Drawpoint

I've applied to AppSumo, applications should take around 2-3 weeks according to AppSumo, so while I'm waiting I'll be adding more features that have been requested by users.

Today I pushed the "label" feature to allow users to add text on top of interactive images. This was done after speaking to one of my customers who works in the home inspection business.

I'm currently exploring which niche to take Drawpoint down - conversations like these with customers are invaluable for figuring out how Drawpoint can provide the most value.

I now have 3 of my 4 planned steps implemented (see previous post on IH) to learn more about how Drawpoint is used and move towards product market fit. The next step is to implement Mixpanel so when the users come from AppSumo, and elsewhere, I can see how they are using Drawpoint.

One month after my first paying subscriber, I had the first customer for the yearly plan of Drawpoint converting from the free trial today. $96/year!

They are the first power user of Drawpoint and I see them logging in every day to use it. I'm starting to see some good traction for Drawpoint now, my next steps are to find product market fit and find some customers who NEED to use Drawpoint regularly, not just a nice to have.

Images seem to be a lot more popular than maps, I need to explore further how people really use Drawpoint and what the most valuable features are for them. Here's my plan:

1. Talk to customers: email all new customers, learn about their business and how they will use Drawpoint
2. Mixpanel: fine-grained analytics on how people use Drawpoint
3. LogRocket: watch how users build/what they are building
4. AppSumo: quickly increase no. of users

The first paying customer of Drawpoint converted from the trial to an active plan today!

After a few months of people starting trials and churning for various reasons, this customer found enough value in Drawpoint to stay signed on.

I'm learning about how they're using Drawpoint and what we can do to help them.

The next steps are to find a niche to target that NEEDS Drawpoint, not just wants it.

Drawpoint started life as Mapply. It was a platform to build interactive maps for websites. Doing more research I found that an opportunity also exists for interactive images. Even better, most of the features I'd built for maps could be easily ported over for interactive images.

Now Drawpoint lets you build interactive maps and images for websites so I thought a rebrand was necessary.

Today I finished the work to remove the credit card requirement from the 14 day free trial on Mapply.

The reasoning behind this is that Mapply is a very interactive product that users would have to play around with and experience in order to get the best value from it. Requiring a CC adds a barrier that will prevent a lot of users from experiencing this value.

Other products provide a more immediate and obvious value to the end user and so they would have less qualms with handing over their payment info.

I am constantly working to reduce sign-up friction of Mapply, I want users to be able to create an account and start building a map in seconds.

The MVP of Mapply is finished. There are still many more features I want to build but the basic value proposition is there.

I completed this in around 1 month and have already built what I consider to be a superior product to other established players on the market now.

A large reason for this is the technology stack I used. Next.js, Firebase and Vercel. I'm usually not one to advocate for new technologies to be used -- my normal advice is stick to what you know. However, the increase in productivity I've had with this stack is incredible. It has helped me ship features at a monumental speed and I don't have to worry about an deployment or DevOps details.

Everything "just works". Exactly what I want in a tech stack. I can worry about the important things like shipping features and not about the things I don't like and don't care about.

(Side note: Vercel and Firebase both have generous free plans)

After some initial research I have found this opportunity is bigger than I first thought.

The current solutions for interactive map building are lacking and I have found a specific niche that I can serve better than any current marker players.

Work starts on the Mapply MVP.