
From Idea to 10 Paying Customers in Less Than a Week - casjam
http://casjam.com/how-dan-norris-wp-curve-attracted-10-paying-customers-in-the-first/
======
onion2k
"Both of his products, while seemingly very different, actually serve much of
the same audience."

Exactly. That line is very important. In reality, he had an idea for a product
_and an existing market he had direct access to_. That "less than a week" bit
should really include the time it took to build the audience in the first
place, which is probably a lot more than a week. A somewhat disingenuous
claim.

~~~
duiker101
like 99% of all the headlines that proclaim to do/learn something in a
relatively short time period there is always something that is not counted.

 _Learn to write apps in 10 minutes! here the source code for an hello world,
to learn anything else it will only take the rest of your life._

~~~
casjam
It's true that the kernal of the idea may have originated earlier, and
developed over a longer period of time (which is kind of what Dan explained
during the interview). But the point I was getting at with this title was that
it was less than 1 week from the day Dan decided to pursue this idea and
actually start this company that he had 10 paying customers.

Most founders have an idea, decide it's something they would like to pursue,
then spend many weeks/months working to validate it, build MVP, attract
customers. You can't deny that WP Curve started and gained initial traction
exceptionally faster than most.

~~~
jasonlotito
> Most founders have an idea, decide it's something they would like to pursue,
> then spend many weeks/months working to validate it, build MVP, attract
> customers. You can't deny that WP Curve started and gained initial traction
> exceptionally faster than most.

I disagree. Most founders with an audience can generally get 10 paying
customers fairly quickly. And, frankly, I think 10 days isn't at all fast,
especially these days.

~~~
casjam
For people who are new to creating/launching a product, 10 customers in the
first week would be a huge win. So this is a very instructive conversation for
people in that camp (who I'd guess are the majority).

And the impressive part of this story is its not 10 customers within 1 week of
"launch" day. It's 10 customers within about a week of deciding on the "idea".
Idea --> MVP launch --> Paying customers... 1 week.

~~~
gaadd33
Is there anything more to the MVP than the website and I would guess a
ticketing/live chat system? I'll admit I didn't listen to the audio, was
hoping for a transcript.

~~~
thedannorris
Hey mate. Actually we didn't even have a ticketing system for the first month
or so. Even now we barely use it. It's mostly email. I had a live chat widget
(Olark) that I'd paid a year for from my last business.

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recursive
If there was a Cosmo-style magazine for startup founders, this headline would
be one of the promos on the cover.

~~~
crumblan
The rest of the magazine would be like, "patio11's dos and don'ts of summer
SEO", "can lisp trim your application's waistline?", and "infosec
schadenfreude! how to protect your app". viz., HN.

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marban
How can you turn a profit from unlimited 30mins job at 69$/m and even moderate
capacity utilization?

~~~
thedannorris
Hey there. We made a few assumption about how much people will use the
service, how much it costs us to get developers etc when we started. So far
those assumptions are proving to be very accurate.

Most people utilize us a few times a month for small jobs. Some less, some
more. The fee is per site so there's a natural limit to how many small issues
a website owner runs into. We are also careful to target the kind of people
that really need us and make great customers.

We don't have to worry about traditional agency expenses, offices, local
staff, project management, all of the hassles in signing up new clients for
project work (quoting, scoping, passwords etc). It's actually very efficient,
it's not uncommon for us to get through 6-10 jobs per day per developer.

We will have to closely look at this as we grow but so far so good.

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yogo
Good idea for a service. Recently I told someone that a business can be built
based solely on broken wordpress installations and this validates that it is
indeed a big problem out there. Naturally the only reason I thought this was
due to the emails I get related to this, and I never want to waste my time
getting involved with wordpress. Now I have a site to recommend.

~~~
casjam
Ya, one of the great aspects / hidden benefit of a service like this is how it
makes the lives of web developers easier because they have a reliable service
they can refer clients to when they don't want to handle those pesky small
maintenance tasks anymore.

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palidanx
Hey thanks for the article share. I know it is a little early, but in your 24
hour live chat support, have you had any abuse from your clients or have
things been more self regulating for them?

Secondly, when offering your paid product service, did you ever consider
omitting the 24 hour live chat support or is that a fundamental part of your
value proposition?

~~~
thedannorris
Hey there

So far clients have been great. We are making a deliberate effort to target a
certain kind of business which helps a lot. It may get to the point where we
decide before we allow someone to become a customer but we aren't there yet.
We have things in place if people abuse the service.

I didn't really consider omitting the 24 hour aspect for 3 reasons. 1 is I
really wanted to have something I could offer worldwide which means covering
pretty close to 24 hours anyway. 2 because I want customers to not have to
think. They just know we'll be there. People pay for the fact that they don't
need to worry, they don't need to think about whether we will respond. The
final reason is without it, it wouldn't be that much of a talking point and we
wouldn't have a big point of difference. This is helping us get early traction
I think.

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joshdance
Any blog post that purport to achieve anything substantial in less time that
usual has uncounted costs. "Learn this new language in 20 mins (after learning
to program other languages for years)"

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mozboz
omg u r teh next steven job?

What really is the point of this article? Can someone wake me up when we are
ready to let go of this passive income bullshit, worshipping the
'entrepreneur' as someone who can pull money out of their ass crack by finding
and statistically needling their way into some exploitative niche and start
focussing on things which have real social purpose and _meaning_ and _value_
to their creators and users?

~~~
bdunn
There are quite a few points of contention to be made with your comment:

First off, to group "24/7 on-call Wordpress support" with passive income is...
well, a very, _very_ long stretch.

 _on things which have real social purpose and meaning and value to their
creators or users_

"Someone I can turn to when my website blows up because of this new plugin I
added" most assuredly provides meaning and value to WP Curve's customers.
Also, I'm not sure who's exploiting who in that relationship.

But you're right, Dan should shut down WP Curve and the customers who are
paying him real money to solve real problems and focus on more meaningful
things.. like maybe building a social discovery app.

