
How I Got Pre-Signups for my SaaS, then Failed - acjohnson55
http://mattkremer.com/how-i-got-2200-pre-signups-for-my-saas-in-2-weeks-then-failed-hard/
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mynewwork
This is fascinatingly baffling. I'd love to meet the author in person.

I don't know how much existing technology was used, but the feature set sounds
quite expansive for 6 weeks of development. Seems like the guy must be a
pretty good developer. Aside from the HN shilling, it sounds like the launch
marketing was done well.

But then a few surprisingly bad bits: "we had a long heart to heart about 3
weeks after launch". 3 weeks? Just how quickly were they expecting success?
Followed by "I assumed that the way I worked on projects (remotely over SSH or
SFTP) was how everyone set up their projects" which suggests they did all this
without even the slightest bit of market research.

I wish the team good luck in the future. It seems like some smart people made
some strangely simple mistakes, but I bet they've got a great chance to be
successful in the future.

~~~
thibaut_barrere
3 weeks is indeed really quick to jump to conclusions in my opinion, and a lot
of people just give up too quickly. In my case, it took around 10 /months/ to
experiment and understand how to properly sell my Saas [1], and now we are
starting to see a nice increase in sales.

Rob Walling cut a normal SaaS growth in 3 phases: build, learn and scale. The
learning phase is about learning how to properly convey the value, tune your
message, and find the right channels to sell your product - and it can take
quite a bit of time.

Too bad a lot of technical people just stop too early (not assuming carrying
on in that specific project would have been a good idea :-)

[1] [https://www.wisecashhq.com](https://www.wisecashhq.com)

~~~
mkremer90
Thanks for the replies guys.

I definitely gave up too quickly I think (not saying that how it was would
have turned out though, it definitely needs to be reworked).

I think just the sheer emotion behind the other people I was working with
thinking I could shut it down, and other personal circumstances is what drove
me to "abandon" it for 4 months.

Hopefully what I'm working on now will prove that there is still some
substance behind this idea.

~~~
thibaut_barrere
Emotionally this is a roller-coaster for sure. Just wanted to point out that
your situation is not unusual and not necessarily a failure :-) Good luck with
your current work!

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ilaksh
That's not failing and its not failing hard. People have a very strange idea
of what success or failure is and I think that it is mostly apparently based
on watching The Social Network or something.

So a lot of people have incredibly unrealistic expectations.

It seems like literally 1 in 4 or 1 in 3 programmers have startups today. In
that context getting 2200 signups is not failing hard. Getting people to log
in is not failing hard. Getting 9 people to actually use your product is not
failing hard.

In reality, that is a story of mild success and I would take it as a solid
motivation to keep working on it.

I mean, to be honest, after putting everything into my own startup, if I can't
ever get more than a few people to really use it then I am going to be
devastated.

But everything that I read about business suggests that getting customers to
actually use your product is very hard and requires a long-term effort. Those
stories also almost always say that there was an evolution of the product
before it gained traction.

You are saying you only worked on it for a month or so. I have been working on
different variations of my idea for more like 8 months. I have not 'launched'
anything yet. So I have 0 signups.

You are way ahead of the curve man and just need to keep your expectations a
bit more realistic and keep going.

~~~
mkremer90
I think this was definitely an emotional failure, and not an actual one. The
sheer emotion behind the two other people I was working on this with telling
me they don't think I should pursue it further is what put me over the edge,
and why I abandoned it for a period of 4-5 months.

I think there are legs here, and I have a plan to test out this concept again
with a relaunch.

Thanks for the feedback!

~~~
sharemywin
You need to find out what you can charge your users to customers. Or what
things you can add to the product so they will pay. It's not your product
anymore, it's theirs. Unless you piss them off and they leave. Changing bunch
of things with consulting them will do that.

------
pkorzeniewski
Almost every guide for people wanting to build a product begins with one
advice - find customers before you even have a product. I wonder how would you
confront it with this story - more than 2k pre-signups and after launch almost
no one is using it. Yes, he already built the product, but lets assume he
didn't - having 2k pre-signups would convince anyone that the idea is good and
worth investing time and money. Stories like this just proves my theory that
the startup world is one big unknown. You can build a product without any
research or marketing, some popular website or even a single person writes
about it and suddenly your product is the next hot thing. You can also make a
big research, advertise everywhere, collect thousands of potential customers
who said "Sure, I would use it", but when you finally build and launch the
product - no one is longer interested.

~~~
chaddeshon
He didn't find customers. He found 2K looky-loos. Customers are people who are
paying for the product (or meet some activity threshold in a free product). He
found 2K people who were willing to give their email address to learn more
about what was being offered.

That is a positive sign, but they aren't customers. It seems like 2,00 people
logged in and then found out the product wasn't what they were expecting.

I know this was the case for me. I signed up hoping for a really nice online
IDE. I found a bunch of ssh stuff that made no sense to me.

It might be worth talking to the 2000 people and finding out why they signed
up and what type of product they were hoping to find.

~~~
pkorzeniewski
That's the point - if you don't have a product, you can't sell it. You can
collect e-mail addresses, people may say they're interested in your product,
but until you build it and users pay for it, nothing is sure. That's why I
find the whole advice "sell it first, then build" a bit silly.

------
pfitzsimmons
So 2,200 signups turned into 9 active users. If those were paying customers,
than that is a .5% lead to customer ratio. There are companies that have built
large businesses with a ratio like that. I'm not saying that OP should
continue the business, his other reasons for giving it up may be valid. But a
.5% conversion ratio is really not that bad for a brand new product. Very few
products are instant hits.

~~~
thibaut_barrere
Exactly - after being featured on HN, my SaaS got around 1k email signups, and
out of my head only 15 to 20 translated into paid customers. There is a lot of
work to be done to improve that, and it does not mean the product isn't good.

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personjerry
I don't think he did all that badly. Just that he gave up. Maybe people
weren't using it for what it was intended for--that's fine. You learn and
pivot. Maybe you're not getting enough conversion. Adapt!

------
richardbrevig
Startups are emotional roller coasters. Paul Graham said, "If you can just
avoid dying, you get rich" (www.paulgraham.com/die.html).

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colanderman
All I get is a header and footer with white nothingness between them. Chrome
36 on Windows 7.

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ilaksh
Please read his post.

~~~
colanderman
I can't see it; that's my point.

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mkremer90
Hey colanderman, you can't see my post or you can't see Kobra.io?

~~~
colanderman
I can't see any body text on any page on mattkremer.com. The header and footer
show, space for the body text shows, I can highlight & copy white boxes that,
upon pasting, turn out to be text, but I cannot see any characters on the
pages themselves.

~~~
potatoman2
Have you tried clearing your cache and cookies?

