

€1,400 b-strapped prod that’s disrupting the market, 250 customers before launch - connorp
http://blog.bullethq.com/irish-business-builds-a-product-for-e1400-thats-disrupting-the-market-with-250-customers-signed-up-before-launch/

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garethsprice
How did you get 250 users interested and pre-subscribed without spending a ton
on marketing? (Really interested as I've built a few small apps that never go
anywhere as I'm not much of a marketing guy).

Bootstrapping a product for such a low cost and having a high* number of users
interested before launch is inspiring - good luck with the launch!

* - I know someone will come and say 250 isn't "high" compared to Facebook or something, but 250 paying customers is a nice income stream and quite impressive for a low-cost, bootstrapped product built as a side project from your consulting gigs.

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connorp
Well Gareth, we didn't have any money to spend on marketing, and we're just
learning to do it ourselves. Not to mention we're in a saturated market full
of big guns. The biggest thing to learn about marketing your products I think
is nobody really cares about the product they care about what it does for them
or how it helps them. When you build something you're in love with it, but
sadly you're the only one to think so. So we try and find out what people hate
and twist it. From having people come to our current site we know the tag
'Automated Accounts', line doesn't mean anything to them. So we're changing it
to Hello Bullet, Goodbye Accountant. If you need an hand with your app's I'm
happy to help out a fellow startup. Follow me on @peterconnor and we can DM
emails if that helps.

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evilswan
Hard to imagine how they arrived at the total cost of €1,400 - what about the
hours of work that went into the web app and iPhone app, and all the visual
design? Are they calculating their hourly rate as insignificant?

Product looks good, but this €1,400 figure is meaningless.

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connorp
Hey, the €1,400 amount is made up of every out going we had in the company.
That included the logo design, to company formation which is about 300 euro in
Ireland. I'm not a designer but I learned how to design so we could build it,
we worked hard in the evenings and weekends to get the product built. So what
we're really trying to say to people is you can do it. Sure it doesn't include
our time, but running it so tight is a reflection of how significant we value
our time. Everything we did, piece of copy we wrote had a time cost, that made
us focus on what people wanted. So to me the €1,400 means everything. Hope
that makes sense :)

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femto
What's the position on liability if the program generates erroneous taxation
information and a (user) company gets hit with tax penalties?

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connorp
Hey, the way Revenue work is your tax liability lies with the individual. So
we've actually no way of underwriting that that goes for an Accountant to
product. But like all good open companies we know if that was to happen our
business would be dead. So ultimately that's the best way to underwrite your
product we feel.

Bullet got built in the first place cause my co-founder John was paying an
Accountant quite a bit of money and he failed to file his returns, resulting
in an audit. Bullet Automates all the tax returns so to miss it you'd need to
actively ignore it. Hope that answers your question.

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stevoski
disrupt: verb

* drastically alter or destroy the structure of (something)

I think this word is being overused. 250 customers for a new accounting
product is not disrupting.

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connorp
Hey, your right 250 users isn't going to knock the ball out of the ball park.
But remember what the product is, it's an accounting product and that puts
people into a coma with bodrum. So getting 250 on to the application with no
marketing in less then a month I think sends a message that we've built
something that people want, it's disruptive cause the 3000 other accounting
products have all just copied Sage. When I was designing the UI - I hadn't
looked at one competitor.

~~~
iambot
There are already people doing this In Edinburgh where I'm based, with far
more impressive numbers than 250 users pre-launch, FreeAgent
(<http://www.freeagent.com>) If you think these guys are going well you should
check them out. They actually DO have the figures to back up being called
"disruptive". I don't mean to be negative with regards Bullet, just that when
I read the post I thought wow only 250 and they're "disruptive". The guys at
FreeAgent are doing a spectacular job and the funding they received and users
they're pulling only serve to confirm it.

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connorp
Hey yep we know FreeAgent they're doing a great job and it's great to see
they've got funding. They've been around a good number of years now.

Just to point out though - we fully automate all your tax return and provide
payroll. With Bullet you don't need an accountant, with FreeAgent you do
(unless of course you're comfortable doing your own returns). But the more
Bullets and FreeAgents in the world the better. Accounting products are crap
at the moment and provide guys like you with an endless pain in the ass.

