
How I’ve Attracted the First 500 Paid Users for My SaaS - spiffytech
https://blog.inkdrop.info/how-ive-attracted-the-first-500-paid-users-for-my-saas-that-costs-5-mo-7a5b94b8e820
======
noname120
This story strikes me as (at least partly) survivorship bias. It's great that
they were able to acquire 600 paid customers without advertizing their product
on blogs, and ignoring their competitors. I don't have hard numbers to back me
up, but I doubt that this is a successful strategy in general.

This story is a data point that proves that it's _possible_ , not that this
gives you a _better_ (or even good) chance at succeeding. Hell, I would wager
that greater exposure would have led to much higher sales.

~~~
bszupnick
Do you think there's a philosophical difference that the author did here? They
specifically write "Don’t hurry. It’s not a startup rushing to an exit.".

The lack of pressure and the slow cultivation was something that struck me in
this article, as opposed to the stereotypical rush of the startup lifecycle.

~~~
MrEfficiency
The whole 'Lean Startup' trend was such a feel good gimmick.

Sure if you arent sure about your product and havent done any market tests, a
minimum viable product is fine.

However, I had/have a service that was already popular and my circle of
friends were obsessed with MVP and Lean Startup. They pressured me and when I
began mainstream marketing the response was that my service was low quality.

Those people were wrong, but minimal HTML/css bugs was all it took for people
to question me.

~~~
canadapups
I run an online business with my wife. Her background is in marketing. When I
explained the MVP idea to her, she thought it was the dumbest idea ever. In
her eyes spending expensive marketing dollars to bring people to see anything
but a full featured product is a disaster. You only have 1 shot and 5 seconds
of their attention so you better make sure they like what they see.

Any pivoting in the business strategy means you don't know your business
space. Business opportunities and the required value-add features should be
painfully obvious if you have experience and know the industry/niche.

~~~
mindcrime
_In her eyes spending expensive marketing dollars to bring people to see
anything but a full featured product is a disaster._

The lean startup approach doesn't advocate spending a lot of marketing dollars
showing people your MVP. It advocates being, well, lean, until you have a good
reason to believe that you have "product/market fit". It's _then_ that you
crank up the marketing/promotion stuff.

After all, wouldn't it be a disaster to spend a lot of expensive marketing
dollars showing people a product that they don't want or need?

~~~
canadapups
There are a couple definitions of "marketing". Most people's definition of
"marketing" is "advertising". However, in business school, "marketing" is
knowing product fit even before building anything. Knowing the product niche,
pricing, market size, competitive advantage... all in the business plan ahead
of time. You would not spend any money on advertising (or engineering) without
knowing all this. Lean startup is backward in this sense.

EDIT: i guess my point is, engineering isn't cheap either. Shouldn't be OK
spending that money ahead of product fit either.

~~~
mindcrime
_Knowing the product niche, pricing, market size, competitive advantage... all
in the business plan ahead of time._

The whole point of the lean startup approach is to posit that the "business
school approach" is wrong, exactly because you _don 't_ know all this stuff
ahead of time, and that "business plans" are an outdated idea.

And if what you're doing is a truly novel product, then you almost certainly
don't. If you're using the "fast follower" strategy to be the _n_ th company
doing a product in a certain space, then sure.

OTOH, even Steve Blank says that there are certain areas where you don't need
to do Customer Discovery / Customer Development... like, if you're creating a
cure for cancer, it's pretty much all engineering. If you build it (and it
works) they _will_ come. But I think that kind of scenario is the exception,
not the rule.

------
Kaveren
> "You don’t have to care about competitors. It’s a waste of time. Because you
> know where to go. You can ignore even if they stole features your product
> has. Because you are the person who most understands your product, how it
> works and why it works."

I enjoyed this article, but this bit I'm not entirely convinced by. The saying
does go that competition leads to innovation. Instagram Stories were a great
business move, but if they hadn't paid attention to Snapchat, would they have
come up with it?

I understand that this article was written about a niche product, but I think
it still applies.

On the other hand, I really like the bit about the communication with your
customer-base. In game development particular, but also in all sorts of
software I use, I see so many developers who don't interact with customers or
improve their product based on feedback.

