This morning I was demoralized. Then I tweeted about it, and now I'm more motivated than ever.
https://twitter.com/FlorianMielke/status/1550402793977982978?s=20&t=ZdJgkPwu-XAOy8zK4_iD8A
My SaaS got 160 registered users during the beta. The beta is now over, but only 2 users subscribed.
Reality vs. Expectations
Hi Florian glad you got back your motivation!
Sometimes when things like this happen just saying it out loud helps🙂
...And in terms of reality vs. expectation it's important to see things from the customer perspective...[rather than the founder perspective]
For a customer "free" is the expectation of COMFORT
...but money isn't comfortable.
So when you continuously delay the discomfort it increases the level of friction
that will occur when you ask people to pay😥
Btw...if you have any specific questions...I'm actually doing a Free Trial thread series
on Twitter so just ask & I'll write a thread to answer🙂
I remember watching this YC talk by the founder of Weebly where he showed their sign up and usage graphs and for 2 years it looked pretty sad (small numbers, high churn) but they kept at it and they got product market fit in year 4. you're probably doing fine :D
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LNQxT9LvM0&t=482s
that aside, I've gotten 277 sign ups for my app's soft launch and we don't even have a pricing page yet (so that's 0 subscribers). Looking at your post made me think "damn we could potentially get 2 paying subscribers already?")
keep it up :D
Thanks, Sina! I really appreciate your feedback and insights. 😃
I created a reminder for that video and will definitely watch it! 👍
One piece of advice from my site after I got a ton of really valuable feedback based on my tweet: Don't wait too long to ask for money. That's the only valid currency in the end and the only metric to see if your product works or not.
love it, shared this with my team too :) thanks for sharing
Okay, who are you comparing to? If you compare yourself to the thousands of companies that got started but got 0 results, you’re mega successful. But you’re prob comparing yourself to the super-successful brands in your market which can be very demotivating. Even they probably started with smaller results than you.
Yes, I was too optimistic about the conversion rate.
This is my first SaaS. Coming from the iOS development, I've already learned some significant differences between the SaaS- and iOS worlds.
So I will keep learning and try to be more patient. 😉
Was there a specific response that motivated you further?
Oh, there are a ton. But the most helpful responses are:
Love that mindset! Letdowns like this can feel like defeat. Or they can feel like a challenge. Glad to hear that you're standing up to the challenge!
Do you have a way to get feedback from the other 158? Just a thought, but what if you grandfathered them into the paid tier in exchange for feedback?
Overall, it seems to me that you're in need of validation, and if you can't get that, then a pivot in branding, market, or features may be necessary. Just my two cents. Good luck! 🚀
I also agree on the mindset aspect🙂
I really like that Florian is looking at this as a challenge.
And in terms of the other 158...umm I don't think it's a good idea
to exchange feedback for the paid tier for all them.
It's more effective & less costly to segment the beta testers then chose a sample
from the 160...[not 158]...the 2 who converted MUST be included in the collection
of feedback.
In fact...all of the other responses need to be compared to the feedback
from the 2 that converted.
A good sample size would be 16 [10% of testers] so it would be the 2 that converted
& 14 that didn't convert.
Oh and btw...Testers & Users are two DIFFERENT classes of consumers...
so the type of validation is NOT the same [I'll prob write a Twitter thread on this
...jus joined so I can't post here yet😥]
Great points, and welcome to IH @Ravenmay007 !
Thanks so much for the welcome 🙂
And oh my account got upgraded in time so I was able to make a IH post about product validation🙌🏾 Would really appreciate your feedback 🙏🏾
LINK ➡️ Product Validation: Beta Program or Free Trial?
This comment was deleted 4 years ago
Hey Samantha,
you are completely right, and that might be one mistake I've made to think that my beta "testers" are future users. There might be some, but not all of them. 👍
Thanks for your feedback! 🙏
That's also one of the feedback I got on Twitter, to quickly reach out to my users and ask for feedback. And I'll definitely do that this week.
I don't think I'll take any further actions right now, before getting a sense of the potential reasons.