13
24 Comments

My girlfriend is our first paying user and I’m not embarrassed

@AndrewV and I soft-launched vidds.co out into the world a couple of months ago, and although we’ve manage to get 100+ users signup for free accounts, we’ve only managed to convert one of them to a paid plan.

My girlfriend.

At first glance, it looks like a pity sign up. Even at second glance, it looks like a pity sign up. But on the third look, it’s actually pretty cool to see what she uses our product for and the value she is getting out of it.

Aside from being a co-founder with me on another product, she also works as a freelance content creator and marketing consultant for SMEs in Sweden. She’s just booked a new client and one of the reasons is because as part of her offering she sold a video creation pack to make 8 short-form social media videos a month for 4000sek (approx $480).

She pays $15/month for the basic Vidds subscription, spends around 3 - 4 hours creating all the videos (including implementing client feedback) giving her a net profit of $116/hour.

So for transparency, this takes our MRR to a total of $15, but having created something that empowers someone to have that kind of power over their work and incomes feels really amazing.

Our next goal is to start marketing Vidds.co effectively, reach more new users and improve our onboarding to convert our current users.

You can follow our journey on twitter: twitter.com/andrewWHacks and twitter.com/edthomas__ where we’re building in public and sharing the lessons we learn along the way.

  1. 22

    Now get a second girlfriend and double that MRR. 💪

    Do ThInGs ThAt Don'T ScaLe.

    Jk, good luck with the next customer :)

    1. 2

      I was just reading about a guy in Japan that had 35 girlfriends, so that he could get 35 birthday presents. He told them different dates. So there is precedent for this approach!

      1. 2

        That's not a bad idea actually. I might put an ad out for some more tech savvy boyfriends who can build apps and software which makes my life easier 💁‍♀️

      2. 1

        A great growth tip that scales!

    2. 2

      Im down-voting this reply 😂

      1. 1

        But My IndiEClout :(

    3. 1

      haha, or tell a bunch of girls you want a relationship with them, AFTER they sign up. However, that may lead to a heart-broken churn rate in a 30-day window.

    4. 1

      Best response ever!

    5. 1

      hahaha best that I avoid commenting on that

  2. 4

    It should maybe be mentioned that I actually wanted to pay for it because I found it so useful, and I didn't sign up as a paying client just to be supportive (I did sign up as a user to be supportive though, never actually expected that I would start using it, heh).

    I really hate trying new software, and after having gone through a handful of video creation platforms which just didn't do anything for me I was pretty sceptical on trying out another one. As a reasonably tech-savvy person, I find myself falling between the pro software (PP & FCP) and the more limited online software. I couldn't find a tool which ticked all the boxes in terms of features and functionality without being under- or overwhelmed. My favourite things about the Vidds creator is the easy drag & drop function, and that I don't need to work with a timeline to match my scenes and elements.

    So hey, my client is super happy so Im super happy. Im also really excited being able to offer my clients this kind of video production to a price which is affordable for them.

  3. 3

    If you listen to @arvidkahl podcast here on IH he built his product around a problem his GF had at work, and it got to 55k MMR, so that's not a bad idea at all.

    1. 2

      That's amazing, thanks for the tip. I'll give that a listen tomorrow.

    2. 2

      Arvid's story was awesome!

  4. 2

    Awesome 🤘🏽. Looking forward to your content on Twitter!

  5. 2

    Awesome, create a testimonial and market that testimonial.

  6. 2

    I’ve never ever used vids for anything because I thought it was hard to make, but I think I can do it now!

    1. 1

      That's great to hear Dylan, let me know if you want to have a one-to-one product walkthrough and onboarding for Vidds. Would be my pleasure to get you creating the videos you never thought you'd be able to 😁

  7. 2

    Congrats. What's the tech stack behind the animation?

    1. 3

      We started with the AMAZING AnimeJS! It doesn't do everything we need, so had to wrap it around some custom code.

      1. 1

        Excellent work, my dude.

    2. 2

      I'll let @AndrewV answer this one, as no doubt I'll butcher the explanation 😅

  8. 2

    She's also a great tester! She has caught quite a few bugs, helped us improve the app, and make the UI more usable.

  9. 2

    No doubt she'll be the first upvoter of this post too 😂

Trending on Indie Hackers
How I grew a side project to 100k Unique Visitors in 7 days with 0 audience 47 comments Competing with Product Hunt: a month later 33 comments Why do you hate marketing? 27 comments $15k revenues in <4 months as a solopreneur 14 comments Use Your Product 13 comments How I Launched FrontendEase 13 comments