I've been working on no-code design project since the beginning of this year and we've just hit $25k MRR!
First time posting!
Last year we had been using a very similar service for our rental management startup, www.hostgenius.ca -- we found it very useful however there were so many areas in which we found it frustrating.
At the time due to covid, HostGenius majorly pivoted away from being an Airbnb management into a full-service real estate brokerage. This is where I stepped away and began working on teamtown.co with my Co-founder.
At teamtown.co, we offer unlimited graphic design and video editing on a monthly subscription. We outsource our designers and package them into an easy to use web app.
Our first thought was this: Is a no-code route a good idea considering our biggest product would be the quality of design and the experience with the designer? With the company we had been using for HostGenius we were mainly frustrated with the quality of design. So it made sense.
So we decided to take the no-code route using Bubble.io -- and It's been working great! With neither of us having a technical history this was a huge advantage. We can act on user feedback and roll out new features extremely quickly at a much lower cost than it would have been otherwise.
Building the MVP took around 3 weeks, and we had our first paying customer in another 3 weeks. It was a whole lot of "I have no idea what I'm doing" and it still is. But we're learning every day.
Currently, we're sitting at around $25k MRR and just under 40 users. Our main acquisition channel is paid social where we mainly target marketing teams and marketing agencies. This is because a small businesses will only have x amount of design to do whereas marketing teams and agencies have a constant need for new ad creatives.
It's been amazing so far and I've learned so much, but I'm struggling heavily in a few areas.
I think our site looks good, but I also believe that we're coming short on a lot of basics and fundamentals. Things feel messy and not as uniform as they should be. Being a design startup this is something we should really hit the head on the nail with -- but I've struggled with it plenty. I'm only 23 and I'm lacking experience here.
Also, I'm struggling on distribution. Paid social works great, but I'm concerned with it generating 90% of our sign-ups -- especially with everything going on in the privacy world.
Thank you for reading! Super keen on hearing everyone's thoughts.
UPDATE: We've updated our branding and our landing page based on feedback here. All the insights have been super helpful over these past few months. Thanks IH!
From what I can see your ads do the following : someone sees your ad on Facebook -> he's interested -> he books on your calendar and gets a call from you
1.May I ask how many people book a call from you everyday and your daily ad budget so I know how much a meeting cost to your company ?
Have you tried a simple form where you would ask for a phone number in exchange for some free stuff then message them on whatsapp/whatever you're using ?
Have you tried to direct them to your home page ?
Have you ever had someone buying one of your package without going through the phone call ?
Have you tried contacting startup you like simply saying "I like your startup and i'd like to do some design for you to build my portfolio. Would you be interested in a 20% discount as we'd like to have you on board ?"
What the weight of the 7 days free trial ? Do you collect card numbers beforehand ?
Instead of the 7 days free, did you try a "1st (small) gig for free so you know what to expect from us" ?
That's about right yea, they book a Zoom call where we either do a demo of the product or just simply answer questions and try to get them signed up.
We're getting around 3 demo submissions a day right now, we just increased our budget last week to $400/day.
Not yet! Do you mean specifically using Whatsapp or a messaging service? We've thought about doing this with an e-book that we made, but we were going to call/email instead.
We haven't, is this something you'd suggest testing?
Yes a few actually! It's a really cool feeling when they do it all themselves. Even down to submitting their first design request. There are quite a few similar services in the space, so I'm assuming they know how flat-rate design works.
We haven't tried this (plenty of cold calling businesses with graphic design job postings tho), but It's something I'll do now!
We do this through Stripe, so the card is collected first yes.
We've tried a money-back guarantee before but not this. Something I'll for sure keep in mind.
Thank you!
Hello Alex,
The site looks good.
Re the distribution challenge that you are facing, here are a couple of things that you can do:
(1) Provide a tempting incentive for your Free Trial like free templates , free video. Offer a 5% discount to users who share your landing page on LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook
(2) I took this idea from some leading Chinese smartphone makers - as soon as a new prospect signs up, call them up, immediately. The person on the other side just went through your marketing funnel, you’ll get feedback on your product.
(3) Offer a referral program that is worthwhile. Take Evernote for instance. They offerd a freemium product with basic features, and a premium product that’s feature-rich. The referral program promoted the premium product by awarding points for each referral that could be redeemed for free Evernote premium months. The referral program had the added bonus of highlighting the benefits of the premium account.
https://www.referralcandy.com/blog/evernote-referral-program/
(4) Build a relation with high end influencers from your industry. Reach out to them, share their content on SM and share insightful comments with them.
(5) Engage on a more personal level with prospect by creating content on TikTok. The most downloaded app worldwide for July 2021 was TikTok. Consumers view TikTok as a more authentic platform compared to other photo, video sharing platforms.
Hope this helps.
This is all really helpful, thank you! It's really hard to see outside of what is currently working so these are all great/creative first steps.
Hey,
The site looks really good. I would suggest you use a mix of Insta, Twitter, and Linkedin to increase organic growth.
Post industry-relevant content. A mix of designer problem memes, designs by your designers for clients, how clients have benefitted, and reviews.
Make an organic moat today. Paid ads have a ceiling.
Thank you for this -- I totally agree, It's definitely something we need to do.
Congratulations!
Did you outsource the Bubble development? If you learnt it yourself, how did you do it and how long did it take?
Thank you!
We had one of us go through the Bubble bootcamp program and they learned in 8 weeks. They actually completed a very early MVP in the final 3 weeks of the bootcamp which was really helpful.
https://bubble.io/bootcamps
That's an idea I hadn't thought of, thank you!
Congrats and thanks for sharing your experience! Looks like you're doing really well and I love the landing page. The green brand color and illustrations are awesome. I know what it's like to not feel fully qualified 😅don't stress and keep making progress every day!
Thank you! Very much appreciated 🙏
Where do you hire your designers from? Are they all sourced in the United States? Thanks!
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Thank you, this is really helpful. Something about the portfolio totally felt off and this totally makes sense.
Are there any resources you'd recommend for getting an eye for this?
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Hey! We made some changes to the branding and landing page with your feedback in mind. Keen on hearing your thoughts!
demo.teamtown.co
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Thank you! It's absolutely frustrating haha, but I'm looking forward to seeing where it goes.