Open Beta Launch

After one month in closed beta, I opened Bkmark to the public.

Why Today?

The closed beta lasted one month and I was pretty happy with the results of the experiment. I had 40 registered users on the platform, plus one paying customer. I thought I had fixed most of the pressing issues/bugs and it would be smooth transitioning to opening it to the public. Also, I had spent some time revamping the landing page and it was ready for the world too.

How did it go?

It was pretty chaotic, to say the least 😅.

It was a lot of fun sending invites to everyone on the pre-launch waiting list announcing the open beta and the new website. From there, there was a surge in signups and usage. And bugs started popping up! Things that work fine with 3 daily active users will break with 40.

However, the response from the community was beyond my wildest dreams. So many people shared and/or signed up. I received a lot of feedback and encouragements when I was fire-fighting with the code to keep things up and running. Moreover, a few actually helped me with detailed explanations of the problems, screenshots, video recordings, etc... Shout out to everyone in the Indie Hacker who is alongside me in this indie SaaS journey.

Later in the day, I had fixed most of the pressing issues and things started going smoothly again. Errors stopped popping on my phone and I could relax and actually reply to everyone.

Numbers

• Registered users: 103 (157% 📈)
• Paying customers: 3 (200% 📈)
• Bookmarks created: 503 (67% 📈)

We can notice a sharp rise in registered users but not as much in bookmarks created. A few people created accounts, added a couple of bookmarks and signed out. My aim over the coming week is to keep those users engaged.

I'm still over the moon that people are actually paying for Bkmark in its current state. I have a lot in store for this product, and things are going to be even more awesome. Thank you to those using it and to those subscribing for the paid plans.

Lessons Learned

Just launch it. It doesn't matter how prepared you think you are or you want to be, things will break with increased usage. It doesn't have to, and cannot be perfect. People genuinely want to see you succeed and will help you in the hard moments.

Next Steps

Now the priority is on triaging the feedback and prioritising it in tasks for my next sprint. I will go over the most burning bugs first and slowly get back into features.

The new landing page is converting pretty well, so I will leave it as it is for the next couple of weeks and see how much traffic I get without any marketing push. Following that, I should have most bugs fixed and a couple of new features, I'll go out with the product again: Reddit, Facebook, etc...

I also need better visibility in the systems. Now I get notified only when there are errors. I want to get the good news sent to my phone too.

Finally, making sure that every single user is finding value in Bkmark. I will be checking in, emailing, in the Twitter DMs, etc...

I will be doing all of this in public on Twitter. Don't hesitate to follow if you want to know more 👉 https://twitter.com/BorisTane