4
16 Comments

Where to focus next efforts?

I built my MVP last year, signed up new users, then a few large accounts and now at a $1,450 MMR (33 users). I'm having an issue with where to focus my attention next.

✅ Product produces an income
✅ Users thoroughly enjoy product
❌ New leads generated through social media advertising fall flat, on-ramp an issue. Seems to require more demos, but once they get it, they love it.

I'm a technical founder, solo coder, sales man, wearer of all hats.

Would you focus on:

  • Adding more features? (get in touch with users and ask what they want next)
  • Advertising more? (outsource some marketing, generate new ads)
  • Bullet-proofing the app? (it's a React app, thinking I could convert to Typescript, and redo the UI without a dependent UI framework from scratch, like Tailwind CSS and add a lot more testing)

I'm just having a hard time on where to focus my next efforts. Is there a priority list or something similar I could follow that helps founders prioritize?

  1. 1

    Hi Steve,
    First of all, congratulations on being awesome, you created something of value and managed to prove that to yourself and others by getting actual revenue, that's amazing!
    If I may be so bold:

    • Adding more features? There's a saying called "feature death" - spiraling off on an endless journey of more and more features.
    • Advertising? Usually, when you outsource something you don't understand, you get lousy results. If you want to advertise, IMO you have two options - get a marketing buddy/co-founder or leave the code and spend a LOT of time getting better at it yourself so you can manage the outsource without throwing money down the drain.
    • Bug fixing? I wouldn't go near that unless you're bleeding users because of bugs. I'd actually see the bugs as a great way to show how your users love you, that they don't care.
      Find what your user love about you - what's your killer feature, and dig deeper. Make the existing features, the most used ones better!
      Talk to your users, and ask them what frustrates them on your site.
      I'd suggest reading this:
      https://coda.io/@rahulvohra/superhuman-product-market-fit-engine
      Cheers
      Jonathan
    1. 2

      Thank you for the kind words!

      • I really think I should get better at the marketing. So far, I settled on writing more to help loan officers succeed (and plugging Mortly in the process) and doing more podcast sponsorships for loan officer podcasts. I think if I go further than that, the management will become a burden or I might be spread too thin.

      Thanks for the link! I'll read up.

      1. 1

        Happy to help!
        If you'd like to dig deeper, I'm doing 30-min consults for the community (for free, of course!) - feel free to book me - https://calendly.com/jonathanoron

  2. 1

    Start a "refer-a-friend" type of promotion, so existing users can talk to their peers about your app and earn some credits or free month of service for every 1 or 3 new users that comes through his code or link.

    Even better if you do reward both for client and newly referred friend or colleague, apparently double-side reward is more effective than simple referral link, drastically reducing "he just want to earn money on my signing" state of mind. Also let's not forget the word-of-mouth value and trust factor coming directly from a friend/college instead of you, the salesman.

    1. 1

      I like that! Referral on both sides. Tax implications come to mind though, so I wonder if there is a platform for this already that I could somehow tie into the payment processor (Stripe). Need to do some digging.

      So far, the users have been my best source of new leads. They're totally advocates and that's vindicating - one of my favorite things about building something is seeing other folks get passionate about it with me. 😊

      1. 1

        I am not aware how would be tax-ed something if money is not directly involved, you can structure it like "Get 1 month free for every 3 paying referrals" instead of "get 10 usd per referral" deal. Glad to hear that users are already talking good about your app, that means with some incentive they would talk even more and literally do the work for you.

  3. 1

    I think you should focus on #1. Advertising and growth will bring in more users who will then request features (#2). As you're adding features you can fix any leaks, etc. I think adding Typescript and the redoing UI at this point is just keeping you from your goal which is to run a business. If you want to focus on development only, having a developer job is a lot less stressful 😄.

    1. 1

      Haha, I hear ya. 10 years ago I almost went to work for a start up. I've always loved building but have been better at sales, but I love how the two go hand in hand when you're a start-up founder.

  4. 1

    Could you post a link to the product in question?

  5. 1

    I would advise against bullet-point 3, unless you have evidence that there are bugs which are preventing customers from successfully using the product, or you have a clear way in which this will dramatically increase your velocity for delivering new features. Based on what you've described, it isn't clear how that line item would help you reach your revenue and growth goals.

    I think a priority list is a great idea! I would have columns to the effect of:

    • Idea
    • Rationale
    • What business metric you expect this to improve
    • Effort (t-shirt size)

    Perhaps by enumerating your list of ideas in this manner, it will bring clarity to what activities you believe will have the highest impact relative to effort. Ideas, incidentally, don't have to just be new features: choosing to invest x hours or dollars for marketing, with an expected cost of y and expected return of z (of course, you won't know these values in advance, but you may estimate) is perhaps a useful way to decide what to spend time on.

    1. 1

      Thanks for the suggestion! I agree, I think I need to get all the priorities out of my head and detailed so I can then assign a scale of 1-10 on it's effect on growth.

      On bullet #3, I also agree. I monitor for errors and there are actually none lately, so investing in rebuilding/testing now while MMR is on the lower end is probably just a waste of time. I need to focus my efforts on increasing revenue next.

Trending on Indie Hackers
How I grew a side project to 100k Unique Visitors in 7 days with 0 audience 49 comments Competing with Product Hunt: a month later 33 comments Why do you hate marketing? 28 comments My Top 20 Free Tools That I Use Everyday as an Indie Hacker 14 comments $15k revenues in <4 months as a solopreneur 14 comments Use Your Product 13 comments