Launching a chatbot SaaS for not for profits

In 2019, I finished my job at one of the worlds biggest not for profits and decided to throw my hat in the ring consulting.

I had big dreams of being location-independent - and I knew not for profit organisations had big problems I could help solve.

One of those things was helping not for profits measure their impact by allowing their service users to complete surveys via chatbot.

But, in my scramble for money, I did anything people would pay me for.

With my scatter gun approach, I was never able to get my annual income from the company above $25-$30K per year, so ended back up in a day job.

I am in a senior position in a not for profit now. It is kind of the dream job for a lot of people in my industry. But I can't quit this dream of working for myself.

I keep listening to the Indie Hacker Podcast and am like, 'This needs to be me'.

Of all of the work I have done, there is one tool that people seem to LOVE, and is great in terms of income for me.

It is a chatbot that performs one specific function for advocacy campaigns.

I had two customers pay between $5K and 7.5K for a two week period of running the bot.

Coming from a service background, it is only recently that I am like, 'I could turn this into a product with recurring revenue'. From what people have paid, there is definitely product-market-fit.

Here were my main hesitations in the past:

1. It is built on ManyChat, so not my own platform, so worried people will just go 'We can do this ourselves'...but reality is they can't. It is quite complex and they would rather pay than waste time building it themselves.

2. Distribution is tough. Essentially, it needs to be not for profits with annual revenues of over $3m for it to be worth their while, and they need to work within a very specific niche - advocacy.

3. You have to show a chatbot for people to get it. Not tell. This takes getting people within an organisation to use it before I can sell.

A few weeks back, I decided to go in on this, and have started promoting it as a product on LinkedIn - where all my ideal clients hangout - and where I have a small but targeted group of connections.

I also made a brand and website just for the bot, Levrr.AI

From that I have three new organisations, all asking for the bot on an ongoing basis. No deals closed yet but it is potentially $10K+ per deal annually. That is great, but at that level it means I need to keep my day-job.

Now, the biggest issue is distribution. My current LinkedIn strategy and audience can only get me so far.

In the interest of accountability and building in public, here is my plan:

I am going to write a book about advocacy - my niche. Not some shitty 10 page ebook to try attract some leads. A real, proper, adult size book.

For this book, I am going to interview 80+ experts and distill their insights across the various subfields.

I have a list of 10 people within my network to ask, all of them from well-respected positions and organisations. I am going to ask them for interviews first and then ask them to introduce me some other people in their network to interview.

I'll perform the interviews and learn all about them and their organisations. Then, politely and gently, ask for their feedback on the bot after the call. Getting them to use it.

I will use Otter.ai to transcribe the interviews, and setup automations with Zapier and OpenAI to create a series of blogs and LinkedIn posts with insights, so those interviews become content for further reach.

My hypothesis is that the process of writing the book will put Levrr.AI in front of more people, and some of those people will become paying customers.

Aaanyway. I am keen to keep posting updates. For now, I am going to go email those first few people.

I'd love peoples thoughts and feedback. Are there any other Indie Hackers building for not for profits?