Calquo
Build no-code forms with calculated fields
Hi everyone 👋
3 months after the beta launch we just got our first paying customer, even before activating payments on the website!
We are very happy, although it's not the kind of customer we expected.
Our product aims the $15-$99 monthly fee range, and our user target is someone who wants to add a form with calculated fields to their website.
We've known this customer for a couple of years because they have a SaaS of their own, and we do freelance work for them. Just out of the blue they reached out to build a "tool to allow their users to create forms builder with calculated fields", and immediately thought about offering Calquo to them, but there were a few points to work on. Their SaaS is medical-related, so they wanted to store their sensitive information. This meant they pretty much wanted to use the front end of Calquo, so we'd have to create some kind of API to integrate with their backend.
We had no idea on how to price that service, because our plans were a subscription based service, but they wanted some kind of white-label in-house Calquo.
The starting point for us, given that we already worked for them hourly, was to look at the hours we already spent on the product.
Since they just wanted the front-end part of it, we didn't add the time used for the back-end. It added up to around 160h –yep, a lot of time for an MVP 😅–.
We didn't think charging the full amount would be fair, so we halved it. Somehow we thought we did half of the development for them and half for us... but at the end of the day it sounded like a reasonable amount of hours we could use to estimate the right price.
With that starting point the numbers were clear: 80 hours * 60 $/hour = $4800 ≈ $5000
We also agreed to charge them 60 $/hour for any additional work, i.e. customisation and work needed for integrating with their backend.
Should we pivot and offer a white-label product to other companies?
Is it too risky to give them a copy of our source code? We agreed some license terms with them, like they couldn't resell our code, but nothing too formal nor reviewed by lawyers.
We don't know if it was a good decision TBH, but those $5000 feel like an incredible push to our side-project and some kind of validation of the product, even not the expected one.
What do you think? Would love to read your thoughts.
We've just launched Calquo beta and would love to receive your candid feedback!
▶ You can sign up for free at calquo.com
It's our first version and obviously needs to get polished, but you'll be able to create your calculator form and embed it in your website.
Let us know your opinion about both the Calquo app and the marketing site.
Thanks!
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1
Tip: have working calculator examples on the landing page - you have no live examples!
Requiring registration to even start is big friction.
Even animated gifs vs illustrated wireframes would be an improvement.-
1
Thanks a lot for your feedback Tim!
We are implementing some upgrades on the design of the builder and the calculators, as soon as they're ready we'll change our wireframes for real examples. Current step in the roadmap 😊
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After starting in the wrong direction without an MVP in mind, it was easy to drift away from development as the list of tasks didn't have an end.
Add a pandemic to the mix and there you have it. The project stayed almost untouched since March with our focus shifted to other places.
During all that time we learned a lot from the community here and other folks around twitter, and decided to cut the number of features and build a working MVP that we could sell.
Maybe MVP is not what defines best what we were aiming for, because having some pieces already coded it didn't make sense to throw them away. However, having that codebase there made us move slower than an actual MVP would have required.
At this point we had a bunch of non essential features already added to the product, but a few essential features missing. This is what we aimed to change from this point.
We started coding the initial solution.
Without any prior indie hacking experience we made one of the most common mistakes there are: not defining an MVP. This is so obvious in hindsight and once you've made the mistake, but it's quite tricky to think in terms of MVPs when you haven't seen a few examples.
We started this as a side project. One of us had a full time job, and the other two were working as freelance with a few clients.
A client for a freelance project wanted a website for their house renovation company.
One of the features they asked for was a tool so users could get an estimate for the renovation cost, just on the website, without having to call or send any email. We thought other companies would have the same problem.
After talking with them about the different options, decided that a SaaS product could be a great way of solving their problem, and at the same time create a product that we could sell to other companies.
3 Comments
Pipe that money into the business and make it grow.
Although cool (rooting for ya), this says nothing about the model you are targeting, so nothing changes for the business. Don't consider this as any kind of validation, unless you pivot to be a white label solution & now your customers are other businesses like this. I would say, its just good positioning at the right time. Keep figuring it out :)
Thanks for your feedback! You're right. That doesn't validate the business since is not our current user target.
We'll focus on getting our first paying customers and start earning MRR. If we can't make it to a decent MRR, at least we know we can try to pivot to a white label solution :)
At the risk of sounding negative, not even that. Its just 1 customer. 1 customer can pay me for sitting in a chair by chance, doesn't mean a bunch of others are going to do the same :)
Remember, you are looking for product-market fit.