Gator

Nine months after launch, Gator has cracked $1k in MRR. Here's a peek at my Stripe Billing dashboard:

Overall I'm really pleased - it was never a certainty that this night-and-weekends SaaS business would get this far. Looking back on the past nine months, here are a few decisions I'm happy about and some I'd do differently:

✅ Keeping the product tight and reliable - I've aspired for this to be a tool that "just works", and I've gotten feedback from my superusers that they appreciate that. I've gotta believe that's a big part of why some of them became paying customers.
✅ Paying for the right services - Running on Heroku isn't the cheapest option (approx. $150 a month) but I haven't regretted it for an instant. Same with building the marketing site on Webflow - I could've taken the time to beef up my frontend skills, but that wasn't the right path. Even using Stripe Atlas to set up my LLC felt worth it.
✅ Pricing higher than competitors and offering the annual plan - I have about 29 paid Slack workspaces now, but three of those are from the same person who bought the annual plan three times over in a single month. That $1,500 in revenue felt like a pleasant surprise.
✅ Building the dashboard - I used Google Data Studio to build a dashboard showing my non-revenue growth stats for Gator. It's set to email me a copy every morning, which is a great way to start the day.

❌ Picking a generic brand name - When I launched, Gator was called "Later". I got enough Twitter buzz on launch day to receive a trademark cease and desist letter from another company that goes by "Later." Rebranding took a lot of time and, truthfully, was a demoralizing speed bump to hit two months after launch
❌ Still haven't found a scalable marketing tactic - About 2-5 new Slack workspaces install Gator every day, a number that could be much higher. I did a few months of Google Ads, but that didn't move the needle and just wasted $400 per month.
❌ No Enterprise Plan customers - A few months ago I finished implementing a few smaller features that I bundled in an "Enterprise Plan." But I haven't had any takers yet (though one customer is serious about licensing Gator to run on-prem)

Looking forward, I want to focus on marketing Gator and accelerating adoption. My hunch is a content marketing strategy focused on remote work topics could be promising. And though I don't have much free time to write myself, I've got enough revenue to pay a ghostwriter to churn out some blog posts for me.

I'd love folks' advice on what marketing tactics might be fruitful here. Also happy to answer any questions about the journey so far. This community has been super helpful for me and I'd love to give back.

Last Wednesday Later was featured in the "New and noteworthy" section of the Slack App Directory. I took the morning off from my day job to try and capitalize on that placement and "launch" Later.

I knew that whether I got a pop on launch day or not, this is just the beginning of building the marketing machine for this app. But I was pleasantly surprised!

On Tuesday night Later was installed in 15 Slack teams, mostly from emails to friends and a little effort on Twitter. My goal for Wednesday was to reach 50 Slack teams - the thinking there being that if 2% of them converted at the end of their trial, I'd have one paying customer 😄

By that measure, launch day was great.

I ended the day with Later installed in over 100 Slack teams. It's now up to 150, with 250 individual users between them.

I was also shocked to get my first paying customer that day too, signing up for my $50 per month "Startup" plan. That was a real surprise because there's no restriction during the free trial and no serious nudge to upgrade until you're close to the end of the trial.

Reflecting a little bit on the day, here's how I'd sum it up:

What went well

• Launching on Twitter with a tweet from my personal account: My personal following overlaps pretty well to the types of folks who might find this interesting. That's what got the whole ball rolling.
• Endorsements from my early adopters and beta testers: I've been working on Later since April. There are a handful of people who have been happily using it weekly, and they showed up on Twitter to help spread the word. I'm extremely grateful.
• I learned a ton about how people perceive this product: I'm still not exactly sure how I should position this tool (is it "the essential Slack app for remote teams" or just "intelligent scheduled send for Slack"?) but I've got a lot more data now than I did a week ago. There's a lot I can go on now for refining the next phase of my marketing.

What I'll do differently next time

• Wasting time on some long shots: I posted on ProductHunt and Hacker News, even knowing it was a long shot, and got basically zero upvotes in each. I should have just skipped them and accepted that I wasn't ready for sites like that yet.
• Pricing wasn't easy to find on my website: My hypothesis with Later is that it needs a lengthy, three-month free trial to prove its value to enough people in a Slack team. Because I don't require a credit card up front and because the first person to install Later in a Slack team might not be the person who sees the most value in it three months down the line, I didn't make pricing information easy to find on my site. That was a mistake: a few people explicitly asked about it, and implied they considered it reckless to trial Later without knowing how much they might have to pay eventually. I fixed that halfway through the day. Still, a good lesson learned.
• A few small bugs: Overall the service has stood up really well this week, in part because I'm not skimping on Heroku resources. But launch day exposed a few bugs: Later broke when people would send messages to guest Slack users (I've never used this feature) or when testing Later in a DM with Slackbot (should have expected this one). More through testing might have helped me catch some of these.

Overall, though, I couldn't be happier with this week. After almost a decade of working as a professional software developer, I've never had a paying customer for a side project — and that feels pretty good. This business' greatest (and quite likely 😅) threat is that Slack realizes this is a missing feature and builds it in a sprint. But at least I'll always be able to say I got this far.

One last fun story: a few emails came in to the help@slashlater.com address throughout the day. One was someone asking about how I keep messages secure (short answer: encrypt them as rest, erase them as soon as they're delivered). After exchanging a few emails he just said "Want to call me?" and gave his phone number. I gave him a call and we talked for 15 minutes. They're a remote startup in the healthcare space and they were excited about using Later but they're wary of Slack apps because of all the personal health information in their conversations. After talking him through how I store and erase messages, he said he was satisfied and decided to turn on Later for everyone at the company to use.

Didn't expect to take a sales call on day 1 😂

Later got listed today in the Slack App Directory's "New and noteworthy" apps.

I'm capitalizing on that momentum to essentially make today "launch day" for Later, starting with some launch content on Twitter (https://twitter.com/slashlater).

I'd love some ideas on other ways I can get the word out about this app. I suspect Slack's App Directory will never be a huge acquisition channel (I think people mostly go there to find apps for services they already use outside of Slack). My hunch right now is that focusing my marketing on remote teams is my best bet, even though Later's useful to non-remote teams too.

After a couple weeks of revisions, Later has passed Slack's review process and is now live in the Slack App Directory:

https://slack.com/apps/ANPGHD2F8-later

And so Later is officially open for business. But my hunch is the Slack App Directory won't drive much of an audience to Later unless I get included in their "popular" or "new and noteworthy" lists. So it's time to get busy laying the marketing plan...