Lowdown
An email digest for everyone in your Slack
Yesterday we got our second paying customer for Lowdown.
This particular success I put down to building a great customer relationship. They loved the concept and tried it out, then jumped on a call to give feedback. From there we managed to address some of the most impactful issues quickly, which really helped them get behind what we're doing.
They even became an active advocate sharing how we're building something that's getting more and more useful every day. Hopefully, we can keep developing great relationships as we grow. I can imagine it will be tricky to do on a personal level — but it's something of real value especially at this early stage.
It's been four months since we shut down the first version of Lowdown and two months since we launched Lowdown 2.0 into beta.
Closing the first version acted as a great way to drive people towards our early access list. As a result, we had ~50 accounts created in our beta and learnt a lot.
Last week we quietly launched our full product (https://getlowdown.com). Within a couple of hours, a new user had signed up and paid for it! That's despite the fact there's a 30-day free trial. It felt great to know someone instantly saw the value the new Lowdown offers, but the real test will be what happens when our beta users get to the end of their trials :)
Looking forward to getting it out there now!
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Hey @shylands this is an awesome tool for Slack community owners. I have seen this first hand when I get emails from NCF.
What was the reason for shutting down the first time?
Also, it certainly feels great to have customers paying even before the trail period. It makes me believe we are doing something right and that people belive in it.
My very first supporter for We Care Social https://wecaresocial.co/ paid rightaway! And another supporter just sent an email "Send me your Venmo account" haha.
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Thanks Nakkeeran! Great to hear you encountered something similar :)
We shut the first version because, in the end, we felt like it wasn't getting enough traction. Ultimately it probably wasn't solving a painful enough problem.
Also, cool that you've already been receiving Lowdown's in NCF. Ever any feedback let me now!
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The first money always feel great and then the next second we know we still got a mountain to climb haha.
Sure, I'm back active on NCF slack so will keep my eyes open for the email too.
Any chance you could replicate this for Reddit too? I notice there are more sub reddits than active Slack communities these days.
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Cheers! I think https://mailbrew.com already has that one well covered. Worth checking out for sure
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Ah yes I remember coming across Mailbrew many months back. Thanks for the link.
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We’ve made the hard decision to close the current version of Lowdown.
Initially, we tried to solve an engagement problem for Slack communities—and we did. Unfortunately, we found it very difficult to turn communities into paying customers.
We then switched focus to teams and tried too hard to make what we built work for them. It just didn’t solve a painful enough problem.
So we’re switching gears and are razor-focused on the single most painful problem we hear over and over about Slack—information overload.
The new version of Lowdown will be more personal. Enabling individuals to silence Slack and focus without missing out on what matters.
A private beta period will start soon and we're on the lookout for companies to take part in our beta (signups open here https://getlowdown.com).
Thanks indiehackers for your help to date!
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super bummer!! i just recently saw that you were catering more towards communities that individual teams. i was going to subscribe once I built out my community. do your timeframe for testing was long enough?
i think that might be something interesting to pursue (unless slack launches native digests).
wishing you the best with the new focus!
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Hi @optemization, we had a lot of communities sign up to our current product and found it a struggle to convert them. I think it was a mix of the fact many aren't businesses so not looking to pay much and they often want more than just Slack highlights in their newsletters. Generally, it's just not the main use case of Slack and it felt like building a business around them would be difficult.
Our new product will still be usable of course by communities and I can imagine will be extremely useful to them too (I know of several I don't look at frequently but I'd love to get updates from specific channels).
Do you think the new product sounds like something you'd use in your community? Thanks!
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Best of luck with the new focus Steven!
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Thanks :)
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Hey Steven,
I had a look at Lowdown previously and "useful but not valuable" was exactly my takeaway. I just couldn't justify the cost.
I hope the new direction works better. Always tough to pivot, doing the same with my own plugin at the moment.
Best of luck!
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Hey Lesley, appreciate you sharing your perspective. Best of luck with your own project!
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Hi, Steven,
I've created something similar for Slack; you can check it out here: https://www.indiehackers.com/product/our-time-to-think
If you want to chat, let me know.
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Cool! Yeah for sure let's sync up. My emails on my profile :)
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"Useful but not valuable" is a tough call to make. I'm glad you made it before it was too late.
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Hey Rob, yeah it's been one of our struggles realising that it just wasn't solving that painful a problem to be of real value to enough people. I'd certainly spend more time gaining confidence in the pain of a problem upfront in future.
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Best of luck!
How would your feature transform into a product?-
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Cheers Alex. We think there's a lot of scope for a tool that helps you get the most of Slack from a productivity sense. So if this initial test works out I'd imagine we'd continue to build out the product in that direction.
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Best of wishes! 🙏
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Cheers!
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It's always a tough decision, but it's great that you guys already have a community to start with! All the best :)
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Thanks! Yeah it's been helpful to get a few early beta users lined up that's for sure :)
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God speed Steven! It's part of the drill!
