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24 Comments

First paying customer!

Today we have our first paying site paying for authentication from trykno.com.

In the last 5 months we have gone from an idea, prototype, working alpha product, first customer and now first paying customer.

Does anyone have any advice for finding early adopters?

  1. 3

    Awesome & well done on getting from idea to paid customer in less than 6months

  2. 3

    Congrats!! I know it's still in early alpha, but it took me some effort to understand what this does (ie. does it only work if I forget my password?). I only stayed longer on your landing page and did the mental effort to get it because of IH.

  3. 3

    Hey, congrats! Interesting product as well!!! 🎉🎉🎉

  4. 3

    @FreddyBruce seems like your target audience are developers, so find where those people hang out, and let them know about your solution. It may be niche forums, potentially reddit etc.

    1. 5

      I think you can go into a number of communities to find adopters.

      I would suggest scouting the diverse web developer communities on the web. Find the IRC chats, their Discord servers, Slack communities, Forums. Become a member of those communities, be helpful, and drop some information about your product after a while. This will take a few weeks to work, but it's very helpful to talk to developers directly.

      Just posting a link on some pages won't break through the noise.

      1. 4

        Yes, very good point @arvidkahl - I didn't emphasize that, you need to actually be useful there and may post your solution as an answer to a particular problem (and even then, in more educational way), not just "hey look what I've built here".

        1. 1

          Thanks for the advice

  5. 2

    I've been listening to a few podcasts by the author of the book 'Traction' lately, and that sounds like a really methodical way to go about finding the best channel for customer acquisition.
    https://www.amazon.com/Traction-Get-Grip-Your-Business-ebook/dp/B007QWLLV2

    1. 1

      Cheers will take a look

  6. 2

    Congrats!

    Does anyone have any advice for finding early adopters?

    I think IH is one place where many of your target audience is :)

    Questions: how long is the generated pass-token valid? What about producing a JWT instead, so that I can validate the user without contacting your server?

    1. 1

      Currently the pass token is valid for 15 minutes.
      JWT are normally used to send signed data. We don't want the persona_id to be visible to anyone but the service.
      Also calls to the server give us more information that can be used for nice error messages if the service is misconfigured.

      All of that said, it will probably be possible to do both in the near future. Sending a JWT that you can decrypt on your service or use to make a call to our servers.

      Is there a reason you prefer a JWT?

      1. 1

        I'm using JWT's now with Auth0, and I like that I have one little package of data that has all the info I need, and I can validate that it's real (and still valid) without having to connect to another server.

        My knowledge of security gets a little flaky here, but as I understand, connecting to another server can also be a point of attack. Correct me if I'm wrong :)

        What you say is also true, anyone who gets access to the JWT (cached in the browser) can see the user's name and email. Using an opaque key also has advantages :)

        Another somewhat related question. Allowing the user to authenticate via a social account (Google, Github etc.) makes things easy for the user. Is this something that you're considering, or perhaps you have a reason to avoid this entirely?

        Anyway, will definitely keep an eye on your service!

        1. 2

          Every interaction has some potential for an attack service, however the token JWT or otherwise passes through the browser and this is a completely entrusted environment.

          JWT's are nice. We, however, work on persona_id' (unique per service and client) rather than user_id's (unique per client only). This is a way we protect the end users privacy and in the future might be able to offer better features for data privacy. We don't want this id to go via the browser.

          I am working on improving the about pages FAQ sections on our site so hopefully will soon have some clearer explanations of these features

  7. 1

    Congrats! As a developer I think an absolute must should be a forever free plan. Why? Because I will try out a product on my side projects before recommending it at my work. If I like something (after trying it out) it isn't usually me that pays it's the agency I work for. Based on that you have to make me love your product enough to put my neck on the line selling it to my boss. How can I make that commitment if I can't try it out?

    1. 1

      At this point we are using pricing as a filter to find our most interested customers. Perhaps once we are bringing on customers faster it would be something to bear in mind.

  8. 1

    Congratulations! I like your product concept. Authentication is time-consuming to code.

    By the way, maybe you want to update the meta tags of your page so that a sensible description shows up in Google. This is what I saw in the SERP when I googled your product:

    https://i.postimg.cc/tTLrCqJx/image.png

    1. 1

      Thanks. Hadn't noticed the meta tags, will be sure that we update them

  9. 1

    Woohoo!
    Congratulations! 🙌

  10. 1

    consumer apps. Scrape & cold email.

    1. 1

      Thanks, that's a good idea.

  11. 1

    SUPER CLEVER! Definitely a market for this. In terms of finding more customers, IH is the place to be.

    1. 1

      Thanks, I'm sure we'll keep posting to IH. Just the challenge of finding the rest of our customers remaining

  12. 1

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