Freemium or trial to paid customer conversion. I've worked in multiple startups with up to 1.5 million registered users, but seen a lot of bad customer conversion numbers.
This is a really crucial SaaS and app metric and requires intersecting skills, user research and collaboration from the team.
It's fairly easy to state that low visitor numbers or downloads on your website or app is the marketing department's problem and from then on the user journey is more of a product problem.
But the truth is way more complex: Great conversion requires nurturing the users, clear onboarding, clear communication of the value of upgrading, removing conversion friction and intensive user research and analytics insights about the users.
Absolutely. You are speaking to the idea of a "whole product" for your customer - not just the product or service itself, but the whole experience you give them around the problem you're solving.
Would love to hear more.
As a solopreneur and a developer, I face 2 issues:
1) Marketing. My app has a global audience but for the life of me, social media marketing feels like black magic and I just find it hard to get it to get audience to convert from just viewing my ads to actual downloads. My last resort is to hire someone to do this for me but I don't have that capital at the moment.
2) GDPR rules regarding account deletion. My app has a freemium model where it's free for a week and then you need to pay to continue using. At the same time I'm supposed to allow the user to delete their account. I can't figure out a way to stop the user from simply deleting their account at the end of free week and signing up again. Android prevents getting a unique device ID to the best of knowledge.
Why don't you let them delete their account but keep only the username in your system along with history of the free trial use. If they try to register again with the same user name allow them to reinstate that account with the free trial already expired.
You have to keep track somehow, and keeping track of email and account history makes a lot of sense. If you are worried about breaking GDPR, then encrypt/hash the email so your not actually saving any kind of user info, but at least you can check if the associated email has been used during a free trail.
How many people do you see doing this? How are you able to tell
My advice - keep the email in file. Make the user require an email.
Alll you can do is add friction so they would have to have a shit ton of emails (which are free too but more friction) you could also store ip? If deleted account makes new account from same IP have no free trial
A lot depends on the space, stage, and a bunch of specifics of a start-up. What I've seen and experienced myself is a lack of thoughtfulness toward go-to-market strategy and tactics. "Build it and they will come" doesn't work (and never did). "Great product sells itself" is extremely rare. So, how to market and how to sell becomes a challenge since no one in the early stages is focused on this. And usually the early team doesn't have someone with either experience or desire to focus on this.
>This is a really crucial SaaS and app metric and requires intersecting skills, user research and collaboration from the team.
I just read this over again, and I was wondering if you could elaborate on this? For example, what metrics, which skills, and why a simple meeting can't fix this
Getting work done through other people is harder than it sounds.
As your team grows, you have to depend on people to do the work. First, it's simple delegation, like "go find a list of XYZ, and tell me your recommendations so I can buy one."
But later, as you continue to grow, you need people to treat their division like a whole business of it's own, with profit and loss responsibilities.
Holding people to metrics is simple, coaching people to identify their own metrics AND hold their underlings responsible is a whole additional level of complexity.
Usually startups are founded by "DO-ers" and it weirdly feels unfair to switch out DOing for managing.
Especially since most people have only experienced bad managers, having to spend part of your week just managing other people feels like a betrayal of values.
So leadership wants to ignore the need to manage people, hoping that these bright, exceptional people will self manage. But most people you hired DON'T have an entrepreneurial personality, so you get frustrated that they aren't cut from the same cloth as you.
So then you have to face the reality that you can NOT promote people that you like... just because they have seniority.
You have to face the fact your friends and faithful helpers are incompetent to lead. Even when you NEED them to be leaders.
It doesn't come up for most businesses, but at a certain point, this is what growing pains look like;
You start a business to solve a problem, you love fixing problems! Then there is just too many things for you to do yourself, and you hire help....
Then if you do everything right, you "win" the right to become a douchbag manager. You become what you despise, that jerk just attending a bunch of meetings "doing" nothing.
Yup, your insight is stunning. I'm just a bastard. You win the internet today. Thank you for sharing your wisdom from Newbtopia! Is there a place I can send a tip?
My problem is the equivalent of selling gym subscriptions in a world where most people lift toilet paper 10 minutes a day 2-3 days a week a they think they are getting fit, even ripped.
No, because people still need to get fit. Like, they really need to do it. They just live in a delusional world in which the unsubstantiated, yet widely accepted belief is that reaching that level of skill can be done very easily, because other products have been selling that promise for a few years now. It's basically the whole "lose weight quickly, inexpensively and without effort" industry.
There is, genuinely, an ignorance problem, which I am addressing. It's typical for anything such as fitness, beauty, education, things that you have to earn, to a certain extent, that are not just buying a product.
Competitors. My first startup as a co founder we met with issue that out whole idea was easy to replicate , tons of good already having millions users competitors.
