

Ask HN: How long after launch did you get your first customer? - hajrice

How long after launching did you get your first customer?<p>What was your plan on acquiring the customers?<p>I'm going to be launching my SaaS soon and would love to hear your experiences ;)
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compumike
For our first product, we used eBay, starting an auction at $0.01/free
shipping and letting it go for a week to see where it ended up. We got lots of
bidders and a better price than we expected, and most importantly lots of
interest.

After that, we did several more eBay runs to test different copy / pricing,
and then with that information, launched our own web store (normal fixed-price
checkout, non-eBay) about 8 weeks after that first auction.

Now with 2nd product, we've already got an established reputation and traffic
in our niche, and developed the 2nd product specifically around the feedback
we were getting from customers.

This is for a consumer product, hybrid of physical parts + content. Not sure
that you can apply the eBay concept to a SaaS, but depending on what you're
doing, it may actually be possible (i.e. if people would be naturally
searching on eBay for software to fill that need, then put up a 12-month
subscription as an auction!).

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hajrice
Interesting. With all due respect, I think you should redesign your site
www.nerdkits.com

~~~
compumike
Very tactful -- I'd be very happy to hear specific thoughts on this from you
or the rest of the HN community! Send me an e-mail, or post it here.

~~~
hajrice
Here are two points that I've realized. I think that the ThinkGeek website is
pretty well-done, I mean they're in a relevant market as you guys, so you
should definitely look into their website at: <http://www.thinkgeek.com/>

The elements are really aligned in a logical fashion. It's pretty aggressive
on the eyes when you see huge yellow boxes with the prices on the right.

The stuff that's supposed to grab my attention, doesn't. "Invest in yourself:
learn by doing. Read on to learn how the NerdKits philosophy is implemented in
our kits, and why other electronics kits will leave you intellectually
unsatisfied." is DISTRACTED by the "Updated Thursday, December 17th, 2009:"
div.

~~~
pmorici
sparkfun.com is more in line with what they do, also a very good site.

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dpcan
Before I launched each app, I had my first customers lined up. I think it's a
mistake to spend time developing something first and then hope there are
customers somewhere.

To be more specific, while developing a big product I spent time each week
contacting people in my network until I found customers that were ready to pay
as soon as I went live. It worked well.

In one case, I found a company that allowed me to offer 4, 2-hour classes with
15 people per class for 1 day after launch just to introduce them to the app,
answer questions, and get everyone signed up.

I got about 40 paying customers that day, and it was the best launch ever for
my small business as all those people told more people and we were growing
from day 1.

~~~
zaidf
I second that. I have a policy to have customers lined up before launch. For
my current product, I have a contract signed by a client based on a very rough
beta. Now I get to develop the actual product knowing a customer's waiting.

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patio11
I had my first customer two weeks after launching. (He actually got a refund
-- but I learned two things to incorporate into version 1.02.)

My main plan when starting the business was acquiring customers through SEO,
with the possibility of eventually "cracking the AdWords code" and figuring
out how to acquire them profitably through there. That is pretty much still
the plan.

~~~
hajrice
Thanks Patrick, glad to see BingoCardCreator doing well.

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dagw
The last startup I was involved in had two customers lined up before launch.
We (well the two founders, I was technically the first employee) started by
pitching their product to their contacts in the relevant industry and didn't
actually launch until they had a couple of at least potential customers lined
up.

The product was quite niche and quite expensive so we didn't really need many
customers. So the plan was to grow largely by word of mouth and by using our
network of contacts to get future leads.

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Asa-Nisse
First day (hour?).

Adwords.

Consumer product if anyone wants to know.

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JangoSteve
For most of my products, I've had customers before launch. Then again, I guess
that depends on what you mean by "launch". I've never been big on showy
launches. I usually put something up right away, and then get to work refining
and finding more customers. Based on my last couple endeavers, I no longer
even begin work on any new products until I already have a customer for it.
(and by "work" I mean actual coding/design/development, because of course the
process of finding a customer for a new idea is still technically work of the
non-technical variety)

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jacquesm
1) same day

2) mailing list that I'd built up over years

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sgoraya
I had a demo built which I then presented to a small group of potential
clients (which included my partners contacts in Commercial Real Estate and Oil
field services - there were probably 15 people at the demo). After the demo I
had two clients and things got going from there.

From idea to demo: ~4 months

We build custom geospatial apps. for our clients.

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harisenbon
I had one customer within the first week or so of going live, but
unfortunately that's still my only paying customer to date.

I'm still struggling with the freemium business model and how to weight things
to get people to upgrade to the pricier versions.

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ashishk
-2 months. (yes thats a negative)

I built a dummy signup site before I started developing the real app. Launched
with a few hundred users.

That said, my app is consumer-facing, and I sign up customers with ads (it's a
dating site).

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timdorr
30 minutes. Customer #2 was at 60 minutes. But I had been hyping up the
specific launch date and time for a while. But it snowballed pretty quickly.
Haven't had a day without a sale since launch.

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koenbok
I think it was two or three months (<http://www.checkoutapp.com>).

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elblanco
Same day. Had customers lines up before launching.

