ConfigCat
Feature flag and configuration management service.
Sometimes it is still hard to believe that we are building a company out of thin air, totally bootstrapped that turns out to be successful. ConfigCat is awesome and we love it!
We have:
- Served 35 Billion (yes, 35x10^9) config.json downloads throughout the year. That is avg. 1100 downloads every second.
- Built 8 data centers across the globe.
- Partnered with other cool players in the neighboring fields.
- Landed a number of Fortune 500 companies as customers.
State of the art CDN pays off when customers start to put some heavy load on the infrastructure. Looking back from here having those hard debates about the architecture turns into a market advantage. Having the right people with the expertise investing their time is one of the most valuable things a startup can have.
It took us a while to get our stuff together and launch on ProductHunt. We finally did it today (http://bit.ly/2Sq6FpQ)!
For this occasion, we decided not to give a personal discount for product hunters )or other personal bribery), but to plant a tree 🌳 for each upvote we receive.
In 20 hours or so, we'll be able to share what we have learned and whether this approach works. While we try not to be clickbaity in the meanwhile, we really appreciate it if you make us plant a tree by upvoting ConfigCat on PH.
We have announced Ruby SDK for ConfigCat. With that we are supporting all the popular technologies with 10 SDKs. Customers can connect their Frontends, Backends and Mobile Applications to ConfigCat feature flags. https://configcat.com/blog/2019/10/29/ruby/
We have partnered with GitHub Education and made a massive campaign together launching the 2019 Student Pack. By giving out ConfigCat Professional plan (49€/month) for free for students.
We're even featured on the official GitHub blog and social media channels. https://github.blog/2019-08-20-the-github-student-developer-pack-is-back/
It's a huge leap in traffic from 1.5K to 5K /month and lots of new registrations. And what I'm really proud of is that the infrastructure has proven itself and handled it like a charm.
Received lots of positive feedback from actual users and now I believe more strongly that it worth putting all the energy and money it this project.
I still can't believe this is actually happening. And we're on the way learning how to build a company from the ground up. Super exciting times!
One take away from here is you shouldn't over-complicate stuff just start building and you will learn everything on the way. It's okay if you are not shooting for the next big thing there is place on the market for you if you put your heart and soul into it.
Awesome! I finally feels like worth putting in all the work and effort. Now I need to figure out the sales channels that best work for me.
I have learned that there is place for a more simple feature flag service out there. As opposed to the big players with expensive and complicated pricing models.
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Congrats
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Congrats! Interested to hear how long as well? And how close you came to giving up?
Are you planning on doing anything special for that customer? I've seen Etsy store owners (I know this is different) send personalized notes thanking their first customers.
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Thanks! We never actually thought about giving up. We know what we're doing and we have started to do it in time. We have funds (self)enough, know our way (wow, this sounds amazing :D I've never seen this written myself, but it's true), so there is no reason for to think about giving up!
Did you think about giving up?
RE
Are you planning on doing anything special for that customer?: sure, we do something that shouldn't be special in an ideal world, but it's special today: we help them and talk&listen to them a LOT.This is how we have learned that their needs are very different from free users' needs. This whole experience made us create our Decision Maker and Buyer peronas, which are different from the User persona we ware working with before. Since that time things sped up with customer acquisition...
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How long did it take you? How did you acquire this customer?
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It took us about 2 years to build the right product, find the market and learn enough from our free users to land the first paying customer.
Now we could do the same in a few months. But being a company founded by 6 engineers, it took us a while before we figured out things like sales. We keep learning along the way, so I'm sure in a few months we'll be in a position where we could replicate the whole 2 years story not in a few months, but in a few weeks.
Our first customer found us through google search. They were looking for exactly the same service we offer, and they just bought it.
We started to have a conversation with them and learned what their needs are. This is how we have learned that paying customers have different needs than free users!
This has sped up the whole the process and today we acquire paying customers routinely (though not frequently enough :D - this is what we are learning right now).
Is this an answer to your question?
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What a feeling that must be! Getting that FIRST sale is my goal, but for that I need a product on the market right? Ha ha, I better get back to work...
CONGRATULATIONS on your first sale! -
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Who was your first customer? :)
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Thanks guys! You’re awesome! ❤️
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Congrats!! Hopefully you can apply what you learned getting this one to take you to the next 100!
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Good catch!
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That's awesome! I had my first user a couple of days ago, looking forward to have my first paying customer as well :)
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Congratulations!! Good thing to keep track of your wins and celebrate the small wins.
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8 Comments
Very cool product and took some time to learn about it. I also love the fact that you guys already support Deno, looks like you are a hard working organisation.
What do you mean by:
"What if you could release to 1%, 5% or 10% percent of your user base before big bang to see how they react or how the infrastructure is going to hold on?"
Can I use ConfigCat to release certain website changes just in some parts of the world and see if users like it? Will you take care of the "analytics" part when it comes to understanding the user behaviour??
Thanks we truly worked a lot on the service. Still not sure about Deno though. Do you think it’s going to big? Hard to see clearly from the hype. 😂
Yes, it means exactly what you described. You can target any groups of your users with different features or just say I want to experiment only on the 5% of all my users. On the analytics side: you can connect your favourite analytics tool to ConfigCat only provides integrations to other services. Here is how: https://configcat.com/blog/2020/12/10/custom-segmentation
I tried using Deno to build a REST API of Maturity Level 5 (based on Damien Fremont [ https://damienfremont.com/2017/11/23/rest-api-maturity-levels-from-0-to-5/ ]) and it was pretty easy to do. The imported links save you so much space rather than doing "npm install" or "yarn install" etc but it will take a while for users to make the move.
Followed on Twitter, you certainly have what I call "A BIG SHARK PRODUCT".
P.S: the "cat chat" on the bottom left is so cool but not so obvious. I'm either blind or noticed it the 3rd time I visited your website. I usually expect this type of interaction at the bottom right :D
Big shark product 😂 sounds awesome! I’d like to use this expression haha.
Oh that bloody chat icon. I’m moving it arount the website every few months. Can’t find the right place. It’s always on the way of some other controls. 😕
Are you using Deno in production? How is it?
Cool product. As an app developer this looks nice alternative to me.
You built your own DC or rented it?
Thanks 🤩! The service runs on barefoot VPSes we rent from Linode and DigitalOcean. So partly own, partly rental. Seems like a good compromise for now. Why do you ask? Are you facing an architectural decision?
looooooooove this! I have the same goal for Embarque.io for 2021! Growth is never linear, when you discover new ways to distribute.
Totally and I believe content marketing is key to achieve visibility and growth.