Sprints
Agency-quality design in 4 weeks (at a fraction of the cost)
What's good indiehackers
What I learnt from my Product Hunt launch:
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Don't rush it: I was in a "just ship it" state of mind which may or may not have caused me to not be able to talk to hunters, build hype, email existing clients or network. While that mindset helped me get something out, it did not prove to be very beneficial to my service.
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It's easier when its free: Most PH launches are directories, curations or free design assets. A lot of upfront value at almost no cost. That's what gets thousands of upvotes. A strategic way to get traction could have been to launch a free resource related to Sprints and channel that audience into my product.
UPDATE: I tried it out on Twitter for fun and it worked. I took 2-3 hours to collect some good inspo SaaS websites and threw them into a Notion doc. Gave it out for free to anyone who retweeted and it ended up doing significantly better than anything Sprints related.
- I dont need ProductHunt: This is not denial I promise. While the cost for Sprints is much lower than my regular freelance pricing, it's still not easy to sell to a mass audience. It's much easier to do target outreach to clients who can afford Sprints and are able to compare it to agency pricing.
Apart from my ProductHunt launch, I was able to close 2 monthly retainers for Sprints (5k/sprint). I'm learning a lot about the way I package Sprints, and am seeing a market for single-page websites at a low cost ($1k-2k). Something like that is very approachable - even for ProductHunt standards - and super repeatable.
Progress:
- $10k/m MRR added
- ProductHunt Launch
- Side Project #1 (Website inspo gallery)
- Getting some progress with existing clients
Next Steps:
- HIRE!
- Side Project #2 (Single-page site)
- Finish my first round of Sprints (and showcase results)
- Improve SOPs + Onboarding flow
What’s good indiehackers
I decided I want to build sprints.design in public since its just a side project at the moment, and I’ll probably be more accountable this way + it’ll be fun to look back at this in a couple months.
Last week I had put together a quick landing page for my productized service just so people know I exist. I was still testing out price points (I still am) and wanted to get a little feedback on the business model as a whole. I wasn’t quite expecting to start generating revenue as of right now since I haven’t done any marketing yet. I planned to wait for my Product Hunt launch before taking any actual Sprints clients, but I do think a little more validation revenue doesn’t do any harm.
In terms of marketing, I did no marketing. Just a short indiehackers article introducing my startup and a tweet for my 10 followers (lol). Generated most of my traffic from these two sources (around 600 visitors) and was able to close 2 clients. I’ve been doing freelance for a while now, so it was pretty easy to close these projects. I guess my freelance experience translates pretty well here.
Here is the breakdown for the 2 booked clients:
- $7.5k for a 4 week Full Sprint (Design + Branding + Webflow)
- $5k for a 4 week Full Website Sprint (Design + Webflow) with a monthly retainer for 5k/month after the first month (Enterprise)
The prices are a little different than those on the current website because I’ve been adjusting my pricing and they happened to see the website when the prices were at $7.5k and $5k lol.
We’re still in the early stages at Sprints and I’m doing freelance work full-time. I’ll probably reinvest this initial capital and continue working towards launching on Product Hunt.
My todo list before Product Hunt launch:
- Animate the website (ffs)
- Automate onboarding (right now clients have to book a 15 minute call with me which is annoying for the both of us. Ideally i would want to set up payments directly or redirect to a Notion with a breakdown on a realistic roadmap)
- Finalize the pricing (or at least come up with something that works for now)
- Start posting on Dribbble and do a little explainer article/tweet on how Sprints works
I’m aiming for the PH launch for the 31 May :)
PS: Feel free to shit on my business model + reach out if we can help each other w/ anything
What's good Indiehackers
I've been thinking about a project on these lines for a while, but never really pulled the trigger. Took last week to finally ideate on a small landing page to launch a Version 0 for the world to see.
Put together Sprints.design in under a week....have a look at the website. I'll be launching on Product Hunt soon and will also post my thought process behind this model, and why I like it so much.
For now, I have one customer from last month ($7.5k for 4 weeks) which was a test project to validate the model and I just closed another Sprints deal today. I found these clients from internal referrals (I've been a freelancer for a while)
A little brief about me: I'm a freelance designer working with funded startups on marketing websites and brands. I also started a white-label studio for some web3/yc startups to take on bigger projects. Sprints is essentially my skills in a repeatable, productized offer.
I'm testing it out, and just wanted to make this a timestamp for me to look at later down the line.
Ask me any questions on my business model!
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Will follow this for more updates. This Concept would help my agency but will need to check what it can do
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This will be interesting to follow! This is always a challenge for those of us trying to launch and market products without any professional design skills. Will revisit, when it's time for my next launch.
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