10 Paying Customers!
by Pat WallsAfter launching about a month ago, we have officially reached 10 paying customers!
At $29/month, this puts us at $290 MRR.
This is also a first for me - I've never had 10 paying customers for a SaaS before. The last SaaS I built struggled to get users and never reached 10 customers.
Feels good :)
I also need to work on spreading the word better with Pigeon. Growth has been slow and I've been pretty quiet. I'm working on forcing myself to talk about it more, hence this IH milestone!
I'll also be working a lot on content marketing that's the marketing "plan" I have for the long term.
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Congrats! How did you get your first 10 customers?
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Most of my customers came from before I launched.
Before committing to building and launching the product I built up a list of about 100 people who were interested in the product. Then I did a bunch of phone calls / screen shares with potential customers to understand what they needed.
Through these phone calls (and also lots of emails and messages), I got a few to commit to trying out the product once launched. This got me about 7 signed up once launched, and after the launch I got 3 more that trickled in since, which got me to 10.
Since launching I've spent most of my time taking feedback from my customers and improving the product. It was very much an MVP and it's come a long way since the launch (although it still has a long way to go).
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Awesome! Congratulations!
How were you able to build the initial list of people? Where did you go to find them?
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To get most of them, I did a webinar/podcast interview with Chris Lee, who ran RankXL.com - I just talked about my new product idea and it seemed to resonate with people.
The rest was just me emailing, messaging, and tweeting/talking about the product and showing some early features.
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This is an important question and one of the hardest ones to find an answer for. It's a question I have right now as I start to develop an online training course.)
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A beautiful way to do it. 👍
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I also wonder this because you said you've been pretty quiet
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I third this!
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@patwalls Your welcome to steal this idea - http://veed.io/pigeon
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Congrats Pat. 10 customers is just a start!
How long did it take you from the first line of code to launch day (time wise)?
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- Had rumblings of the product idea since late last year
- Started toying around with Chrome extensions in March 2019
- First commit April 13th, 2019
- Launched alpha May 9th, 2019
So about two months to get to launch, although I reallllly worked hard in the 2nd month to get it done and really pushed myself.
I actually documented much of the launch on my YouTube channel if you're interested at all.
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Well done! A great milestone to reach. Sounds like you've gone about creating the product an excellent way too! 👍🚀
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congrats Pat!
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thanks brooooo
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Great start Pat!
What's the main thing you plan on doing to get to $1,000 MRR?
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That's a good question, my general plan is:
- Keep working closely with my customers developing features and improve the product - and optimize for word of mouth.
- Content marketing
- Develop a free plan and attract customers through Chrome Web Store
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So great! The struggle is real, I feel you, man.
Congratulations and Good luck for more! -
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Congrats!
Growth has been slow and I've been pretty quiet. I'm working on forcing myself to talk about it more, hence this IH milestone!
Why not join the ongoing #30daysofgrowth challenge here on IH?-
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Yes! I actually saw that, and it inspired me to do it. I think it's such a good idea.
I've been documenting my 31 day challenge here:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rDYZ3n8ORRCf9pF4CQnrcfbboScGeSABg5eVNaeJQuU/edit?usp=sharing
I will start sharing in the thread as well.
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Hey @patwalls do you have some more resources you followed/documented while doing business development? I am currently working on a MVP for my startup project and need to start working on some gameplan for the lunch of the product.
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Nothing really, just lots of Googling and talking to people.
Check out Start Small, Stay Small book by @robwalling - I read it while building the MVP and found it really helpful and inspiring.
Also check out the IH Office Hours on YouTube - there is some gold in there.
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Pat, that’s amazing! Congratulations! 🎉
I’ll be watching your journey. Thank you for sharing!
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I'm still just working on my MVP, but I deploy it to firebase regularly. It has a basic landing page.
I've started just livestreaming me working on my project on Twitch and I get random traffic from that which is pretty awesome.
In addition to content marketing, you should also just talk about your work all over the internet. Twitter, Facebook, Youtube. Wherever you hang out.
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Yes, you're right - I just need to talk about it more. I think my fear of failure is making me want to keep it quiet.
This month I'm doing the 31 days promotion challenge. It's only been 3 days so far but it's been awesome. Hopefully this gets me out of my comfort zone.
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That's awesome! Anything like that that creates pressure to go a little outside of your comfort zone is probably good.
If you're interested, you should also check out https://pioneer.app. It's like a tournament style thing for people working on projects. You post updates and vote on others and you get points and such. I've been doing it for two weeks and it's very motivating.
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Well that's nice to hear.
What makes you say that?
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Thanks so much!
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