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63 Comments

My MVP is built. Now for the hard part...

Hi Indie Hackers!

I have just finished building my MVP, and as I am moving on to my next phase of trying to get some users, it felt a good time to write about my plans here and keep it updated as I go. That way, people can see the successes (probably failures), that I have along the way. I can also hear some feedback from others in a similar position!

A little background

  • I am 28 years old
  • I have a 2-week old child
  • I work for a software company as Head of Product which takes up around 10 hours per day

I feel that I am at a point where I hate working for others. I feel that I have better ideas (I probably do not) and that they are taking things in a different direction to where I would take them. As it's not my company, I can do nothing about this.

I always wanted to create my own company, but wasn't just going to create any old piece of software. It had to be something I was passionate about.

This is where Jessle was created.

Jessle is a SaaS product that helps an organisation monitor the marketing efforts of its competitors. In SaaS you will often have multiple competitors for your products, learning about new functionality, or a shift in direction of your competitors' is important to know about quickly.

In my current job, I would spend a couple of hours a week learning things about our competition by looking at the website, social media, etc. Sometimes, I would learn about them from potential customers that chose our competitor instead of us.

Our company had a couple of competitors that were far bigger than us, and some up and coming in the sector.

This gave me the idea as a programmer of creating a bit of software that would inform me every time my competitors' website would change, each time they would post on social media, each time they would have a new AdSpend etc. This is powered by a simple timeline that can easily be digested in chronological order, whenever you load the website. Maybe even whilst having breakfast?

After realising this software was helping me, I figured I could attempt to sell this to help others get the same benefits I had been getting.

My number 1 rule with everything I am building is that end-users should not have to spend more than a few minutes each week to learn about everything their competitors' are doing.

Anyway... enough about the background. Now for the "fun" stuff.

I am a software developer at heart, I am not a sales guy, I am not even a marketer. So I am now stepping into brand new territory. I need to try to get users onto my SaaS...

This is where any advice is most welcome.

I have set out to start by making it my mission to only find 10 paying customers. That's all I care about for a while. I can try to work closely with these 10 customers and improve the product to ensure it meets there needs, not just mine.

My product has 3 plans

  • $30
  • $50 (recommended)
  • $90

So how do I find 10 paying customers with limited time available?

For me to answer this question, I have done a bit of research.

I am leaning towards two key channels.

  1. I can post replies on sites such as Quora, where questions get asked that are relevant to competitor monitoring or marketing. The fact people are asking questions about this, means they're already slightly interested in this topic.

  2. Find SaaS companies that I believe this product would be perfect for (companies that have the main product and a few competitors that do a similar thing). Once I find these, find the information about the relevant department/personnel on LinkedIn and reach out to them via cold email.

I feel there are other measures I could take, but with limited time (and money), I could only focus on two. Likewise, I feel both of these do not require a fantastic grasp of marketing/content writing, that is not high on my skillset.

I will keep you all updated on how these two methods go. If they are a success or a failure (probably the latter), and if I make any money, i'll let you know about that too!

I figure that if I post about this in public, others in a similar position to me could either learn something, tell me how wrong I am, or at least look at if I received any success in my endeavours.

All the best, and let's hope this works!

If anyone reading this is in a similar position, I'd love to hear more about how you are trying to approach this. I am a 1 man band, trying to be a programmer, marketer, sales guy, and if I get any customers, support personnel. It's not easy, and I am a little petrified, to be honest. However, I want to make this work!

Thanks
Lee, Founder of Jessle (https://jessle.com/).

  1. 3

    I'd think there is a particular industry/segment that is more inclined to monitoring competitors than others.

    I think at this point it's important to focus on acquisition channels (see the link on my profile for a full list) where you can actually TALK to people. So:

    a) In case you decide to do "broadcasts" (where you post something and expect those that click to come and sign up), I'd try to capture their email AS SOON AS POSSIBLE (so I can later personally email them) and ask what's their use case. One guy did personalized loom videos in each email so people who've received it did realize that they're talking to a real person, and not an auto-responder.

    b) Don't just show your product, show what it can DO. For example, if you join a Facebook Group that's full of people who do dropshipping, do a video/photos relevant to them (create an account in your software with a dropshipping company and take some screenshots and show them off.)

