

How I Got the First Paying Customers for My Startup - jteusa
https://medium.com/@JonTuckerUSA/how-i-got-the-first-paying-customers-for-my-startup-in-10-days-e6054495a672

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pbreit
Enjoyed reading but have to say that 1) this is a ridiculously crowded market
and 2) there are some very good options that start at free (Olark, Zopim).
But, best of luck and nice job on breaking the revenue seal.

Edit: Many apologies, I misunderstood the service. $97/month for actually
handling the inquiries (up to 500/month) then sounds like a bargain.

Edit: I went back and studied the website more closely and while it does
describe the service you mention, it doesn't seem as clear as it could be. The
spotlight seems to be on the web chat window which is a very well-understood
mechanism and it's hard to get past that to understand that you are actually
wo/man-ning the chat sessions. I would really work on making that cleare
because at $100/month, it's a no-brainer for a lot of business types.

~~~
jteusa
I think you might have mis-understood what we do. My fault (you're not the
first).

In short, we're not a software company.

We manage the live chat for website, so they don't have to. We're a service
business.

~~~
dmak
I actually misunderstood this as well from reading the blog post. I thought it
was silly to be entering such a saturated market especially with companies
like Olark.

~~~
jteusa
Updated - let me know what you think.

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trcollinson
Fantastic write up! A couple of nice take aways from this:

1) Give away the product -- I love how you started up a GoToMeeting and got
the product running on a site right there. I know you mention that
conventional wisdom says to get the customer to validate by paying first, but
that seems like a brilliant move.

2) Don't give away the farm -- I would have stopped right there, I imagine.
"Hey, they loaded up my stuff on their site. I'll get 'payment' from them in
the form of a testimonial for the site. That's validation enough." Nope, you
turned them into a paying customer. Even better, and you can still get the
validation.

3) Don't over think everything -- Even though I have been successful in the
past, I often over think things. I have to figure out all of the models before
I can launch. The actual model rarely looks anything like what I thought up
because in reality, it takes running the business/product to really understand
the model.

I'll be watching for the future updates!

~~~
jteusa
Re #2

At first, they said (on a Friday) "we'll talk about it *next Monday" (which
was almost two weeks).

I casually said "ok that's fine. For now though, let's take it off the site
since we know it's working - that will give you guys some time to make the
decision without any pressure."

They made the decision by Sunday, paid Monday, and we were back online quickly
= )

It's ok to push, if you're providing value and it seems to be working

~~~
prawn
_" ok that's fine. For now though, let's take it off the site since we know
it's working - that will give you guys some time to make the decision without
any pressure."_

This tactic is likely to be useful to more than just those working in the
early days of a startup. Nice move!

------
jteusa
THANKS HACKER NEWS!!!

Tons of great feedback received, summarized below:

\- Explain the service better (i.e. we're not a chat software)

\- Answer the main question directly (i.e. how can you possibly know enough
detail of the business to answer visitor questions)

\- Answer a few other basic questions (chat system included, 24 / 7, etc.)

Here's what I've done so far:

\- Revised headline to (as of 12/24 am) "Website Chat Support, Done For You",
and also sub headline- will tweak it a bit

\- Added FAQ section to the page

\- Revised testimonials (with approval of course) to speak more to the main
question of "how can you know enough about my business?"

\- Included REAL EXAMPLES of chat lots to show how this is working for a
diverse group of clients

\- (coming soon, recommended by a HNer that I can't find the name of in my
logs - comment here for credit) I'll be testing the impact of changing entire
focus of home from "here's what we do, it works, here's why, blah blah blah"
to "Test Us Out on Your Site Right Now" using the preview feature that pops up
our chat on your website right away (i.e. you're connected directly to me via
chat). We got bombarded from HN traffic (yay!) but I think that could work
REALLY well if I streamline it a bit (and make the feature looks better of
course - hacked quickly).

In short, THANKS for all your feedback. I'm taking action as fast as I can
(got quite a few customers, so building some backend stuff as we speak) and
wanted to say thank you!

Happy holidays!

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logn
In short, sales. Marketing and publicity don't really provide benefit unless
you're offering a free service to end users. My own startup reached front page
of HN. Total sales resulting from that: about $0 (or negative dollars if you
count server costs). Every sale is because I directly approached clients I
thought needed my software.

~~~
jteusa
Well said.

We're not doing helpareporter.com anymore for now (might later). The right
publicity to the right market can work well, but this isn't focused enough for
us yet. There's bottom of funnel work we can do better for now.

We got signups from the HN traffic. I totally understand that HN traffic
doesn't covert in some cases - it's not been insane conversions for us, but
it's working. That wasn't my goal from the post (I've never published to
medium / haven't been active on HN), but cool surprise.

~~~
logn
To clarify my above comment, I was referring to just my own experience and
that focusing more on a traditional sales process worked better for me. And I
liked your blog a lot because it talked about the sales side, which we don't
hear enough about on HN sometimes (skews toward growth hacks and publicity).

~~~
jteusa
Totally understand.

Have a cool post coming soon re: great process for building a solid prospect
list (sounds bland, but there's some magic to it).

