How Joan and Jaume acquired the first users for the HARO automation platform HeadcomAI on the way to 1K$ MRR

It's my pleasure to share the story of two fellow Indie Hackers from Barcelona, Joan and Jaume, the co-founders of HeadcomAI (https://www.headcomai.com/)

HeadcomAI is their 2nd successful SaaS product, after rocking it with the remote team building marketplace, Onsite.fun (https://onsite.fun/).

They got to their first users on Onsite.fun through the HARO (Help a Reporter Out) platform. They then automated their approach to HARO and turned it into a product in HeadcomAI.

I had a chat with Joan about their approach to HARO and how they tirelessly worked through SEO communities to acquire their first users for HeadcomAI.

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What is HeadcomAI?

Getting featured by media outlets and bloggers is a fantastic way to improve online presence and SEO. Platforms like HARO (Help a reporter out) makes journalists requests accessible to everyone.

HeadcomAI automates the task of finding and responding to journalists requests on the HARO platform (https://www.helpareporter.com/).

Using HeadcomAI, companies can significantly increase their chances to get media coverage by responding to journalist requests much faster.

HeadcomAI filters the relevant requests from thousands of journalist requests on HARO and uses AI to generate memorable intros.

What made you start HeadcomAI?

When my brother Jaume finished his Computer Science masters, we quickly realised we want to build something together.

We explored a few projects. One example is PeerPull, an app for scheduling 1:1 sessions with experts of specific topics.

The first project that really took off was Onsite.fun.

Launching Onsite.Fun

During the Covid-19 pandemic, many of our friends were working remotely and were missing the watercooler moments that were part of their everyday life when working together in the office.

We launched Onsite.fun on Hackers News and got immediate traction with 100 votes and 250 people signing up to our waiting list.

After the initial traction on Hacker News, we looked for more exposure and decided to focus on SEO. We knew we needed other websites to write about Onsite.fun so we started looking for journalists covering "HR" and "Employee management" related topics.

This is when we started looking at HARO (Help a reporter out).

Doubling down on HARO

Investing in HARO really paid off for us in Onsite.fun. The pandemic and the rise of remote work helped us get into media outlets faster. However, I had to spend a lot of time to go through the journalists' requests and reply on time.

After signing up to HARO, I started getting 3 emails a day with the newest journalists requests.

3 times a day, I would look through the HARO emails and search for keywords like "Employee management" or "HR". I would then craft a personal email explaining why we could be a great candidate for a news item. I would have to do it really fast, otherwise the story would no longer be relevant, and we would lose the opportunity.

Here comes GPT-3

Around this time, my brother Jaume got access to the new OpenAI technology called GPT-3.

GPT-3 helps you create articles using just a small amount of input text. Using GPT-3, we could use the journalist queries and our own copy to generate larger amounts of quality variations and text.

He wanted to try out the new technology, and we immediately thought about using it to help me craft emails to journalists.

Soon after, HeadcomAI was born.

Are you funded? What is your revenue?

We bootstrap Onsite.fun and HeadcomAI. Currently,we are doing $500-1K of monthly recurring revenue (MRR) from HeadcomAI.

Who are HeadcomAI's first users?

HeadcomAI typical users are marketers and public relations professionals who are already using HARO to connect with journalists. Many of them are freelancers who are working for multiple companies. and a tool like ours streamline their entire process.

How did you acquire your first users?

We started doing things that don’t scale. By going where the targeted audience is Facebook Groups and Reddit communities.

Finding the right communities

HARO users tend to be interested in marketing and SEO, so I looked for communities on these topics.

I searched for relevant groups on Facebook and Reddit, and tried to get a feel for the vibe of the community. I looked for communities that don't have much self promotion or spam.

I found 2 Facebook groups, SEO Signals Lab and SaaS Growth Hacks, and 2 subreddits, Digital marketing and SEO.

Engaging with the community

After I joined the Facebook groups and subreddits, I searched for questions and discussions related to HARO.

I typically looked for posts with high engagement, and commented where I could add value.

I slowly started building a reputation in these groups.

Reaching out to community members

Our real goal was to talk to folks who are frequently using HARO and discover their challenges and pain points when using the platform.

I sent direct messages (DMs) to community members who were talking about HARO, and asked them to share their thoughts.

At times it felt a little spammy sending out these messages, but I felt it was my obligation to tell SEO professionals about HeadcomAI, as I knew it can save them a ton of time.

Whenever possible, I would try to provide an incentive to give us feedback, for example I would give away double the amount of AI generated emails on our free trial in return for providing feedback.

Interviewing members of the community

Whenever possible, I would jump on a call to interview potential users. I would schedule 30-min calls.

On these 30-min calls, I would typically use the first 15-mins to better understand their pain points, and the other 15-mins to demo the product.

Ultimately, we learned the most from these interviews stayed close to our leads.

What are your primary channels to acquire customers today? How are they different from the early days?

We still invest a large portion of our time in communities. We even took it one step further and started our own community, Facebook group for HeadcomAI, inspired by the Facebook group of CopyAI.

Now that we have a good core of users for HeadcomAI, we plan to start affiliate marketing to drive word of mouth. Many of our customers are freelancers, who tend to know other marketing and SEO experts. We believe there is a huge potential to spread the work across these networks using affiliate marketing.

What can new founders take away from your journey?

My biggest takeaway from our journey was to never underestimate the power of human relationships.

We often get emails from new users starting with "A colleague of mine recommended your product...". You never know when a huge deal is going to come your way. By always doing what it takes, we managed to win some amazing deals from large corporations that we never thought were possible.

I am also a huge believer in delighting users way beyond what's expected. Whether it is sending a small basket of chocolates or giving a personal gift, the benefit of these little gestures go way beyond the extra effort.

Where can people learn more about what you are doing at the moment?

You can follow me on twitter @joalavedra, HeadcomAI on @headcomAI and Onsite.fun on @OnsiteFun.

Want to share the story of how you acquired your first users? Feel free to DM me and I will be happy to cover your story