    Good luck!

    1. 1

      "I'd think there is a particular industry/segment that is more inclined to monitoring competitors than others." - Yeah, I would 100% agree with this. My only real focus at the moment are companies that sell SaaS products. Which is the reason I originally built this software.

      I love the idea of Loom videos, we use them quite a bit in my day job. Hadn't really thought of using them in my own materials.

      Thanks for the advice.

  2. 2

    Hello Jessle! Congrats on finishing your MVP.

    This looks like a nice to have for most people, and not a must have. Also, there 's a lot of information such as images and presentation style, that one will want to see on the competitor's website. Your software will only gather textual information and events.

    It makes sense to visit a few websites per week and get a real feel of what has changed...
    I think you should have tried to find a few potential customers before building the MVP.

    Your project has more potential in market intelligence and data analysis, if you can gather information and analyze it for a whole market segment then the reports will be your products, not a SaaS.

    1. 2

      "Your software will only gather textual information and events." - can you expand on this a little? I am a tad confused.

      Jessle will look at your whole site, text, images, videos, etc. It can tell you what has changed with any of those. Including meta information etc. Its change detection really is quite impressive.

      I had definitely built too much in the MVP, but this was mostly because I have been using this in my current company to help me on a day to day basis. So everything that has been built is for a requirement I had to help solve the problem I was facing. This does not mean everyone else will face the same problem though.

      I am confident that some SaaS businesses similar to where I work would find software like this helpful. It's really helped my company spot some pitfalls we had in our own product/marketing and spot the trend of where our competitor' was heading.

      Our competitor (so you are aware) is 50x our size, so watching the items they focus on has been key to ensure we don't make similar mistakes or waste precious time on stuff they already tested and proved did not work.

      1. 1

        You will soon find out what works... I'm sure there is potential to make something good out of this. All the best Jessle.

  3. 2

    Hello there @jessle_lee!

    I really enjoyed reading your post, I actually learned quite a lot from what you wrote and I think that you're a head of product must help a lot so you shouldn't be as petrified!

    I would like to ask, if you would be inclined to answering, how did you come up with your price points?

    I would suggest also placing your product on Product Hunt if you haven't done so.

    I was going to suggest @zerotousers b) as well as I believe one of the best approach is "look at me doing this" rather than "take my word for it!"

    Best of luck, and hope you write more and hopefully come up with a success story!

    1. 2

      Thanks for the response.

      The price points were not easy to decide on. In fact, I haven't even put them to the test enough to know if they are correct.

      Ideally, I would prefer the price points to be higher, but the MVP really doesn't offer enough yet to justify more.

      My initial plan was to have 3 e-commerce plans, and finally a bespoke enterprise offering. My MVP is not sufficient to focus on Enterprise yet, so ecom is my focus.

      I wanted one plan for small startups ($30) that has the bare bones of competitor monitoring, and no customisation.

      The second plan is designed for a growing startup that has several competitors and other social media networks/keywords they may wish to track ($50).

      My final plan, the $90 price point is for businesses that need multiple users, have many competitors, want an element of customisation and also want larger allowances for keyword tracking, LinkedIn tracking, etc.

      My aim is to get most of my customers onto the $50 plan, which over time, as more functionality is added, will be closer to the $90 price point.

      I apologise that this answer is not as clever as you might have hoped for, but as the MVP has only just been finished, my aim now is to figure out if my pricing is right or not.

      I'd rather prove people have a want for the software than to focus on making too much money right now. These price points seemed fair to me.

      Where I work, we would happily spend several hundred bucks a month on something to monitor our competitors. But I don't want to aim too high as other companies may not be the same!

      Thanks

      Lee

      1. 1

        Thanks for answering!

        It's quite alright, the fact that you've provided insight is good enough for me!

        Might I ask how will you tackle price definition? As in, how will you know if you should up/down your prices? And how will you justify it? Someone might be subscribed to tier X and then it goes up Y$, so I guess that person stays paying the original value, but will you give some sort of update?