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raminassemi
Awesome post! Should be included in
[https://yourfirstcustomers.com/podcast/](https://yourfirstcustomers.com/podcast/)
and [http://www.unscalablestartup.com](http://www.unscalablestartup.com) :)

~~~
jteusa
Will check out the podcast and the book - Thanks for sharing!

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iliaznk
Great story, thanks for sharing! I just have one question - how do your
support team members get the information to handle the inquiries and how is
the information updated? Do you have a sort of training sessions with the
customers?

~~~
md2be
That seems like the huge and I mean huge oversight here.

~~~
jteusa
Great questions! Sorry for delay in responding (been hectic last 24 hours)

The value of what we do seems to be that we're available for the visitor, we
do our best to help (fast response, personable, etc.), etc. And if we don't
know the answer, we commit to getting them in touch with the right person on
your team (i.e. a lead for you, and a happy visitor).

We go through a detailed on boarding process to get the info we need. We study
the ins and outs of your site, and also ask questions as needed before
starting the chat service.

If we don't know the answer to a question, we are honest with the visitor
(visitors appreciate transparency rather than halfway answers - i.e. like a
cox.net, ATT, Verizon, or other similar website chat team). We then offer to
connect them with someone on your team via email to get an answer asap.

I know this sounds simplistic, but it's working well.

I'm going to put together a case study on the site, and possibly deeper blog
post about tackling this part of the problem, as it's a THE QUESTION so far.
If you want to check it out, drop your email on the site (there's a "follow
our progress" button on the blog posts).

Thanks for the feedback!

------
jmnicolas
I'm not sure I understand what's the added value of the service offered :
unless you have a deep understanding of your customers business, what are you
going to chat about on their website with their potential customers ?

~~~
jteusa
Good question.

The value of what we do seems to be that we're available for the visitor, we
do our best to help (fast response, personable, etc.), etc. And if we don't
know the answer, we commit to getting them in touch with the right person on
your team (i.e. a lead for you, and a happy visitor).

We do have a good onboarding process / workflow to make sure we know enough
about the customers business to help visitors (see other HN comments in the
thread), but the core value is that we're there, personable, and do our best
to help.

------
jakejake
congrats - I agree with your approach of getting a real business working
before worrying about solving every possible problem that will arise.

It took my startup 6 years of hustling to become profitable (we're around 50k
users now) and we did it basically just as you are doing it - creating a
product that people wanted, and then just adding features and solving problems
as they became known to us rather than trying to anticipate things that may
never wind up being important. It feels a bit like flying by the seat of your
pants unfortunately but I think it's always going to be that way.

~~~
jteusa
Thanks Jake.

Well said re: avoiding "trying to anticipate things that may never wind up
being important".

Today is the "flying by the seat of your pants" day ha. I underestimated just
trying out a post on medium. It's been great though.

------
aprilcrawford
This is great. Congratulations to just taking the leap and getting it done and
proven.

How are you thinking about scaling it? How to understand every websites issues
and provide a live Customer Service?

~~~
jteusa
Thanks April.

We've got a solid process for managing chats for a diverse group of websites.

\- We go through a detailed on boarding process to get the info we need. We
study the ins and outs of your site, and also ask questions as needed before
starting the chat service.

\- If we don't know the answer to a question, we are honest with the visitor
(visitors appreciate transparency rather than halfway answers). We then offer
to connect them with someone on your team via email to get an answer asap.

As simple as this sounds, the attention and transparency goes a long way based
on what we're seeing.

As far as scaling, we've got numbers around what it takes to manage a customer
at various website traffic levels (prices are based on website visitors), so
I've got an idea of how we'll scale for customers vs chat team.

~~~
MichaelGG
What about a way to escalate to my own team via chat? That way you field
general inquiries and make it look alive (chat that goes to "leave a message"
just sucks), but the moment someone is getting serious or has an in-depth
question, you can tx them to me.

I think this is s good idea. At my last company, we did live chat, and it was
_very_ popular. But the constant interruption to our few developers wasn't
feasible. And later, it was hard to get salesguys to make sure they were
really always available. Taking the front load off is excellent.

~~~
jteusa
Could definitely be done.

Right now, we don't escalate via live chat but instead connect them via email
quickly.

The bulk of our customers don't seem to be using live chat now, so doing an
escalation / transfer process via live chat could be a source of confusion and
friction. For now, we'll stick to email connections (working well), but it's
on my list.

Thanks Michael!

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peterjancelis
You always use the customer's chat system? Or do you include your own chat
system to streamline things in your backend?

~~~
jteusa
We use our own chat system. Very streamlined.

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stephengoodwin
I assume you're answering many (maybe all) of these chat requests personally
(at least to start). Do you operate 24/7?

~~~
jteusa
Yes, running myself for the moment - but on boarding a team member or two to
help in the next few days (been preparing for that part as part of running it
myself).

It's 730am PST to 9pm PST right now. Will be expanding shortly.

------
dchuk
Jon! Congrats dude!

~~~
jteusa
Thanks Darrin. Been fun so far.

~~~
andrewchambers
I'm sure the first few customers signing up is a really satisfying experience.

~~~
jteusa
Definitely! Getting to that first customer signup ASAP gives you a TON of
motivation right out of the gate.

