How I built a SaaS in 30 days (Product Hunt Launch Challenge)
Hello Everybody 👋
Exactly 30 days ago, I challenged myself to turn a simple idea into a full SaaS startup launch in just thirty days. Today, I finally finished the challenge, but it's just the beginning 🙏
Here’s how it happened:
It all started from a simple idea for an AI Email Writing chrome extension assistant. I did some basic market research and validated my idea and found my target audience. I built a few MVPs, tested them with some users, and made changes fast. The key to this challenge was moving fast, not being scared to break things along the way. ⚡
After a few weeks, I continued building and had my 1.0 version ready to launch! I uploaded it to the chrome web store, and grew to 75 users within the first week.
Today (exactly 30 days from the start), I completed the challenge by launching my SaaS chrome extension on Product Hunt. If you want to support me in any way, here is the link: https://www.producthunt.com/posts/mailr-ai-email-writer
I hope this challenge motivates some of y’all to become a SaaS founder. It has been an incredible journey, and I promise you that it is worth it! ❤️
Here’s my challenge for you: Leave a comment, and return 30 days later. Reply to your old comment and see how much you have grown!
If you could show some support to my Product Hunt launch today that would be amazing! Link: https://www.producthunt.com/posts/mailr-ai-email-writer
Of course - sounds like a fair trade :)
Hi Rohan- Would you be willing to share your Mailr story?
Founder Club (https://founderclub.com) provides resources and support to those who want to start and grow a successful online business.
We want to hear about your journey and share it on our site to help and educate other founders and business owners while bringing visibility to your own project.
We are looking for founders who want to talk about their business journey and would love it if you would be one of them 🙂
You can drop me an email at [email protected] if you'd like to know more.
Definitely! If you show some support on my Product Hunt launch that would be amazing! ❤️
i would like to know more about the tech stack. Which tech did you use for the backend? Also were you the sole developer or did you hire people to do the actual coding? Another thing i'd like to know is about the marketing; did you go the free or paid route?
Hello 👋
I used AWS and ReactJS as the main part of my tech stack. So far, I've been working solo and completely free on the marketing route
Did you use a boilerplate? Is the chrome extension simply hosting an iframe of your web app?
if you don't mind revealing your secrets, please expound on how exactly you are doing free marketing. I personally have seen that reddit is great place to get eyeballs for a product. Which sites are u using for marketing?
Yes! At the moment, Reddit, Twitter, and Indie Hackers is where I have done some marketing so far. However, I seem to get a lot of organic traffic from the Chrome Web Store, for my extension. That is what I have done so far, let me know if you have and questions!
Is free marketing working from a revenue standpoint? Let me rephrase: are you making money from this extension with the number of uses you currently have and the type of marketing you are using?
Hey Rohan, that's a very inspiring story. What exactly did you do when you said you built a few MVPs? Can you tell me about the results? I appreciate you sharing your story with us. It is very helpful
Can you share more about the marketing side and the validation? How did you find the first users?
When I posted my extension to the Google Web Store, I was able to get organic growth via the app store. I also shared with some of my friends and family. Here is the link to my PH launch which has more info: https://www.producthunt.com/posts/mailr-ai-email-writer
upvoted
What did you do to prepare for producthunt?
I created a marketing list of where I wanted to share my Product Hunt launch the day before. I sent out emails to existing users, shared on various communities like Reddit/FB groups, and made an announcement on my twitter
Awesome! what was the most significant success amongst those marketing channels?
Facebook Groups and also Indie Hackers were great for me! I’m not able to track exactly how many upvotes I got from these channels, but they had the best engagement. More information is on my product hunt launch profile: https://www.producthunt.com/posts/mailr-ai-email-writer