          I hear yah @johnt2021. We will stick to what we are good at for now. haha

  3. 1

    But what if some one logs in, while an employee is looking (silently) with him? Then the employee can see the password right? Also it seems like the user has no control to cut it off and doesn’t even know someone is looking with them?

    At the moment it feels strange and not very privacy friendly to me, but I think it has the potential to grow really big, because it solves a problem very well. It just takes some time probably to get used to

    PS on ipad the landingpage doesn’t have side margins.

    1. 1

      Hey @DylanS, those are great questions. Privacy is definitely one of the biggest concerns with this type of product.

      To answer your first question about passwords, the answer is NO. An agent can NOT see your password and we have settings that allow you to block out entire sections of websites if needed.

      For your second question, you are right and wrong at the same time. Depending on the country you are in and the settings enabled by the site, you are correct. You might never know if someone is watching, but in our defence companies have been doing this forever. HotJar and FullStory do much more than just watch you, they fully record your sessions to watch back and share internally. We record NOTHING.

      As far as a user cutting off a session, that can be done if that setting is enabled, but to your first point, you might never know someone is watching.

      @Dylans believe it is not, it is very privacy friendly. It's more just creepy. Haha

      I like to explain cobrowsing kinda like shopping. Wal-Mart for example has cameras all over their stores and they know every aisle you go down. They are allowed to do this because they own the store.

      With cobrowse, you own your website, your software, potentially the servers, and all the content. So when someone visits your site it's not that different than visiting a Wal-Mart.

      Also, thanks for the kind words. If you are interested in using the tool feel free to shoot me an email. Would love to help.

      1. 1

        Yeah, in essence it’s the same, it just feels so creepy😂 But eventually that feeling will go away if you keep explaining it as well as you did here. Maybe it is an idea to address it more on the homepage?

        PS if I had a website with users I would have loved to try it out, unfortunately I don’t have that:( also my apps barely have users.

        Maybe an idea by the way, can it also integrate with nocode apps?

        1. 1

          @dylans can you give me an example?

          If the no-code app is running on a website I would say yes. If you are talking about Bubble, then I don't think so.

          1. 1

            For example Adalo. Or flutterflow, and there are a few other native app builders out there.

            But now as I think of it probably not a good idea yet, better focus on the internet first!💪

            1. 1

              @DylanS I am not familiar with those tools. I will look them up though.

              Definitely easier to focus on web-based apps for now.

Trending on Indie Hackers
How I grew a side project to 100k Unique Visitors in 7 days with 0 audience 49 comments Competing with Product Hunt: a month later 33 comments Why do you hate marketing? 29 comments My Top 20 Free Tools That I Use Everyday as an Indie Hacker 16 comments $15k revenues in <4 months as a solopreneur 14 comments Use Your Product 13 comments