        1. 2

          I would prefer not to increase the price for people who are already paying customers. At-least not for the first year or two. These initial customers would have helped me in my way, and I think I should treat them with that respect.

          However, as with any company, I think periodically a price change would need to happen (where they bring in new plan names) and in order to unlock new features, they would need to move onto one of the newer plans.

          But again, I have not thought enough about this at the moment. It feels like I should start worrying about something like this when I have a product with quite a few users on and is starting to find product market fit.

  4. 1

    My friend, its an excellent idea. YCombinator applicaitons are open (I think just few days are left) - apply there. You may have a good chance despite not having paying customers. I can become one of your paying customers if it helps.

    1. 1

      Hi Khan - i'll look into YCombinator. If you think the platform would help you, it would be great if you became a paying customer! I'd really like to hear any feedback you have on how the platform can be improved.

  5. 1

    Its an awesome idea. Cheers!

  6. 1

    Hi Lee! Amazing to see the work you've put together and the project sounds interesting. One of our saas clients decided to go the free route which I think was very advantageous. Find the first 3 customers that fall in your target market and offer them the beta user discount of free + they get to have their feedback heard and (potentially) acted on. The first yes is always the hardest, but the second you have 3 "users" the second you can approach the 4th and say "3 clients are currently using and loving our software..."

    Happy to chat on it more! [email protected]

    1. 2

      Thanks ArgentAaron - yeah I definitely think some free users who can give feedback would be important.

  7. 1

    Hey, I'm a growth marketer working for SaaS companies. I think you have a great product. Not sure if 150 keywords is enough though. I could send it across to my marketing groups if you'd like but the limit is a little concerning to me. Lmk. Happy to help out :)

    1. 1

      That would be fantastic if you could.

      Can you explain your concerns more around the keyword limits? I'd love to truly understand to see if I have overlooked something.

      Thank you :)

  8. 1

    Update 1. My first mistake after making this post...

    A few users signed up, which is great! However, I realised I had no way to know how they got on at all, or for them to ask any questions. I cannot improve the product without this.

    Therefore I have added tools such as Drift for chat, FullStory to watch how people engage with the platform, and I am writing some quick guides to be added to the platform so when people first sign up, they actually have a clue what is going on!

    This should set me back a couple of days, then can continue with my initial plan!

    I had not expected people would sign up for my trial from a simple post like this. I only posted this to gather some advice and to hold myself a little accountable for my actions.

    Thanks

    Lee.

  9. 1

    This is one of the coolest idea's I've seen on here! And I can't believe you built this while having a newborn and around a 50 hr/ week job. Would you mind sharing how long you've been working on this MVP?

    1. 1

      Thanks - it's certainly been hard. But I enjoy what I do, so makes it a little easier.

      It took around a year to get this far, but that's because I do it around my main job (so only an hour a day, then around 4 hours Saturday, and 4 hours on a Sunday.

      I have been using this in my main job too, to help me, so it's a bit fuller than a regular MVP as I have been enjoying using it.

  10. 1

    Hi Lee, You might consider offering this tool as a whitelabel monthly email digest for accountants to send to their clients. The accountant probably knows enough to make some quick selections for each client, and then they have a relevant way to stay in touch each month, and maybe start a conversation about other services/advice they can offer. Also (similar to the quora point) maybe having a pre-selected comparison suitable for particular trade groups, and using it to answer business forum questions, with a reference link. Best of luck. I have a few accountants in my LinkedIn network if you'd like to connect - David:) https://www.linkedin.com/in/delms/

    1. 1

      Hi David

      Could you expand more on the accountants angle? I am struggling to understand the benefit. I may have missed something :P

      1. 1

        I'm seeing the accountant as a hub to reach potential end users of your service. So the accountant brands your offering and distributes it under a wholesale licence as a monthly personalised newsletter

  11. 1

    I'm in a similar position. I've built this daily photo journal app that I'm really proud of (https://phojo.app) and but I have no idea how to grow it. I will be your warning example. I buried my head in the sand. Not knowing what to do, I did nothing. And nothing is happening. It is terrifying. I don't even charge for the app, and I still don't know how to go about this...

