[Journey] Micro-SaaS to 1k users and 5k per month

[hexagonal]

Background​

Hi! I have worked as a software boutique owner for 3 years and at the beginning I had to do all the marketing, write code and talk to customers. I plan to use all that experience in this project which I hope to grow through years.

The plan​

I don't plan to use anyone from my company, as that can lead people to think that without a team you can't achieve great things. I will do everything myself and every hour I spend will be added as an expense based on the current rate of 50$ USD.

The product will be a web app that attacks a pain point of companies when trying to keep customer churn rate low and will decrease that churn rate for marketing departments. Nothing fancy related to AI or ML or millions of dollars per month.

Stages​

I'll try to make an update each 3 days with screenshots of how the business is currently doing and the profit/loss, this journey will take have three big phases

• UI/UX -> Fortunately I've experience with Figma and know how to create straightforward interfaces for users
• Marketing -> I'll be focused on doing marketing strategies that require a ton of time and that don't scale. Nothing fancy.​
• Monetization -> Will have a subscription plan of 2$ - 10$ to users, that's all super simple.​

Why only 1k users?​

In the past I had an app with 150k downloads that generated only 1k-2k monthly, with 1k users minus taxes and one part time employee I expect to get 2.5k-3k monthly

Feel free to ask any questions!

​

 

[Matta28]

Gonna be interesting following your journey, wish you best of luck!

 

[hexagonal]

Felt motivated and created the homepage designs for the MVP. Will probably do some research on competition and iterate over designs and initial features.

Features that are in my mind right now
- Review features
- Delivery flagging
- Re engagement ( Still need to decide which channels of distribution )
- Basic account management
- See churned accounts

 

[Life 101]

Following this, Good luck!

 

[VelocityServ]

Good luck with your journey!

How do you anticipate getting sign ups initially? Also, your goal is small profit wise, will your idea make everything most automated so you don't have to deal with support? I can't imagine dealing for 1k users every month for only $2-$3k profit

 

[planktons]

The good boy ! I'm interested reading your stories, i'll waitin for next update, please keep to update your journey

 

[hexagonal]

Gonna be interesting following your journey, wish you best of luck!

The good boy ! I'm interested reading your stories, i'll waitin for next update, please keep to update your journey

Following this, Good luck!

Thanks for the good wishes!

Good luck with your journey!

How do you anticipate getting sign ups initially? Also, your goal is small profit wise, will your idea make everything most automated so you don't have to deal with support? I can't imagine dealing for 1k users every month for only $2-$3k profit

Offering trials and cold reaching companies with 10-20 employees that are highly profitable. I read about a guy that had to make 100's of Skype calls just to make a 50$ one-time sell and his company is now worth 100M$ that made me realize how much we've started to run away from doing the non-scalable hard things

In my estimations 1k users bring 4k-6k with that I plan to hire someone that handles the support and the roadmap, a person with experience in support could save me hundreds of hour per month as they make all the noise go away.

Update

Technology​

I'm deciding between building a web app vs mobile app, I tried SwiftUI and I love how it feels however I don't like the idea of having to depend on Apple.

Will probably build something really quick in the Apple Store and see what happens

 

[MgicalaEarner]

Which type of SAAS you are going to create?

 

[hexagonal]

Which type of SAAS you are going to create?

Decrease churn rate for companies and give them knowledge on why users are leaving their companies, if you want more info lmk don't have problem with sharing the idea. B2B

 

[DrMorpheus]

Sounds like you have a solid plan and good experience to back it up. Good luck on your journey and let us know how it goes!

 

[p3n7357]

Interesting journey following you
I want to start something similar but can't decide what kind off app web app to offer

 

[planktons]

Thanks for the good wishes!



Offering trials and cold reaching companies with 10-20 employees that are highly profitable. I read about a guy that had to make 100's of Skype calls just to make a 50$ one-time sell and his company is now worth 100M$ that made me realize how much we've started to run away from doing the non-scalable hard things

In my estimations 1k users bring 4k-6k with that I plan to hire someone that handles the support and the roadmap, a person with experience in support could save me hundreds of hour per month as they make all the noise go away.

Update

Technology​

I'm deciding between building a web app vs mobile app, I tried SwiftUI and I love how it feels however I don't like the idea of having to depend on Apple.

Will probably build something really quick in the Apple Store and see what happens

Why not trying a Xamarin or NET MAUI ? you can easily making a cross platform technology Apple, Android & Windows

 

[hexagonal]

Sounds like you have a solid plan and good experience to back it up. Good luck on your journey and let us know how it goes!

Thanks!

Interesting journey following you
I want to start something similar but can't decide what kind off app web app to offer

I keep a list of ideas and then flag those that are interesting enough, this quote may help you to decide
B2C: look at common things that many people are doing and create a new way of doing it, make it more fun and efficient.

Why not trying a Xamarin or NET MAUI ? you can easily making a cross platform technology Apple, Android & Windows

Made and android app using React Native and the amount of work required to make it work and feel like a native application for iOS was definitely not worth.

SwiftUI components come with native behavior out of the box
https://betterprogramming.pub/swiftui-basic-components-ac2c62dc7b95

 

[planktons]

Thanks!



I keep a list of ideas and then flag those that are interesting enough, this quote may help you to decide
B2C: look at common things that many people are doing and create a new way of doing it, make it more fun and efficient.



Made and android app using React Native and the amount of work required to make it work and feel like a native application for iOS was definitely not worth.

SwiftUI components come with native behavior out of the box
https://betterprogramming.pub/swiftui-basic-components-ac2c62dc7b95

SwiftUI is a apple framework? what your language do creating SwiftUI in iOS? I didn't know before

 

[hexagonal]

SwiftUI is a apple framework? what your language do creating SwiftUI in iOS? I didn't know before

Swift it's pretty cool actually when compared to React Native, one is straightforward while RN feels like a giant mountain of hacks and tricks put together

 

[HustleTong]

I like your plan
Good luck with this journey!

 

[hexagonal]

I like your plan
Good luck with this journey!

Thank you!

Update

Created a landing page took me one hour to write it using vanilla JS, used a Figma design. Made a pitch deck and started to contact companies and see if there's any interest in signing up to the free trial

 

[hexagonal]

Update

The pitch deck was good enough, talked with 10 companies and 2 of them are interested and want to do a trial with a few users (6 users)

Will speed up the development, it has been tough to work in this project with the boutique running at the same time.

 

[hexagonal]

Update

Been a few intense days, already have a list of 50 users that will start in the free trial, created a simple dashboard with basic functionality and sent it to 10 of those users, still waiting for reviews.

I'm also working on the iOS version.

Investments

• Domain - 20$
• 10 hours of work - 500$
• Total - 520$

 

[GreenFog]

Hi,
Interesting project, I am definitely gonna watch this journey.
Your business is B2B, why don't you charge more? Businesses are ready to pay for solutions that help them gain more money.
Have you thought about asking your alpha/beta testers how much they'd be willing to pay for your product?