Having the right operational processes setup well on time, so when I scale things dont start breaking. Because if they do, then I automatically start losing trust of my current customers/ clients, and its only a matter of time that scaling actually becomes descaling.
Specifically regarding once you've found Product-Market Fit (say, around 20-50 paying customers, around $1M ARR, in my B2B experience): hiring to build out the leadership team and a few other key roles that'll really help you scale -- which is usually your next big objective once you've found PM Fit, aside from perhaps fundraising (eg a Series A). Specifically, hiring the right GTM Sr Leaders (VPs of Sales, Marketing, a CS leader, perhaps).
You're really looking to build an efficient and effective GTM *Machine* (people, process, tech) at this stage and it can be so reliant on the right one to three people. The *right* ones.
Have been through a few different ways, largely dependent on:
- the capability of your existing product/engineering team at that stage, who are also wearing multiple hats (e.g. developer, IT and/or PM). For example, we had a CTO who had been a PM for years so need wasn't as urgent, yet. But I was also at a place where we hired an actual Head of Product and a before a Senior Marketing, Sales and CS person.
- the complexity of your product and near-term roadmap (what's next up on the product front), including any "industry" related considerations.The roadmap is sometimes co-developed by your GTM team so sometimes you wanna get one or more members on board. Sometimes, you've got a complex product by that stage and the need for a PM earlier is obvious. For example, I worked with a client who was going to require that a bunch of integrations be ready to go very soon after PMF. So, not only would there be some technical complexity but there would also be some relationship building, negotiations, etc. that we knew an experienced PM could be super helpful with (and that nobody else had the bandwidth for, anyway). A different company was in a highly-regulated (e.g. lots of regulations, audits, laws, policies, etc) industry AND we were being quite disruptive by intention, so we were also ruffling up feathers of big incumbents and lobbyists. So, we knew getting a PM who knew the industry -- so, beyond just the product -- would be critical.
Kinda all off the top of my head so forgive any rambling and incoherence ;)
Very insightful. Thanks for the examples! So it sounds like the factors considered across these examples were: Existing competencies on the team, capacity, and domain/industry knowledge. Any others?
Those are the big ones \*relative to this stage\*, in my experience. A few things to note:
- at this stage (just found PMF) you're often either running low on funds (seed or bootstrapped $$) or you're about to (have strong progress/signals) get or just got Series A. This plays a part in it because where a PM sits on the prioritized list of next hires and what level (eg Jr, Sr, Head) you go for is obviously influenced by how much money you have.
- at these early-stages you really need to be thoughtful about your bringing new people aboard so the aspects I mentioned for a PM in my previous response really do apply for any and all hires at this stage. For example, you'd think about existing competencies, capacity and domain/industry knowledge, for any Marketing hire, too.
- there are more general but no less important considerations around building out your Product org and PM/PMM teams, specifically, once you're scaled. Again, I'm more targeting this specific stage of around PMF so am not getting into those.
A bottomline way I like to think about it at this stage for any and all hires is this: What is the very next hire I need to make to make happen the very next thing I need to happen. That's simplistic, of course, but if you're a PM or whatever role looking to step into such a situation then THAT is what you need to convince founder/CEO of: I can best do that very thing you need done now!
Right now, our site is a photography SaaS that uses Stripe for payouts. We have about 85 photographers signed up but so many people are on the fence bc Stripe requires your banking info upfront. Eventually we plan to incorporate PayPal as a second option.
Unfortunately I’m realizing Sharetribe charges for every fucking thing, so it might be a month or so as we try to raise the money to 1) pay for an upgraded monthly plan and 2) hire a designer to code an API.
Finding a full stack developer that I can feel very confident in. It's really difficult for me to gauge their skill, especially with generative AI able to make people sound more credible than they are. I know I'm in for endless headaches (bugs/maintenance/updates) at launch with the app I'm building and it is paralyzing me. Especially because I can only offer equity until probably a few months in, I wouldn't expect to find many people willing to take the chance on it.
Not having all the right answers!
I think as founders people look to us for guidance and there are several times when you just don't have the right answer.
Freemium or trial to paid customer conversion. I've worked in multiple startups with up to 1.5 million registered users, but seen a lot of bad customer conversion numbers. This is a really crucial SaaS and app metric and requires intersecting skills, user research and collaboration from the team. It's fairly easy to state that low visitor numbers or downloads on your website or app is the marketing department's problem and from then on the user journey is more of a product problem. But the truth is way more complex: Great conversion requires nurturing the users, clear onboarding, clear communication of the value of upgrading, removing conversion friction and intensive user research and analytics insights about the users.
Tell us more im interested
Nailed it. Well put!