~~~
iambot
In that case I apologise, I didn't realise that Bullet's offering had
something over FreeAgent. My understanding was that they were achieving the
same end. Good luck all the same.

~~~
connorp
Hay man, No need. They've built a great product. Thanks.

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mise
Fair play to ye, I look forward to trying it out.

> This allows its customers to remove their accountants and reduce their
> accounting fees, saving them €1,500.

My accounting fees are more around €300, so it depends on context how much you
save.

€12/month is around €150/year, which also needs to be taken into account.

One might also want an accountant to check your return and tax credits and
that type of stuff, even if using your app. I would be surprised if it removes
accounting fees in many cases.

Great work, though, keep it up.

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connorp
Thanks. The fee is taken for limited companies. What our thinking is. Don't
spend 2k or 1,500 on an accountant to do your book keeping and fill out forms
for you. If you're going to spend that kind of money spend it on a tax advisor
etc. But there are a lot of business out there that spend 2k on their
accountant and see them once a year, and 2k could help a lot of comps at the
moment. Thanks again for checking us out.

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muxxa
Bug: site allows me to add a 'Who paid you?' before any invoices are created.
Then when I create an invoice, it loses the 'Who paid you' info I entered.

What I'd really like is to have all my expense invoices set up to be sent to
myaccount123@bullethq.com, and have your software parse out the details (VAT
etc.) and arrange it nicely by date and company. It's currently easier for me
to log into, e.g. my web hosting provider, pull up a list of invoices for the
last year and copy/paste them into a spreadsheet. Your approach would have me
manually enter info from dozens upon dozens of invoices one at a time into
your webapp (using the 'Incoming Bill' form).

<https://getitkeepit.com/> are an Irish company that parse incoming bills from
an (admittedly small) number of utility companies, maybe you could look at
something similar?

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johnnyleitrim
Hi muxxa,

The site will let you get to the "Who paid you" money in page, but it won't
record any of the details unless you select which invoices the payment is for
- that's why the details appear to be missing when you go back to that screen
after having created the invoices.

Stay tuned for our iPhone app (and email service) which will be able to suck
in your invoices and they are entered automatically for you, so you won't have
to do any of the tedious typing.

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fiskah
Writing a headline such as "Irish business builds a product for €1,400 that’s
disrupting the market, with 250 customers signed up before launch." about
yourself just makes me leave the site immediately.

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connorp
That's a shame, we didn't want to hire any PR company. We just want to be
ourselves. So sorry if it p*ssed you off. We're just learning as we go, again
we thought it was an interesting story to share with people who love making
ideas real but don't have the cash.

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dclaysmith
Link from your blog post goes to <https://www.bullethhq.com> (extra h)!

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connorp
Thanks for the heads up - working now :)

<https://www.bullethq.com/>

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corkill
Awesome, great problem to tackle.

Nice demo process!

You might want to test different copy for "Get started in 5 seconds, no credit
card, no signup" and the button at top of page, when I read it had to do a
double take if your telling me I need a CC to signup or if it's not required.

Just saw on pricing page it says "No credit card or signup required." but
didn't read that first time around. Or maybe it was a split tested page!

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connorp
Thanks Man. My co-founder will be pumped the demo took a long time to build.

fiskah just said the same about the copy - I think we'll change it. It's mean
to be the opp, I hate having to sign up to try stuff out. Doh!

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mpeg
a little feedback in case the founders are reading this:

when I saw the "Try now" button with the line "no credit card - no signup" I
first understood it to mean exactly the opposite than they intend it to :)

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connorp
Thanks - We we're wondering about that. You know what it took us a month to
build the demo tech - so you could save it as a live session. Any
suggestions???

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mpeg
As an engineer, I'm probably not the best person to ask about product copy !
But maybe even changing to a comma like further down the site? When I see - it
makes me think there is a correlation between what is being said :)

Still, it might just be my nitpicking; the product looks great, I have
"suffered" Sage myself and this looks like a simpler option for small
businesses

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connorp
Well John my co-founder is the engineer and he came up with the new copy. We
got rid of the 'No Signup', the no credit card is a strong message, once your
onto the next step you'll see we don't ask for a signup. Thanks for pointing
it out.

