Is your SaaS app a “One Night Stand”
I analyzed an app that got 3 users out of 500 visitors. Here’s what I learned!
Picture this: You’re a tech-savvy founder with a dream to help people.
You’ve just poured your heart, soul, and an ungodly amount of caffeine into creating a job magnet website for people who want one.
It’s not just a website, it’s got a lovely coding-like interface for PMs who want to solve guesstimate questions.
Filled with all the hope in the world, you finally launch it to a group of 500 people who are your target audience to a T.
Of course, any founder would expect sh*tloads of traffic, but you hear crickets.
Only 3 people venture into your app, but they like it (so there’s hope I guess)
A founder struggling with this messaged me on X a few days back.
To be honest, as soon as I saw it was a website for job seekers my mind went…
“Another app trying to sell to broke people. Whyyy?”
But I got my empath brain to shut my business brain up and started to look into it. In this blog, we’ll see how she could turn her business around, and what entrepreneurs can learn from this trajectory.
It’s divided into the following sections
- Step 1 — Is this a thing?
- Step 2 — Is it good news or bad news?
- Step 3 — The Messaging Maze
- Step 4 — Where’s traffic?
- Step 5 — After the traffic, comes the meet
- Step 6 — Money Honey????
- The Mic Drop Moment
- Lessons for Founders
But wait Arunima, why were you so harsh to the founder in the first three seconds in your brain?
Lemme explain.
- Firstup, it’s hard to sell to people who don’t have money to spend. There will come a ceiling of what you can charge them.
- The app is like a one-night stand for job seekers. They’ll forget it as soon as they get something permanent :P This also means, you’ll have to be on the lookout for new users constantly. You’ll never have certainty in your life.
- Lastly, there’s always a small chance that you’re making a “good to have” app and not a “need to have” solution. People are used to how they study, would they wanna try something new out?
But keeping all of this aside, I wanted to have a fresh look at the business.
Let’s introduce you to it as well.
The App — PM Interview Club
You can check out the app here.
It is a website to solve and practice guesstimate challenges, and it’s got a very nice UI on the outside.
Preview of the App
Our founder wanted an audit of messaging and positioning as well as the UI.
Step 1 — Is this a thing?
The first step to building a business is researching…
- If people are searching for something like this
- If something like this exists
The keyword “guesstimate” had a monthly traffic of 1K-10K searches in the US, which is honestly good.
However, “guesstimate questions” merely had 10–100 searches.
Next, I googled guesstimate and guesstimate questions, and it was instantly filled with blogs of the top 10 guesstimate questions/challenges.
So, there are people searching for it, there are resources but no one has ever made an interface like this.
Step 2 — Is it good news or bad news?
You’re the first one to make it — so are you a visionary or no one made it bec no one needs it?
That’s a tough question to answer always.
But in this case, there are pros and cons to being the first
Pros -
- No one has made it, and no ads run on “guesstimate” so it’s easy to get traffic doing it.
- Your target audience is not totally broke because people usually become PM at a later stage in their career. So they might have some chunks to pay!
Cons -
- Do the PM aspirants want you?
Step 3 — The Messaging Maze
Now, what’s the pitch?
Why would someone want to solve questions in the app, when they could… open youtube, solve it and get going?
Most founders do this #1 mistake — They build something cool, but forget to understand if there is a space for that “coolness” in a customer’s life. If your TV remote is working fine from years, would you upgrade it to a led lit wifi remote?
One pitch in this case could be to solve questions real time in an actual interview env and get points for each step you take while solving.
The founder also told me they are preparing the whole platform for PM interviews and not just this, so I think that saves it.
Step 4 — Where’s traffic?
Now, the first thing after fixing messaging is getting traffic and seeing if it clicks.
Some ways to do so:
- Run ads. Set aside $100 and run google ads for it. You’re not doing it for profit, you’re doing it to see how people will interact with your app
- Start the long-term SEO game. Write PM interview articles or study material. Have a lead magnet that gives them a strategy to solve questions
- If you wanna be on social media, Linkedin should be your friend (gosh, I hate it but well :P) DM people who have “Open to work” in their bio and see if they find value in your app
Step 5 — After the traffic, comes the meet
Now, let’s say people sign up. What next? How about the interaction and the UI.
I found the UI sleek and straightforward and pretty on my eyes.
However, I was not sure if I could submit an answer directly.
What If I don’t want to waste time by writing equations there?
Preview of the app
I got a score of 54% but I don’t know what I did right vs wrong. A step by step marking and showing correct answers at the end would make it more complete.
Step 6 — Money Honey????
Now, we all build businesses for money.
Yeah, we might start to scratch our itch or for passion, but money makes the pot sweeter.
If it’s just a guesstimate website, I’m scared you can’t charge for it. I, as a student would prefer a YT channel over this. You could however earn from Google Adsense if you have traffic.
If you still wanna sell this, you could make a lead magnet of “Strategies to solve guesstimate questions” and then lead people to this app — where they can solve 10 guesstimate challenges in front of an expert (like an interview) and get expert analysis to their process too. This can be sold for $100.
If though, it is a full-fledged PM interview platform, this could be a nice lead magnet. And then you can sell memberships or course.
The Mic Drop Moment
While I was thinking about monnnneeyyyy, I realized…what if.. she can sell not to students but to exam takers?
As in, shecan sell it to corporates or startups that can use this to TAKE guesstimate exams.
They can see what the guy is writing and his thought process while solving. The founder can add a functionality to help the examiner change the weightage of each step.
So, one sort of outreach she can do is to startups/corps that do these kinds of interviews.
It’s difficult to sell to B2B but then it’s also difficult to get 100 people to try this, when they might just be looking for quick questions/answers or youtube videos. Just gotta choose your hard!
Our founder also loved this pivot. It was a nice flip button and a new way to monetize.
Anyhow, let’s conclude on what next and some learning for a founders
What next?
- The app is nice overall, but she gotta think if people will search for it when they think about guesstimate problems
- For marketing, I’d suggest to have a tie-up with websites that rank so she can get popup there that redirects them to her page.
- Run ads. No one is running ads on “guesstimate questions”. Set aside $100, and run some ads on it. See how people react.
- Start with SEO as a long term strategy. Since she is looking towards a full fledged PM interview prep app, so some blogs on that would be nice
- If she can’t figure out pricing yet, she can start adsense on it.
- She can also tie up with Linkedin influencers.
- The first issue to solve is TRAFFIC — to then see what’s working and what’s not. So a mix of social media and ads might do the trick.
Lessons to a founder
- Don’t build for broke people. Build for people who have money to spend.
- Don’t let your app be a one night stand. If people are leaving your app after they are done, you’ll always need to be on the dating app :P
- Think about the current action pattern of your customers. What do they do now? Is there a space for whatever you are building? Will you reduce time, energy, money in their process?
- Is it a good-to-have or a need-to-have solution?
- Always check the current competitive landscape before you build. Check the messaging and positioning of your competitors.
Want an AUDIT for your SaaS and business?
I’m doing a project called Startup Differentials where I help founders find gaps in their startups and make more moneeeyyyy. I have 3 slots open for a full differential diagnosis like this.
Comment “Startup” and I’ll reply with my contact info! :)
Oh and if you want to grab more of this content, and services from me at a discount, you can subscribe to the newsletter “Startup Differentials” here.
Thank you for reading and hope this helps you make more money!
Cheers,