Customer feedback for users that aren't enterprise has to be the ultimate form
of support. If I can provide the same service as a competitor to you, but I'll
listen to your feedback, respond to it, and potentially act on it, I think I
have a big advantage.

~~~
jakobegger
Regarding customer feedback: As soon as you reach a certain scale, it gets
really hard.

For my app, I have hundreds of feature requests, and for 95% of them all I can
say is, that's a nice idea, but I don't have time to do it.

For the remaining 5% it'll take me a year or longer to implement them.

For customers this looks like I'm unresponsive.

When I started out, I often added features in a few days, and customers were
thrilled, but that low-hanging fruit is mostly gone now.

~~~
alexchamberlain
I don't think customers need to see every feature they request actioned, or
even actioned quickly. As long as you're shipping new features and communicate
both your roadmap and with individual feature requests, I think people
understand.

I do, however, think you need to balance big featured with quick wins that
make a subset of your clients significantly more happy.

~~~
jakobegger
I'm really sceptical about sharing roadmaps. In the beginning, I often talked
about planned features, and it often turned out that they took way more time
than expected (one of my favorite features is in progress since December
2015).

If I share a public roadmap, and then I don't deliver, people will be
disappointed.

So I've started to only tell people about new features once they are stable
enough for testing.

I don't want to build up expectations when I'm not sure when/if I can deliver.

~~~
zerkten
> If I share a public roadmap, and then I don't deliver, people will be
> disappointed.

I agree. Your public roadmap should be conservative, or more oriented towards
the type of impact you will be making. The intent of a roadmap is to
communicate your focus so that folks outside know the general theme. You then
have something to reference in conversations later when someone asks for
something that doesn't fit with the theme.

Personally I have found any type of feature and expectation discussion easier
in person or on a call. I expect feedback over the internet to be poorly
phrased or hostile. Expectations break down if you have any type of sales team
who are prepared to offer features to close deals.

It looks like you make a database management app for the Mac. If I was
creating a theme-based roadmap I might choose a theme like "SQL Console
Improvements". You can explain that your focus is on that area of the product,
but that your focus may change in the future. When you get close to being
certain a feature within the theme will be developed then publish that
information. You can operate multiple themes depending on resources.

This approach can also work for feedback. You can let users know that the next
theme on deck is "Optimization Tools" ask for feedback on how users want to
improve their SQL queries. Then when you start executing on the theme you have
collected feedback that can be incorporated. The flow makes users feel
involved in the process. Actually summarizing the feedback in public can be a
useful community exercise for expectation setting when everyone thinks they
have the most important idea.

------
bttf
This is an interesting perspective on running a SaaS and pricing it for slower
paced growth. On the Inkdrop pricing page, it reads:

>We would like to provide good, quick and warm user support. If we got a lot
of users, we won't be able to support them all.

Frankly admitting that they want to pace user growth for better quality
service is both brutally honest, and enticing.

I hope more bootstrapped SaaS companies achieve this equilibrium where pricing
is premium, growth is paced, and quality is high.

~~~
zawerf
Maybe a little bit too paced?

According to the first graph, it's $30,000 in total sales over the last 2
years which forced him to continue freelancing as his main income. This post
is basically announcing ramen profitability. (Of course it's still a great
achievement to turn any profit on a side project, let alone supplant his main
income)

~~~
unixhero
Haha thank you for that.

I have been in the market for a new term, for what to say to people what my
goal is with my side projects. Up until now I have been saying, it's not
making much, it's all supposed to be for some "beer money"...

Welp. I stopped drinking.

Now I can call it ramen money instead. Cool!

(I do dropshipping of computer hardware, specializing in computerchips). And
currently building an OS-disk to the enthusiast-market for Apple G5
workstations (yes, it's a hyper niche, and will only cover my ramens) :)

~~~
zawerf
It's not my terminology:
[http://www.paulgraham.com/ramenprofitable.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/ramenprofitable.html)

