Good day, everybody
I'm reposting since we discussed with the moderators the format in which it would comply with the rules.
I want to share my experience and what my team has learned while product development: Saas, bootstrap, no VC, 4 years, 230k users, x2.5 YoY, team 5→21, Productivity & Design tool (B2B + B2C2B).
I hope these will be useful for makers and teams that are launching now:
1/ Freemium is a must
My opinion about the freemium model is fully shaped by the values of the Product-led Growth strategy.
Being able to use your service for free (even with free plan limits) lowers the threshold for entering the product (no need to pay, no credit card needed, no monitoring the trial period) and creates a wave of organic mentions, recommendations, and shares.
Freemium for us is not only a "function", but a tool for user adoption and acquisition. It allowed us to build a growth model based on organic and WoM drivers.
Please consider freemium as an opportunity for users to test drive your product without any pressure. Users appreciate it.
References: Notion, Slack, Miro, Figma, Dropbox, etc. (explore their freemium models).
How this worked for us: Our paid users before purchase: 95% free plan, 5% 14-day trial.
2/ Onboarding is your infinite point of growth
Onboarding success lies in understanding what tasks your users have and how to deliver value through your product as simply+faster as possible.
Think not about what you want to say, but what your users need to get (what are their pains, challenges).
How this worked for us: How we improve onboarding: demo project, onboarding emails, project examples, explanation videos + tips inside the app, product tour, student and edu plans, external content.
3/ Paid traffic at launch leads to the wrong place
Based on my experience, a strong preoccupation with paid traffic leads to negative long-term effects. If you spend all the resources (time, money, passion) on this "quick audience dopamine," other channels suffer. Paid sources don't have the "cumulative" effect that search organics, WoM, content marketing, etc. do.
By launching paid growth channels right away, you lose the opportunity to find out what your early users love and value your product for, which is critical in the early stages of development.
I always recommend leaving paid channels for dessert when conversions, value proposition, and other attributes of a healthy product are optimized and won't account for 100% of inbound traffic.
Paid traffic is the "fastest" option, but also the least useful in the long run. When the money in the "Facebook Ad Manager" runs out, the music stops.
How this worked for us: Growing to 230k users with a $0 marketing budget.
4/ Design will be even more important in 2022
First of all, I mean product design.
Watching interesting startups, I notice a low UI&UX execution level. It's a big stopper for user adoption. No-code trend leads us to unprecedented dev speed, but also to template solutions.
We believe that product design is an incredible advantage in an era of competition for user attention.
How this worked for us: One of our early investments was into "clean & simple interface": easy to understand, pleasant to work with, familiar working patterns. A lot of feedback from the users was followed.
5/ Launch priority is retention, not revenue
At a product launch, the most important thing is early feedback and user experience, not $30 you can earn. What's more valuable to you?
Don't be greedy.
You have to try hard to get your first early adopters, please don't build paywalls before the product.
How this worked for us: We had no sales at the start, but we talked to the first 50 users and it influenced the further movement. We compiled all the feedback into a document, marked it up (product value, feature requests), and adjusted the backlog and strategy.
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I think there are ~20 points more, hope I can handle them, too.
Good luck with your Saas products!
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