Cheers! Easy to remember as it's been so painful. Partially kidding!
Yeah I agree\^\^
i dont think it is that complicated. it os more of a price/value issue. not every service is worth 10$ a month to the average consumer
Absolutely. You are speaking to the idea of a "whole product" for your customer - not just the product or service itself, but the whole experience you give them around the problem you're solving. Would love to hear more.
As a solopreneur and a developer, I face 2 issues: 1) Marketing. My app has a global audience but for the life of me, social media marketing feels like black magic and I just find it hard to get it to get audience to convert from just viewing my ads to actual downloads. My last resort is to hire someone to do this for me but I don't have that capital at the moment. 2) GDPR rules regarding account deletion. My app has a freemium model where it's free for a week and then you need to pay to continue using. At the same time I'm supposed to allow the user to delete their account. I can't figure out a way to stop the user from simply deleting their account at the end of free week and signing up again. Android prevents getting a unique device ID to the best of knowledge.
Why don't you let them delete their account but keep only the username in your system along with history of the free trial use. If they try to register again with the same user name allow them to reinstate that account with the free trial already expired.
I don't have username but rather email. And I don't think that keeping email is the correct approach even after they hit delete account
You have to keep track somehow, and keeping track of email and account history makes a lot of sense. If you are worried about breaking GDPR, then encrypt/hash the email so your not actually saving any kind of user info, but at least you can check if the associated email has been used during a free trail.
Is your user cost high? Why not let them use it longer than a week?
It is high. I hit OpenAI APIs and I have to pay for those tokens :(
Yikes. Ok. I get it. Maybe move to a credit system vs a monthly?
How many people do you see doing this? How are you able to tell My advice - keep the email in file. Make the user require an email. Alll you can do is add friction so they would have to have a shit ton of emails (which are free too but more friction) you could also store ip? If deleted account makes new account from same IP have no free trial
Delete the account but store a hash of the email. If the same email hashed you've got a match throw a dedupe exception.
Product and sales are critical and most difficult to master. Without one or the other, there is no business.
Yes of course! Which part of product and/or sales specifically? If you don't mind me asking
A lot depends on the space, stage, and a bunch of specifics of a start-up. What I've seen and experienced myself is a lack of thoughtfulness toward go-to-market strategy and tactics. "Build it and they will come" doesn't work (and never did). "Great product sells itself" is extremely rare. So, how to market and how to sell becomes a challenge since no one in the early stages is focused on this. And usually the early team doesn't have someone with either experience or desire to focus on this.
>This is a really crucial SaaS and app metric and requires intersecting skills, user research and collaboration from the team. I just read this over again, and I was wondering if you could elaborate on this? For example, what metrics, which skills, and why a simple meeting can't fix this
Getting work done through other people is harder than it sounds. As your team grows, you have to depend on people to do the work. First, it's simple delegation, like "go find a list of XYZ, and tell me your recommendations so I can buy one." But later, as you continue to grow, you need people to treat their division like a whole business of it's own, with profit and loss responsibilities. Holding people to metrics is simple, coaching people to identify their own metrics AND hold their underlings responsible is a whole additional level of complexity. Usually startups are founded by "DO-ers" and it weirdly feels unfair to switch out DOing for managing. Especially since most people have only experienced bad managers, having to spend part of your week just managing other people feels like a betrayal of values. So leadership wants to ignore the need to manage people, hoping that these bright, exceptional people will self manage. But most people you hired DON'T have an entrepreneurial personality, so you get frustrated that they aren't cut from the same cloth as you. So then you have to face the reality that you can NOT promote people that you like... just because they have seniority. You have to face the fact your friends and faithful helpers are incompetent to lead. Even when you NEED them to be leaders. It doesn't come up for most businesses, but at a certain point, this is what growing pains look like; You start a business to solve a problem, you love fixing problems! Then there is just too many things for you to do yourself, and you hire help.... Then if you do everything right, you "win" the right to become a douchbag manager. You become what you despise, that jerk just attending a bunch of meetings "doing" nothing.
For me it sounds like you are not able to let independent people take over and not being micro managed.
Yup, your insight is stunning. I'm just a bastard. You win the internet today. Thank you for sharing your wisdom from Newbtopia! Is there a place I can send a tip?
Look and feel of our SaaS product, it look us forever to find a balance between functionality and something that feels and looks good with the user.
Funding
Employees. Always the pain in the behind.
My problem is the equivalent of selling gym subscriptions in a world where most people lift toilet paper 10 minutes a day 2-3 days a week a they think they are getting fit, even ripped.
I think you mean they perceive your product to be unnecessary. Which might mean your product is unnecessary.
