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Takeaways on building a SaaS (bootstrap, 230k users, x2.5 YoY)
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I shared my experience, as well as what our team has learned while product development: Saas, bootstrap, no VC, 4 years, 230k users, x2.5 YoY, team 5→21, Productivity & Design tool (B2B + B2C2B).
I've put together 10 particularly important things to think about at the start:
1/ Freemium is a must
2/ Onboarding is your infinite point of growth
3/ Paid traffic at launch leads to the wrong place
4/ Design will be even more important in 2022
5/ Launch priority is retention, not revenue
5/ Talk to users every day
6/ Don’t be afraid to ask people to test your product
7/ Start social & communications asap, even before launch
8/ Support is very very very important. The fast one is a game-changer
9/ Do in-house-only product marketing
10/ Develop an A/B testing system from the beginning (“flag-function”)
All the details are in the extended Medium post: https://medium.com/flowmapp-plg/...
I hope these will be useful for makers!
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Tanya Sharma
Thanks for sharing these tips and learnings, Paul! Could you elaborate on point 3? What volume of paid traffic did you try out?
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@tanyasharma Thanks, hope these were helpful!
The idea of paid traffic limitation at the product launch is not in the volume (a lot or not), but in the idea that paid traffic is very fast and east way for getting visitors/users. But this means that you will spend all you time for ad campaigns, but not on other very very important sources (organic, wom, content, social, buildinginpublic, etc).
Buying traffic is a quick dopamine. No need to get hooked on it. Work directly with your users at the start, communicate your values, go into the community. This will give the product much more than hundreds of purchased visits (which will also leave you forever).
@mituhin - That makes so much sense! Love the analogy of bought traffic and dopamine. Often organic channels require so much nurturing and engagement from the founders directly. And in the beginning it's all about patience. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
Love these tips! Curious how you recommend finding balance within onboarding? How do you deal with providing an amazing onboarding experience for each customer (calls, emails, wikis etc) and the scale limitations of having a small team?
@hugh_dawkins Good question, and really, the whole point is to find balance, because onboarding is a never-ending thing.
We have developed (and continue to do so) onboarding organically, based on the current situation and opportunities. First the Help Center, then the training content, then we developed the online product tour, then we connected the email chain, etc.
Write down on a sheet all the onboarding tools you want to do, and immediately see what is feasible and what can be postponed.
Hi Paul! I'm late to the discussion (new on PH) but I wanted to thank you for sharing your journey. Your insights are extremly valuable and I appreciate them.
Also, I'm very happy to have discovered your product! As a junior UX designer and strategist, this tool is pure gold. :)
Thanks for the info. A few questions for you and the group:
What percent of freemium did you convert?
How many weeks did it take to convert them?
How did you get feedback on what users didn't like, assuming the ones that did not like it just left?
What was your most important acquisition channel/tactic?