    1. 1

      Thanks for the advice. I have been a little like that this last month. I finished the product, then froze a little as unsure on the next steps. That's why I chose to focus on the 2 items in my blog post above. If I can just focus on that and get 10 customers, it can help me with the confidence to push on.

      Best of luck - maybe you could try a similar steps to what I am? Either way, i'll keep you posted on if it works for me or not.

  12. 1

    Great post! How long did it take you to build the MVP?

    1. 1

      I spent around a year on the MVP, but that was around my regular job (and family). I could have done it in 1-2 months if I was able to work on it full time.

      I went through a few iterations (as I have been using it myself at work). So that took a bit longer.

  13. 1

    Hey Lee,

    congrats on launching your MVP - thats incredible.

    As Head of Product at a startup, any chance you already built a professional network with other decision makers in a similar position? These might be the lowest hanging fruit out there that you can tap into. Additionally, when you contact people, try to find a way how you can provide value right with the first interaction. What about sending them a reoport/summary of some of their competitors that you have identiied,c ompiles by Jessle?

    Keep going!

    • Marc
    1. 1

      Love the idea of sending a summary that could be built using Jessle.

      I could monitor the competition for a few weeks, then reach out to them with a report (and even a Loom running through it).

      1. 1

        Allows you to show the value proposition of your product. Instead of offering them to sign up for the free trial, you could urge them to reach out to you if they are interested or sign up for the paid version immediately. This way people understand that this is a paid product that delivers valuable insights. Given your pricing strategy, having person sales long term might not be feasible but at the beginning, you should be able to learn a lot from these early customers.

        Let me what you think about these suggestions.

        1. 1

          Yeah, so the summary provides the value and replaces the trial, with a paid signup then to actually use it?

  14. 1

    Congrats on the launch! I love the concept!

    In case you haven't seen them yet, I came across this company the other day that I've been evaluating (https://competitors.app/). I'm sure the # of competitors tracked is a true value metric, could be good opportunity for you to differentiate by breaking your tiers out by what they want to track.

    ie. Website/SEO on tier 1, Social T2, AdWords T3.

    With your outreach, leading with asks for feedback on your product is a great way to open doors to learn the pain points you should be focusing on and iterate your outreach.

    As others have mentioned Product Hunt would be a great way to get some exposure. Perhaps even some sort of PH life time discount could help kick start things, build credibility and get feedback flowing.

    From there FB ads should definitely be doable based on what you've learned as the value prop is quite clear. And of course the good ol' SaaS branded AdWords terms for your competitors!

    Maybe not now, but at some point it might also be interesting to create an agency plan with brandable reports. I'm a reformed agency owner and would definitely have used this for my clients.

    So much opportunity!

    1. 1

      Thanks for your feedback. I have came across competitors app (Jessle flagged them up). They look like they are in a similar position to I am (but with a few more customers). It's hard to tell if they are having any success though, they have not made any updates, changes, marketing outreach, etc, in months.

      Product Hunt is definitely something I want to launch on, but I want to get 10 customers first to help me improve the product a little more, and build some buzz online before I push on Product Hunt. Otherwise, the listing may just fail.

      FB ads etc is a route I think for the future, but I also think it's a fast way to burn a lot of cash, very quickly. I am hesitant to push this until I am happy with my product and marketing site.

      I would love to hear more of your thoughts on the Agency route at some point.

      1. 1

        Sounds like a good plan!

        If you’re ever considering bringing in a partner to help lighten the load / speed things up we should chat!

        1. 1

          Thanks, i'll keep that in mind.

          I wish to try understand what my users would want first, and improve the MVP before I start going really all out on this.

  15. 1

    love that you shared this! and the story and background... everything!

    sadly, we don't get this story via your landing page... or even something as obvious as an "about" page with your info and the story!

    it would be such a great benefit to selling the product... with such a compelling story!

