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2 month progress report on my patron based SaaS experiment

In early February I launched The Scientific Meal Planner as a 100% free public service. Here's a timeline of major events that've happened since:

  • I launched on product hunt, and was the #3 product for the day. Drove several hundred sign ups or maybe a thousand, I forget.

  • A lot of people seemed interested, but complained it was lacking calorie control. I spent a few weeks focusing on getting that in there.

  • I posted on related reddit forums - achieving ~600 upvotes and sitting at #1 on the r/plantbaseddiet subreddit for a day. This drove by far the most sign ups, I believe I jumped by like 1k this day.

  • I reached out to youtubers in the plant based diet space and so far one that believes in my mission has endorsed the app in a video. This drove ~500 signups so far and it's been just a few days since it was released. Hopeful I can convince more youtubers to spread the word.

  • A healthcare foundation has approached me (presumably with interest in providing a grant/funding) - but the meeting is indefinitely postponed because they are busy with coronavirus things.

So as of today I'm at:
2731 Sign ups (+551 in the past week, from youtuber mostly)
11 Patrons totaling $47/month

I'm focusing on really ramping up my marketing efforts - contacting individual journalists, nutritionist, dietitians, doctors, and so on in attempts to get the word out. I do think one big breakthrough with a celebrity/influencer could go a long way, as I'm getting tons of positive feedback.

But of course I'm nowhere near sustainability as of right now. I was going to ramp down / turn it into a side project in May if I didn't have enough money coming in from it (3k/mo was my goal) - but due to coronavirus I might just keep going until things turn back to normal - I have the savings and not excited about what it's going to do the job market right now so I figure I might as well keep trying - and hey it seems possible I may get funded by a foundation at some point and I really believe in what I'm doing.

What do you think? If you were me, would it be time to wind down or time to double down based on these numbers?

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    Idea for you. What about being it an open startup or build a dashboard showing your operating costs as a "sales tool" to show people its worth paying for and behind the scenes its not free for you to run.

    There's open startup tools out there, like BareMetrics. Or, I can look at helping build a dashboard: https://lakebed.io/#3_minutes

    Hope that helps,

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    TBH, Patreon for SaaS doesn't seem like a viable option. I am also currently experimenting with it but just for context, I've made more in a day than I have in 2 weeks in Patreon.

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