August update: We added AI, tripled signups to our video editor SaaS :-)

This is my first IndieHacker update - I was inspired by fellow French entrepreneur Aurélien Amacker who documented his journey here. Aurélien is a good friend and I credit his transparency for a lot of my motivation to start a SaaS myself.

So here's my August update (based on the "investor update" I sent out to my prospect list) :

🔥 TL;DR

• Recurring revenue is up 3x from June, 5x from May, getting close to $100k ARR (Annual Recurring Revenue)
• Our first free challenge was a success and we’ll do a new one in September
• The « Magic button » (our AI which edits your videos for you) is now the single feature that defines what Nuro does. See a demo here, because we now have a homepage! https://nuro.video/en

⭐️ Elevator Pitch (how we talk about Nuro)

For experts and online course creators, Nuro.video is the AI video-editing software to create and publish video content in one click.
Just provide your unedited raw footage. Nuro will instantly transcribe, analyse and edit a ready-to-publish video with titles, transitions and animations!

Note: This has changed tremendously in the last 3 months (see the « Learnings » section)

🏆 Growth: our key metrics

Up until the month of June, I was so deeply engrossed in shipping the AI feature that I didn’t focus much on signing up new paid users. (We had given free access to many of our coaching clients, but I didn’t do a lot of promotion to sell subscriptions).

Two friends lit the fire under me for weeks to go out and get people to pay up!

So in July we started with a free 5-Day Challenge to my list which led into the offer for the software. I should say « offers », since we pivoted the offer 3 times until we found one that worked.

Obviously this is still early days, but I’m super excited by the shape of this curve 🙂
You can see the screenshots here:
https://nuro.video/en/stakeholder-updates/2022-08-added-ai-tripled-signups/

• Paid accounts went from 19 to 61 following our free Challenge
• Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) went from less than EUR 3,000 to over EUR 7,000
• After we switched to a software-only offer, we went from $30k in Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR), to almost $100,000 in ARR now! (it's our next milestone)

Almost all users are on the annual plan. I think we can afford to keep the focus on the annual subscription and roll out a monthly plan a little bit later. It’s better for cashflow and allows us to not worry about churn too soon.

❓How you can help

Now that our webinars are getting good conversions (10%) and users are starting to love the software, I want to progressively roll out a series of webinars with partners – starting in French for now.

• Any pointers on how to run this kind of rolling campaign are much appreciated (I’d like to do 2+ webinars per week with partners).
• Also if you know of potential promotional partners (preferably folks with an audience of infopreneurs / online course creators) – in French for now ; I’d love some intros since there are many new players in the market I might not know. Our software is the perfect complement to programs on how to build/sell a video course!
• I want to improve on the English demo for the tool (See it on nuro.video/en/ ). All feedback is appreciated. I’d love to make it a bit more dramatic!

💪 Top 3 Learnings since last update

#1. The « Magic Button »: How Nuro became an Artificial Intelligence video editor

I've been a member of Jeff Walker‘s Platinum mastermind group since its inception in 2010. (Jeff's the author of the New York Times bestseller "Launch").
In March, I shared with them a link to a video I had edited from a guest presentation that happened at this mastermind’s last meeting.
Several folks watched the video and happily used its content with their teams, but I had a call with Brazilian entrepreneur Victor Damàsio and he was less than enthusiastic:

« You said it took you 5 hours to take notes from the presentation,
and then 45 minutes to edit the video itself…
and I understand that 45 minutes is way shorter 
than it takes to edit this kind of videos normally.
But – dude – 45 minutes is a freaking long time, 
let alone 5 hours of taking notes! »

And he added,

« What I want is a BUTTON. One button.
I upload my video, I click the button,
I’m done! »

This comment led us to spend the next three months developing the AI behind the « Magic Button » feature, and it kicks ass!

This might be the single most valuable feature we have and it’s now the thing that clinches the sale.

I no longer do a content webinar.

All I do is a demo : people give me a topic in the chat, I improvise a 1-minute talk on the topic, and I click the Magic Button. The video gets edited in 15 seconds, I show the result, attendees gasp, and then buy.

Thank you Victor 😄

#2 Going international… in time

Our software is already available in both English and French, and I was initially gung-ho on launching in English and Brazilian Portuguese in 2022.

However I got the chance to talk 1-on-1 with Marnix Van der Ploeg (one of the first people at Booking.com, and investor in Hotmart.com, a unicorn in the infoproduct space that we recently partnered with to run a fantastic event in June).

Marnix strongly recommended a more gradual strategy. He was kind enough to outline a ramp-up plan that I will execute diligently. This will give us time to get all our ducks in a row in the French market before selling abroad.

#3. Community is great

I’ve been hosting a live session with our users every 2 weeks, which lines up with each new release.

It’s been a huge source of clarity to reprioritize our roadmap. And I enjoy the community-building element of having both the super-enthusiastic folks, in the Zoom room with the doubtful ones who encountered bugs / are waiting for XYZ feature.

I’ve also signed up to Indie Worldwide's "100 users in 100 days" challenge.
It was a pretty epic month!