~~~
unixhero
Ah thanks. I will begin reading more PG. It's necessary I realize.

~~~
eropple
I wouldn't call it "necessary" at all. Some of it is useful shorthand and
steals some credibility for you if you're dealing with people who are way too
deep in startupland, but most of the advice I've ever read from Paul Graham is
on the more basic end of things.

If you have some basic notion of running a business, you probably won't find
much in the way of revelations there. (Some of this is the "Seinfeld is
Unfunny" effect, because the better advice you'll find in his blog is now
common knowledge, but more is that running a tech business is still _running a
business_.) If you aren't familiar with running a business I can see it being
a useful naming-of-parts exercise, though.

------
cmmartin
Amen to this... "You will get many ups and downs on your way — A new feature
might have a significant bug you haven’t noticed and it would cause some
customers to quit. I recently experienced that but I would think it was a
necessary process to make the app more reliable. You are not perfect. So is
your product. Finish your work and see how it goes. Don’t be afraid."

------
ryanwaggoner
Great article. I run a small SaaS on the side that’s about this size and a lot
of these points resonate with me. A few thoughts:

1\. 100% agree with ignoring competitors unless you’re in a field with heavy
network effects. Most niches can have many successful companies, and worrying
about your competition will add a lot of stress and encourage you to build
things your users don’t care much about. Listen to your customers!

2\. Churn is probably low partly because the pricing is low. I charge 10x -
20x this much and my post-trial churn is more like 10% (working on reducing).
People are a lot more motivated to cancel if it’s costing them $1000 per year.

3\. I should really, really do the support forum thing.

4\. Strongly disagree on roadmaps. There are much better ways to make people
feel like the service is alive and maintained enough to feel comfortable
signing up. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve added unnecessary guilt and
stress to my life by promising some future feature to users and then
priorities or timing changed. Stupid to put yourself in a box like that for no
reason.

------
smdz
This is amazing!

I've built more than a couple of product prototypes equivalent to the size of
this app and ended up with the questions "what is the USP other than cheaper
pricing? what is your marketing budget?" \- And was discouraged to a point
where I never did launch the product to acquire paid users. And did launch it
for free and has decent number of users. But it is not fun working on a
product that does not pay.

This is so fresh and encouraging advice here. Even if it was paying me just
half of my freelance pay for a decent period - I would call it a success.

~~~
blinky1456
For me, one aspect is releasing a useful app, and users immediately screaming
'why isn't it free?' \+ 'anyone could have made that, I don't see why you
should charge'.

And losing all momentum on launch.

People have been spoiled by large companies releasing apps that costs tens of
thousands/hundreds of thousands to develop. And have huge server and
maintenance costs for free(lets just say you don't pay with money..)

------
rawoke083600
I hope the author sees this as "good feedback".. My notes taking system is
terrible (lots of TXT files on my desktop) :/ Its terrible and only slightly
better than NOT having a system at all. So I downloaded your app(congrats
looks very polished) but maybe I just had too many coffees but I couldn't
figure out how to make a new note within 30 seconds or 15 clicks :S. Maybe I'm
just dumb?

I _would_ put first and foremost how to make a note the very very first
thing(and only) thing when I open the app.

I don't want to see ALL the apps features.. I just want to first see how the
ONE THING i need this app todo. Make a note :)

Just my 2cents ! Congrats again on having a successful app

~~~
brucen
Have you tried Google Keep? It's quite good for keeping random notes and
sync'd across devices.

~~~
rawoke083600
Nope - goign to give it a go ! :)

------
briandear
I love the enthusiasm of the founder. It’s so refreshing and motivating. I
wish him further success and hope to read another post when he hits $10000
MRR.

------
joncrane
This seems like good advice to maximize personal satisfaction on a side
project.

Many of the tidbits are the exact opposite of advice for startups that are
trying to maximize value.

~~~
weliketocode
Which tidbits did you feel that way about?

It seemed to me that most of the advice is pretty in-line with that given to
value-maximizing startups.

~~~
joncrane
The "ignore your competitors" bit is the part I struggled with the most.

------
sdrothrock
If the author is reading this, I'm curious about whether you've considered
targeting Japanese users and why or why not. :)

~~~
craftzdog
Hi, the author of Inkdrop here. There're already many Japanese users because
I've also wrote blog posts in Japanese. Here is a Japanese version of this
article: [https://blog.craftz.dog/how-ive-attracted-the-
first-500-paid...](https://blog.craftz.dog/how-ive-attracted-the-
first-500-paid-users-for-my-saas-that-costs-5-mo-4111ddad9f50)

Cheers

~~~
sdrothrock
Oh, thank you! I was a bit confused since I went to your site and couldn't
find any evidence of a Japanese version. :)

If you have the time, would you mind elaborating a bit more on the following?
I'm always curious (as an American living in Japan) about small/independent
developers who split across two or more cultures.

1\. How much of your userbase is Japanese vs English-speaking?

2\. Do you find that the goals the users work toward are different based on
the language/culture? Are there any things that are language-specific?

3\. Do you find that one set of users is stickier than the other?

~~~
craftzdog
1\. About 50%-50%

2\. Since my app target is developers, their goals look basically same. But
some users are designers, directors, etc. Japanese tend to tweet their
thoughts on Twitter and English speakers tend to post their thoughts on our
forum or to email me. In a nutshell, Japanese make indirect reactions on
social media and English speakers tell me directly.

3\. Those who have too many suggestions usually quit using my app soon in my
experience because their problems are different from mine. You don't have to
please everyone.