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The road to paying customers can be long!
But I don't understand what you meant by 'closing'... from what it seemed, you a pivoting to a new market with the current product, no?
So, the new version it will be focused on individuals but you'll be targeting companies?
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Hey, good question should have been clearer. We're shutting down the current version as the pivot is quite different in how it functions. Closing it frees us up to focus on the new app and create an experience tailored to its needs rather than trying to support both.
The new version empowers individuals in Slack to pay less attention without missing out on information, but yes we really have to target companies as they must install the app. We need them to be bought into using Slack more productively. It's a hard sale for sure, something we're aware of but have a few ideas on how to leverage team members interest in the product to make it desirable. Ultimately we want to prove that it makes teams more productive first and use that to help sell the offering.
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Yeah, basically you'll have to make users convince their companies!
I have the same issue. Currently trying freemium models, but since the product is not quite there yet, I double I'll be seeing any results in the short term.
Do tell us how your sales strategy pans out, ok :D
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I definitely will share how it goes. Would be great to hear how you get on with this approach too. It's certainly not straightforward but it's possible :)
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My strategy is to go bottom up and attract team members first. That's why the pricing includes a small free tier (betting on product-led marketing here) with a small marginal costs in order for it not to be a barrier of entry.
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Cool. I've been considering this too but trying not to think into it too much until we get a few companies to try the product. Hopefully, we can get a feel for the right approach from that experience.
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Goodluck for the next chapter of Lowdown.
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Thank you!
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We're gearing up to launch our new version of Lowdown designed for Slack teams. Since the problem we're solving isn't something that many are necessarily trying to solve we've decided to try a bit of problem education in the run-up to launch.
Check out our approach and let me know what you think. Would love some feedback! 🙌
We’ve come to a point in our journey where we have a good idea of the problem we want to solve for Slack teams — Key information is missed amongst the noise of workplace chat.
While Lowdown has always been about surfacing and bringing awareness to information, we’d previously focused on Slack communities. Positioning ourselves as a tool that helps them keep their audience in the loop and coming back to engage. Our new focus requires a different approach.
In this update, I discuss how this affects our product positioning with lots of learnings and tips on how to position your own product.
Accruing in-depth knowledge of the problem area you’re working in is vital for a startup to stand a chance to succeed. If you don’t understand every aspect of the space you’re working in, you are handicapping yourself — reducing your ability to spot potential opportunities or effectively solve the problem.
In my latest blog article, I discuss how I'm using the expertise I've developed to help learnings for my startup, and how you could do the same.
https://getlowdown.com/update-9-the-value-of-problem-area-expertise/
Yikes! How the world has changed in the past few weeks. The world has gone into lockdown as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, many businesses face huge strain and many will close. For us, it’s a bit different. We’re lucky to be working on an online business in the communication space.
Due to self-isolation, remote work is going through a bit of a boom period. More and more people are starting to use Slack which ultimately could benefit us. It’s hard to know how to feel about this as it’s come at such a cost to others. We’d like to help but as a startup with little revenue it’s hard.
We decided to try by making Lowdown available for free to any Slack community helping with the coronavirus. While it’s not much we hope that we can play a small part in helping people get the information they need.
We’ve been on a journey to learn how Lowdown can help teams using Slack. During this we’ve realised there are a wealth of issues with realtime chat we could help with which has made it difficult for us to decide where to place our focus. Today I’d like to talk about what we’ve been doing to help us make this choice.
Read our article to learn about hiring a UX agency to conduct research and creating landing pages + social ads to test value propositions.
https://getlowdown.com/update-8-working-out-which-problem-to-focus-on/
I’ve created a Slack guide for companies to help them minimise distraction and increase productivity. I hope it can be of use to companies around the world and help them to irradicate bad habits and set their team up to deliver their business goals without confusion or distraction.
https://getlowdown.com/update-7-a-guide-to-help-teams-work-better-in-slack/
For the last two weeks, I’ve been learning more about the problems companies have with Slack communication. These are often wide-ranging and vary based on what the company does, its size and a variety of other factors. But throughout my calls and meetings, a few themes have still developed:
- It’s challenging to keep up with all of the messages shared in Slack
- It’s hard to surface important content amongst the noise of chat
- Too much info goes through direct messages instead of public channels
- Real-time chat leads to too many workflow interruptions
- Team members often disengage and don’t track updates when there’s lots of activity
- To-do’s shared in chat messages are often forgotten about
Read more on habits and our product developments:
3 Comments
Nice one! I've only the one customer and I know that 2nd one is a big milestone. How long between 1st and 2nd?
Congrats Steven! How did they hear about? How long til the 3rd paying customer? ;)
Cheers Luke! Well our beta users are now in a trial period which ends on the 20th, so I'm hoping at a few more in the next week :D