    1. 2

      I really need to redesign the entire landing page / marketing site. Not only does it not tell any of our story, but it doesn't really speak of the product benefits very well either.

      Website design/content writing is certainly not my best ability!

      I'll have a think what I can do here.

      Cheers for the advice.

  16. 1

    Unsure how well your product works with Facebook/Instagram Ad monitoring but i think the Shopify/Amazon FBA community would be perfect for this type of product.

    Let me explain.
    A while back i decided to research the drop shipping craze and along the way i found out how they manage to do marketing.
    Big part of their routine is to look into competitor products by monitoring facebook Ads, either to get new product ideas or see how the Ads are performing depending on engagement.

    Worth a shot.

    1. 1

      Thanks, i'll look into Shopify/Amazon FBA. That sounds interesting.

      It already does this (although needs improving) for Facebook/Instagram ads.

  17. 1

    This is pretty cool. As a father of two, I'm genuinely amazed by how you do this with a newborn. Do you not sleep at all?!
    I'd niche down even further at the beginning. Even just the SaaS market is still too vast, especially for an indie maker. Maybe start with the type of SaaS that your current company is in. You could optimize it to get the best market insight for that space. I'd also avoid enterprise; the selling and support cycle is way too long for an indie maker.
    I'd also simplify the pricing a little further to only one or maybe two at the beginning. I'm not clear on the significant differences the audiences they are targeting. And it's probably best to niche down to a single segment to begin with anyway. If you must, you could make a standard plan and an "I dare you" plan with a much higher or undisclosed price for unlimited features.
    Love what you are doing. Let me know if you need help.

    1. 1

      I love the idea of just the standard plan and an "I dare you" kind of plan. Takes out a bit of the complexity in the purchasing process.

      I also agree about staying away from Enterprise for a long time yet. Make a product people want first...

      Little unsure on how I could niche down further, but i'll have a think and come back with some ideas.

      P.S: Sleep is non-existent ;)

  18. 1

    Thanks for sharing this @jessle_lee! Best of luck for your new venture, it definitely seems like a promising start. I had two quick questions I was hoping you could answer:

    1. How much time did you spend building the product before you created the landing page/started the marketing?

    2. What did you use to create your landing page? It looks great IMO 😊.

    1. 1

      I spent a couple of weeks building the website, but that was around my regular 9-5. I probably could have done it in 2-3 days if I was working on it full time.

      For marketing, well, I haven't really done any yet, I am just starting that now. But I predict i'll be spending 10-15 hours per week on marketing alone.

      As for what tech I used to create this, it's just powered by Wordpress and all the design I built myself with a little guidance from a friend.

      Personally, I think the website needs a total redesign. It was put together quickly to start getting some headstart with Google. But really, it needs to be far more focussed.

  19. 1

    let me know if you need help with your sales (cold outreach side), I consulted with quite a few IH members and there as solid angles we can use for https://jessle.com. I also have a kid so will share parent-approved stuff :)

    1. 2

      I would love to, but at the moment, I don't have the money to fund anything beyond my own self attempts to sell.

      My plan is to get the first 10 customers manually, ensure they are happy (and paying). Then when I have happy customers and a more repeatable process, start dipping into my own money to help push this forward.

      I'll reach out to you when I am at a point I can start spending money on this stuff :(

      1. 1

        Don't sweat it! We have a free version for now, I'd love to help with your messaging/copy and cold outreach strategy. I'm also learning a lot during these conversations so it's win win. [email protected] if you're curious!

        1. 1

          Sweet! I'll reach out next week :)

  20. 1

    @jessle_lee - I'd be willing to be a beta tester if you like. I have a boutique men's apparel brand that has competitors, and I'd be curious to see what things they're doing/changing in a simple-to-understand format.

    The key for me is not just about what they're changing, but moreso about what ACTION I can take with the information. This is biggest challenge -- figuring out what to do with the information.

    I'm a Product Guy too, so happy to give you the additional point of view of UX, Usability, Functionality, features.

    My IH profile has my email, so feel free to get in touch if you like.