~~~
sdrothrock
Thank you for taking the time to answer my questions. :)

> 3\. Those who have too many suggestions usually quit using my app soon in my
> experience because their problems are different from mine. You don't have to
> please everyone.

I'm sorry, I phrased my question a bit unclearly. "sticky" for me means "easy
to retain." So I was wondering, do you have a better retention rate among
Japanese users, English users, or is it about the same?

~~~
craftzdog
Ah okay. I don't see any difference in the retention so far.

~~~
Kagerjay
Hi Takuya, glad you are doing well with your app. I feel honored that I'm one
of 3 feature users on the frontpage :). Even though I don't use inkdrop
currently. I may try it again after v3 is released though

I have been following your development blog for some time (v3), I agree with
your priorities in better image support and tables. I made a similar plugin
with image resizing support on a different notetaking application, using a
jquery slider. I use it everyday. It might be of interest to you.
[http://vincentmtang.com/2018/06/29/adventures-in-writing-
a-t...](http://vincentmtang.com/2018/06/29/adventures-in-writing-a-
tampermonkey-script-extension/). The implementation I made is significantly
less maintenance too, setting image sizes per image upload is time consuming
IMO. It uses a `max-height` and `max-width` property initialization you set,
and goes up from there. It is (3) on your blog. It does make it difficult to
make responsive image size between devices, but you could always let the user
define custom media queries in settings and set a `max-width` or `max-height`
property for mobile devices. It really depends on information density of
images.

------
agentPrefect
This reminded me a lot of how DHH described their thinking (paraphrasing A
LOT): other people don't have to have a bad product for yours to be
successful. Good article!

------
amorphous
Not meant as trolling.

I'm refreshingly surprised that in 2018 it is still possible to make money
with a subscription-based Markdown editor. Why would I ever shell out 60 bucks
a year if I can pick one of the plethoras of good editors (free or one-time
purchase, I use iaWriter for example) and then just sync for free using
Dropbox or whatever (and have it encrypted on top of that if I want)? I paid
~30 and I own the editor and have control over my data.

And then there's already established competition, e.g Ulysses.

Kudos on the success, it can only be good news for anyone trying to run a
saas.

------
keithnz
I think I'm too cynical to do these kinds of side businesses... I look at this
and am confused why anyone is paying for it. I often find it hard to step away
from what I would do compared to what others will do.

~~~
albertgoeswoof
Well what’s the alternative to taking good notes for a developer? Markdown on
git? You still have to pay for github if you want it to be private and you
have the hassle of setting it up. $5/month is irrelevant if you use it a
couple of times a day

~~~
Svexar
BookStack: [https://www.bookstackapp.com/](https://www.bookstackapp.com/)

~~~
albertgoeswoof
But I have to install this and run my own server- the cheapest one I can find
is 5usd/month, so I’m paying for that and the time to set it up + maintain it.
Inkdrop still looks like better value for money

~~~
Svexar
BookStack is free. You can add it to a server you already have or host it
locally.

------
gregwebs
On the product: this seems like SimpleNote except that it is actually being
developed with features. I have been happy enough with SimpleNote for over a
year now, but trying this out now as an upgrade.

For both of these I like that its just markdown files that I can export if I
decide to use something else.

Edit: there is a plugin for vim keybindings, and a solarized light theme. I am
sold!

------
enraged_camel
Roadmaps are really important to me. When I'm evaluating a new service, I
first look for a published roadmap. Specifically:

* When the next version will be released (specific date, not just bullshit stuff like "Q1 2019") * What new features it will have

If I can't find anything like this, I'm less likely to sign up.

~~~
jakobegger
But why is it important what features the app will have in the future? Why not
focus on what it does right now?

~~~
enraged_camel
Because I want to use services that are actively being developed and improved,
where the development team has a clear vision and direction for the product
and are willing to commit to it publicly.

------
simonebrunozzi
Neat article, and thanks for sharing. My thoughs as follows:

1) I don't want to pay in perpetuity for the software you have built. It's
unfair. (yes, even if you're a single developer and probably a very nice guy).

2) I'm ok to pay for cloud storage, but I want to be able to opt-in and opt-
out whenever I want.

Almost all software is a subscription now, and this is ruining a lot of things
IMHO.

