How We Bootstrapped Our Logo Design Tool With No Money
Hey Everyone!
Recently, my logo design tool, Typogram, hit 1k registered users.
It's a big milestone for us since we are a two-person bootstrapped company with no money and mostly do organic marketing. A short time ago, we wrote a guide on what worked for us. IH has been such a helpful community. I want to share it here in case other makers find this useful. If you want more details, see the stats, feel free to check out the original post.
Background
Before we start, I would like to give you some background about my product. Typogram is a beginner friendly logo design tool for founders. Here is the timeline for Typogram's development for reference. I think a key takeaway here is that we started launching, and tried to start developing an audience before we had a full fledged product.
- 2021– Focus on customer discovery, product research, and content development, mini product launches
- 2022– Launch of a pre-order landing page.
- 2023– Public alpha launch.
For MVP and Product Validation, we tried:
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Create Mini Product of Features Using No-Code
We use no-code products to create mini versions of core features to test monetization. Some of the no-code tools we used: Notion, Figma, Webflow.
Launch Channels: our newsletters, Twitter, IndieHackers, and product hunt. -
Pre-Order with Landing Page
We launched a pre-order in March 2022.
At this point, the SaaS has yet to be fully developed, only the key features. We created a landing page with a demo video, offering a discounted lifetime deal on our SaaS. We wanted to test interest and monetization.
Launch Channels: our newsletters, Twitter, IndieHackers, and Product Hunt
For short-term growth & traction, we tried:
Short-Term Growth & Traction
Content marketing and engineering as marketing were successful strategies.
Sharing learnings and snippets of our newsletters on Reddit
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Newsletter
We started newsletters before having a product to build a community and find supporters. We mostly shared our startup journey and researched user interests for newsletter topics. -
Engineering as Marketing
We launched side projects like "Coding Font" to attract their target audience.
These projects generated traffic, backlinks, and SEO benefits. -
Long-Term Growth: SEO/Organic Traffic
Targeting long-tail keywords works well
Ads and Future Launch Channels:
We didn't invest in ads due to budget constraints. We are launching again soon. A new channel we are exploring this time: Lifetime Deals (LTD) Facebook groups. Subscribe to our newsletter to get updated learning on this!
Last Words: SaaS marketing is hard, but it is possible without money. If you feel like it, check out our logo design tool, Typogram.
Great work on the traction! I've found organic SEO and pre-order/waitlist pages to be so key for tech start-ups. Plus investing in influencers has been way better ROI and easier to manage for my start-up, affiliate programs sometimes attract some smaller ones too
Thanks so much! and glad to hear influencers and affiliate programs are working for you - what's your current process?
Greetings on reaching 1,000 users. Your experiences and tactics are motivating. It was a wise decision to use no-code tools and start with consumer involvement before the product.
Short-term growth was effectively demonstrated by "Coding Font" and content marketing. Facebook groups for LTD and long-term SEO are promising. Use user reviews and collaborations to increase impact. Keep sharing your wisdom!
Thanks so much! Once we learn more about fb LTD we will share!
as a co-founder, I want to add some important points to @wentin's post
you can start writing about your journey before the product or even, the idea is fully finalized - having a community really keeps me motivated.
if you create content - find a format that works, and try to stick to it. for example, if you make video, focus on making the video, and distribute on channels for video. If you do a bunch of different formats in the beginning at once, it can get very costly and exhausting.
yes- especially about the content creation!