First paying customer!
by Swaathi KakarlaExactly two weeks of launching HearApp on ProductHunt, a customer just purchased the paid plan! This comes just a few days after reaching to a 100 users.
I'm beyond excited. It isn't a huge amount, just $5. But it makes me so happy that someone found value and is ready to pay for it.
I'm not a sales/marketing person - I love to code! This is definitely a huge achievement for me. I'll write a detailed blog of how I did this over the weekend.
Until then, 🍻!
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Congratulations Swaathi. This gets the ball rolling, literally!
A couple of tiny nitpicks I feel like pointing out:
- At first (few milliseconds), I thought the app was to help manage sales demo like meetings which usually happen online. Maybe using the word office meetings might help make it a little clearer.
- Having a BETA tag on your product might scare users off (watch Kevin Hale's recent lecture on Landing Pages) Is it a BETA in the sense that the features you've listed might have bugs? Or is it more in the sense that you're not where you want to be in terms of the number of features? If it is the latter, I think you can safely just drop the beta and make your roadmap open to your users.
- The reaction emojis in the video embed can be distracting, especially for non desktop users. Also since a lot of them are from a single user.
Please note that these are just suggestions, and I may very well be incorrect about them.
Love the overall aesthetics. 100 users is fantastic, congrats again!
P.S. - I'm happy to see a fellow Indie Hacker working on a project here in India. We should try and plan a Indie Hackers meet up in India!
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Hey Raunaq,
Thanks for taking the time out to write about this. Really appreciate it.
At first (few milliseconds), I thought the app was to help manage sales demo like meetings which usually happen online. Maybe using the word office meetings might help make it a little clearer.
Here is the new pitch I'm trying: HearApp is an effortless minutes tool for managing everything around meetings; before, during, and after!
Does this make more sense? Any suggestions?
Having a BETA tag on your product might scare users off (watch Kevin Hale's recent lecture on Landing Pages) Is it a BETA in the sense that the features you've listed might have bugs? Or is it more in the sense that you're not where you want to be in terms of the number of features? If it is the latter, I think you can safely just drop the beta and make your roadmap open to your users.
Well, I'm actually waiting to be featured on BetaList, and that needs me to tack on a "beta" tag, so!
The reaction emojis in the video embed can be distracting, especially for non desktop users. Also since a lot of them are from a single user.
Yeah I understand, I can't help this much as they are from different users. Fortunately, Loom clears it every 1-2 days. :)
Again, thanks for sharing your thoughts. I would love for you to use HearApp. You can just sign up and create a free account. Happy to send across coupons if you start using it day to day. :)
Also, yes! I would love a India IH meetup.
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Anytime!
- Adding the word minutes does make the description easier to understand. Not sure if calling it a "minutes tool" dilutes its proposition though (it does a bit, in my head).
- Ahh, alright. IMHO the Beta tag might just do more damage than a feature at Beta List will help recover from. Beta List's audience is just hackers like us looking for inspiration rather than potential users looking for new toolset, but I may be wrong.
I will definitely plan a meet up very soon in India, maybe in Bangalore.
Lastly, do you plan to post this on HN?
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That is awesome!
I really like the product, it seems to solve a very painful problem in a sleek, simple and understandable way.
Big congratulations on the first paying customer. I remember our first paying customer too, and it such a joyous moment! To many more! :)
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Thanks so much! Do sign up for it and let me know of any feedback you have. Happy to send across a coupon if you find it useful for your day to day. :)
And yes, first customer is an awesome feeling! :)
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I shared the link with my team. Let's see if it can help us stay organized.
And quite honestly (and sorry for the unsolicited advice, but it comes from our own experience), I think you should definitely make this much more expensive. We had a $5/month plan, and it really lowered people's expectations for what value the product can provide. We removed it quickly and charged more.
If this were priced at $50, it would signal "this will provide a lot of value". At $5, it signals "this is a tiny tool, and it will have little impact". I know this is early pricing, but you can use that to your advantage. Create urgency by setting a time horizon on the $5, and then make it quite expensive.
I just think about who has a dire need for this tool. Managers with large teams that are a headache to keep in sync. So the more people are involved, the more benefit your product has. And that should be included in the compensation. I bet you have plans for this, so I'll just leave it at that. If not, I'll gladly add my thoughts here too.
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Thank you Arvid. This is fantastic advice.
Tbh I have a bad problem of underpricing products I build! I am thinking to add a "Actually $8 but slashed price of $5 for a short while".
I've not thought about teams yet. I just hate enterprise/organization sales. It's such a lengthy process. But a customer I spoke with today enquired about it too, so maybe we should think about this down the line!
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My team gave me interesting feedback. For one, the price was suspiciously low, for another, it was "a great deal".
The tendency of the comments was that your product is solving SUCH a big problem, you can easily charge 10 times as much.
With our own product, we had to learn this too. What really helped was the math. Let's say, a manager/meeting organizer has to send out a memo or summary of a 1-hour meeting to 10 attendees. It takes them 30 minutes to write down all the things from their notes, and then 3 minutes per meeting attendee to email them out.
That is one hour of a manager's time. Let's say that is worth $50. Your tool does all of this in two minutes, maybe even just a few seconds. You just saved this company $50 worth of time.
Now imagine they have this meeting every week. That's $200 saved a month from using your tool. For just those 4 meetings alone. Many managers have 3-6 meetings a day.
Are you sure you want to sell it for $5/month? I think $50 is definitely worth a try. You can always discount that if it doesn't work. But you are leaving real money on the table. The product is great, it does one thing really well. People pay for that.
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Wow. First off, thanks for putting time into this. Your feedback is extremely valuable. I never thought about pricing that way - it makes so much sense now!
I'm going to rework on the pricing and the pitch. Will definitely steal from what you just said - so useful!
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ohhh congratulations!!!
I wish I could get one after releasing Chooseyourplant!
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Thank you!
What's ChooseYourPlant about? Sounds interesting!
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Finally, I released the landing page here: https://www.chooseyourplant.com/
Could you please give me some feedback 🙏? It would mean so much to me https://www.indiehackers.com/post/would-love-to-hear-your-honest-feedback-d1efb7778e
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It's a houseplant marketplace. People will be able to share content, images, look for plants, see how to take care of a plant, buy it through external ecommerces, add plants to favorites, etc.
I'm collecting all the data manually so, I'll try as many plants as possible
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Congratulation Swaathi. I love to read how you did it.
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Love hearing about this! Congratulations!
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Congrats Swaathi! The first customer is always the most exciting.
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🕺🏻Congrats!
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Congratulations! Important milestone. :) Up, up, and away!
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Congrats!
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Looks so sleek! Awesome job, keep the good work up!
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Looks like a cool product, the little preview video was helpful too :) It's not clear to me if this uses google calendar or is standalone? Congrats on the first paying customer too 🎉
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Hey there! Thank you! Glad it got the point across.
Well we are working on the Google Calendar integration. Just waiting for Google to approve it, so we can release it out for everyone! :)
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Congrats! That's amazing !!!
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Congratulations. Excited for you!
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Thank you! :)
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This is awesome! Congratulations!
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Congrats!
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Wow. I did not expect this sort of response! Thanks everyone for the wishes and the feedback. I'm definitely going to take all this learning. :)
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