------
iliketosleep
Very refreshing. Focusing on one's own users instead of being fixated on the
competition is something many companies could learn from.

------
ganeshkumar_sr
>You don’t have to care about competitors. It’s a waste of time. Because you
know where to go.

I agree with this statement,because as a small developer if you compare you
and your product with big companies you will get lost in a short span of
time."Good customer support will differentiate you from the big players" is
one more great point in your article.

------
GoToRO
3 desktop apps, and 2 mobile apps. Electron?

~~~
craftzdog
Electron and React Native

------
nvarsj
Inkdrop looks seriously good. I may consider switching from my
tiddlywiki+orgmode setup (it's painful, but haven't found anything better that
is cross-platform). My only concern is if Inkdrop were to shut down in the
future. Does it support exporting my data?

------
PerilousD
Site comes up as blocked by Malwarebytes - so I didnt override and continue
on. Just saying....

------
JTenerife
I wonder what would be a good approach to scale support. It seems that the
creator is currently handling all inqueries by himself. @Takuya: How many
support requests do you get per day?

~~~
craftzdog
0 or 1 now. It's scalable.

------
mywacaday
Just so you know the trial is causing a symantec endpoint protection alert in
a corporate environment. I've tweeted you a screenshot Best of luck

~~~
stevekemp
For me the trial download just resulted in an error about shared libraries.

------
adamqureshi
I loved this story i can use this info RIGHT now for what im doing. A tesla
inventory tracker. MVP is up and running next problem is how much to charge
for it,I am using FB / google log in and thinking now maybe just go with the
mobile # log in. this article helps a lot. I will test the subscription model
$4.99/m pay as you go. Cancel anytime. Thanks! very useful!

~~~
usaphp
Isn’t one of your site’s main description points is that you don’t charge
people until they sold their car, unlike other sites. Wouldn’t it be unfair to
advertise one thing first and then change it later?

~~~
adamqureshi
Yup. I updated the copy. NO UPFRONT FEES. The application is another thing im
building to track tesla inventory and charge a subscription.

------
eggie5
I like to use Typora w/ iCloud

------
megaman8
is it crazy that i'm a web dev with more than 10 years and have never heard
the term "markdown" before?

~~~
zellyn
A little bit crazy, yes.

It's the markup format on Github, on Stack Overflow, and for many other sites
and tools.

------
olliej
I dislike the “costs me $5 a month”.

Seriously, part of the cost of running a service is your own income - don’t
discount the value of your own labour

~~~
chrisweekly
Unclear whether you're joking. OP is charging $5/mo to those 5000 users.

~~~
happy-go-lucky
OP says they have 600 users now, not 5000.

~~~
devoply
Imagine if he continues to grow he will have 5k users and would be making
250k.

------
danmaz74
Meta comment: I miss the time when there were many more stories like this one
on HN.

I'm sure that one reason why there aren't as many now is that lots of low
hanging fruits for niche tech/online/mobile businesses have already been
picked, as many people write from time to time, but I also think another
reason is that the stories of hypergrowth and unicorns have raised
expectations and standards too much. Incredibly high salaries for engineers in
SV helped there too (what? 30k? that's nothing...).

But let's not forget that trying to win the big lottery is going to make most
people miserable. Creating a sustainable online business - something like what
37signals promotes, or even just a lifestyle one - can be a perfectly
legitimate goal, something we should celebrate more IMHO. And the world is
still full of niches which can greatly benefit from the thoughtful application
of technology and sustain that kind of businesses.

EDIT: clarified language

~~~
HiroshiSan
A lot of these types of posts seemed to have moved to indiehackers.com

~~~
kkarakk
wow you aren't wrong[1]. they even have a sort by top capability right out of
the gate which you don't get on hackernews. i guess i'm shifting there from
now on, seeing as how lots of highly upvoted hackernews submissions are
essentially fluff/self promotion nowadays

[1][https://www.indiehackers.com/forum/i-launched-finally-
heres-...](https://www.indiehackers.com/forum/i-launched-finally-heres-what-i-
learned-in-24-hours-683aa2b7e0)

------
debaserab2
> Why Churn Rate is Surprisingly Low

Yeah, you're in your first year. Of course churn rate is low.

~~~
wpietri
How do you figure that? He says he launched it 2 years ago, and a pricing page
is in the Internet Archive from January 2017:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20170123082326/https://www.inkdr...](https://web.archive.org/web/20170123082326/https://www.inkdrop.info/pricing)