    Btw, hyper targeting on FB could be an avenue too. If you know pockets of areas that have the types of brands you want to target (i.e. Silicon Valley, NYC, etc.) you could target based on a narrow GEO plus maybe some additional interest to narrow the "persona" you're targeting.

    1. 1

      Thanks Mike, I'll be in touch shortly. I never actually made a way to set an account up for longer than a 2 week trial. So I will modify this next week and reach out.

      If you wanted to share the URL for your men's apparel brand, I'd be happy to take a look.

      1. 1

        Hey Jessle, sounds good. You can find my men's under apparel brand here.

  21. 1

    Although, I don't think I can help you, I just wanted to say that I really enjoyed Jessle design. It's really rare to see a a well made MVP this days.

    p.s. The activation email is a "little slower" (I've received it probably 3-4 minutes after the registration).

    1. 1

      Thank you for your feedback :)

      I guess I took this further than a regular MVP as I was using it myself in my day job. So it naturally evolved to what I needed.

      I'll investigate the email sending. Thanks.

  22. 1

    Holy ... That was a pleasure to read!

    My man. you seriously blew my mind with this! I hope you can shift fast to working for yourself so you have more time for your family especially your child! Congrats btw!

    1. 1

      I hope so too! That being said, I don't think you ever really gain time working for yourself. I think the work just gets harder ;) - at-least you enjoy it more though.

  23. 1

    The easy route for this phase, talk to your parallels in other companies, find groups for your work type or just hunt people down on LinkedIn with similar titles... Just one on one tell them what would have caught you attention - do you also need to do this part? I've got sick of it and started automating it and I'd love to talk to you about it.. or similar...

    1. 1

      Thanks for the advice. I certainly don't want to be doing it, as a programmer, anything I can automate the better. But I think for the first 10 customers you should put the grind in yourself to learn and understand more about the "what, why and how". If that makes sense?

      1. 1

        Forget about "customers", you validation assumptions at this stage, and learning about the problem and your offer from the view of others, that's hard and it would be harder without direct open communication.

        Also as a founder you don't get the privilege of hiding in your one hat like an E... You are the product manager which talks to customers, the biz Dev that talks to other companies, the promoter that talks with press, the customer support, retention, sales all need to converse with a customer... Until an AI starts buying your product as the only customer type, you need to actually communicate with live people and understand the economy works with people as a big component not just systems, full self service doesn't work by default, it takes iterations to perfect and will never be the only path for customers. (self talk)
        Automation work when you have the repeatable process 100% accurately described in the way the users sees it

        Sorry for the long post

        Yes you need to have openness until it starts flowing, no matter how long/many it takes

        1. 1

          I appreciate the long post. I think you hit the nail on the head.

  24. 1

    Really nice post man! I found your post because Im in the exact same position as you are. maybe a bit behind because Im investigating whats the way it adjust better for my MVP to be launched.

    In my case its a Gym's management software (I know its not anything innovative mind blowing) www.gymbosses.com was born out of the necessity of a friend, just a small django project not scalable at all... but I managed to find a chain of gyms that has been using it since 2015, so I decided to re-write the whole thing with the idea of making it scalable.
    Im now in the point of migrating the gyms im already managing to the new app, and then I need to find new customers.

    Back in the days when I had the MVP my friend had to close the gym, so I thought: "I've spend my nights building this, some one needs to use it" so I made a list of all the gyms in my city and started calling them one by one until I got one that uses it. I think this approach is similar to your second approach and believe if your goal is 10 customers its a totally doable strategy... but hey! im also a developer with 0 marketing skills.

    Keep us posted!!!

    1. 1

      I know the feeling. I have spent a year building this MVP (definitely added far too much for an MVP to be honest). I'd hate for that to have been for nothing.

      Best of luck with things.

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    This comment was deleted 4 years ago.

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    This comment was deleted 3 years ago.

    1. 2

      I would agree, I think companies that make less than 500k a year would not be interested. I'd imagine companies above this who are trying to compete with the "big boys" would find it interesting.

      In the future, as you improve functionality, you can probably target towards the higher end companies.

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