Jessle

I have received 6 new trial signups. This is a major step forward for Jessle.

However, I have also noticed shortcomings with my ability to support them (no in app support), and to monitor how they get on.

My next steps are to improve the tooling to track these signups and engage with them.

Copy from: https://www.indiehackers.com/post/my-mvp-is-built-now-for-the-hard-part-008aee53e7

I have just finished building my MVP, and as I am moving on to my next phase of trying to get some users, it felt a good time to write about my plans here and keep it updated as I go. That way, people can see the successes (probably failures), that I have along the way. I can also hear some feedback from others in a similar position!

A little background

• I am 28 years old
• I have a 2-week old child
• I work for a software company as Head of Product which takes up * around 10 hours per day

I feel that I am at a point where I hate working for others. I feel that I have better ideas (I probably do not) and that they are taking things in a different direction to where I would take them. As it's not my company, I can do nothing about this.

I always wanted to create my own company, but wasn't just going to create any old piece of software. It had to be something I was passionate about.

This is where Jessle was created.

Jessle is a SaaS product that helps an organisation monitor the marketing efforts of its competitors. In SaaS you will often have multiple competitors for your products, learning about new functionality, or a shift in direction of your competitors' is important to know about quickly.

In my current job, I would spend a couple of hours a week learning things about our competition by looking at the website, social media, etc. Sometimes, I would learn about them from potential customers that chose our competitor instead of us.

Our company had a couple of competitors that were far bigger than us, and some up and coming in the sector.

This gave me the idea as a programmer of creating a bit of software that would inform me every time my competitors' website would change, each time they would post on social media, each time they would have a new AdSpend etc. This is powered by a simple timeline that can easily be digested in chronological order, whenever you load the website. Maybe even whilst having breakfast?

After realising this software was helping me, I figured I could attempt to sell this to help others get the same benefits I had been getting.

My number 1 rule with everything I am building is that end-users should not have to spend more than a few minutes each week to learn about everything their competitors' are doing.

Anyway... enough about the background. Now for the "fun" stuff.

I am a software developer at heart, I am not a sales guy, I am not even a marketer. So I am now stepping into brand new territory. I need to try to get users onto my SaaS...

This is where any advice is most welcome.

I have set out to start by making it my mission to only find 10 paying customers. That's all I care about for a while. I can try to work closely with these 10 customers and improve the product to ensure it meets there needs, not just mine.

My product has 3 plans

• $30
• $50 (recommended)
• $90

So how do I find 10 paying customers with limited time available?

For me to answer this question, I have done a bit of research.

I am leaning towards two key channels.

I can post replies on sites such as Quora, where questions get asked that are relevant to competitor monitoring or marketing. The fact people are asking questions about this, means they're already slightly interested in this topic.

Find SaaS companies that I believe this product would be perfect for (companies that have the main product and a few competitors that do a similar thing). Once I find these, find the information about the relevant department/personnel on LinkedIn and reach out to them via cold email.

I feel there are other measures I could take, but with limited time (and money), I could only focus on two. Likewise, I feel both of these do not require a fantastic grasp of marketing/content writing, that is not high on my skillset.

I will keep you all updated on how these two methods go. If they are a success or a failure (probably the latter), and if I make any money, i'll let you know about that too!

I figure that if I post about this in public, others in a similar position to me could either learn something, tell me how wrong I am, or at least look at if I received any success in my endeavours.

All the best, and let's hope this works!

If anyone reading this is in a similar position, I'd love to hear more about how you are trying to approach this. I am a 1 man band, trying to be a programmer, marketer, sales guy, and if I get any customers, support personnel. It's not easy, and I am a little petrified, to be honest. However, I want to make this work!

Thanks
Lee, Founder of Jessle (https://jessle.com/).