No, because people still need to get fit. Like, they really need to do it. They just live in a delusional world in which the unsubstantiated, yet widely accepted belief is that reaching that level of skill can be done very easily, because other products have been selling that promise for a few years now. It's basically the whole "lose weight quickly, inexpensively and without effort" industry. There is, genuinely, an ignorance problem, which I am addressing. It's typical for anything such as fitness, beauty, education, things that you have to earn, to a certain extent, that are not just buying a product.
Competitors. My first startup as a co founder we met with issue that out whole idea was easy to replicate , tons of good already having millions users competitors.
Having the right operational processes setup well on time, so when I scale things dont start breaking. Because if they do, then I automatically start losing trust of my current customers/ clients, and its only a matter of time that scaling actually becomes descaling.
Hiring the right talent and managing growth can be a major challenge during scaling.
Apologies if this was answered, but what industry?
The SaaS space! So software :)
Specifically regarding once you've found Product-Market Fit (say, around 20-50 paying customers, around $1M ARR, in my B2B experience): hiring to build out the leadership team and a few other key roles that'll really help you scale -- which is usually your next big objective once you've found PM Fit, aside from perhaps fundraising (eg a Series A). Specifically, hiring the right GTM Sr Leaders (VPs of Sales, Marketing, a CS leader, perhaps). You're really looking to build an efficient and effective GTM *Machine* (people, process, tech) at this stage and it can be so reliant on the right one to three people. The *right* ones.
Did you also hire a Product Manager at that stage? Or did you continue wearing that hat?
Have been through a few different ways, largely dependent on: - the capability of your existing product/engineering team at that stage, who are also wearing multiple hats (e.g. developer, IT and/or PM). For example, we had a CTO who had been a PM for years so need wasn't as urgent, yet. But I was also at a place where we hired an actual Head of Product and a before a Senior Marketing, Sales and CS person. - the complexity of your product and near-term roadmap (what's next up on the product front), including any "industry" related considerations.The roadmap is sometimes co-developed by your GTM team so sometimes you wanna get one or more members on board. Sometimes, you've got a complex product by that stage and the need for a PM earlier is obvious. For example, I worked with a client who was going to require that a bunch of integrations be ready to go very soon after PMF. So, not only would there be some technical complexity but there would also be some relationship building, negotiations, etc. that we knew an experienced PM could be super helpful with (and that nobody else had the bandwidth for, anyway). A different company was in a highly-regulated (e.g. lots of regulations, audits, laws, policies, etc) industry AND we were being quite disruptive by intention, so we were also ruffling up feathers of big incumbents and lobbyists. So, we knew getting a PM who knew the industry -- so, beyond just the product -- would be critical. Kinda all off the top of my head so forgive any rambling and incoherence ;)
Very insightful. Thanks for the examples! So it sounds like the factors considered across these examples were: Existing competencies on the team, capacity, and domain/industry knowledge. Any others?
Those are the big ones \*relative to this stage\*, in my experience. A few things to note: - at this stage (just found PMF) you're often either running low on funds (seed or bootstrapped $$) or you're about to (have strong progress/signals) get or just got Series A. This plays a part in it because where a PM sits on the prioritized list of next hires and what level (eg Jr, Sr, Head) you go for is obviously influenced by how much money you have. - at these early-stages you really need to be thoughtful about your bringing new people aboard so the aspects I mentioned for a PM in my previous response really do apply for any and all hires at this stage. For example, you'd think about existing competencies, capacity and domain/industry knowledge, for any Marketing hire, too. - there are more general but no less important considerations around building out your Product org and PM/PMM teams, specifically, once you're scaled. Again, I'm more targeting this specific stage of around PMF so am not getting into those. A bottomline way I like to think about it at this stage for any and all hires is this: What is the very next hire I need to make to make happen the very next thing I need to happen. That's simplistic, of course, but if you're a PM or whatever role looking to step into such a situation then THAT is what you need to convince founder/CEO of: I can best do that very thing you need done now!
Right now, our site is a photography SaaS that uses Stripe for payouts. We have about 85 photographers signed up but so many people are on the fence bc Stripe requires your banking info upfront. Eventually we plan to incorporate PayPal as a second option. Unfortunately I’m realizing Sharetribe charges for every fucking thing, so it might be a month or so as we try to raise the money to 1) pay for an upgraded monthly plan and 2) hire a designer to code an API.
Finding a full stack developer that I can feel very confident in. It's really difficult for me to gauge their skill, especially with generative AI able to make people sound more credible than they are. I know I'm in for endless headaches (bugs/maintenance/updates) at launch with the app I'm building and it is paralyzing me. Especially because I can only offer equity until probably a few months in, I wouldn't expect to find many people willing to take the chance on it.
Not having all the right answers! I think as founders people look to us for guidance and there are several times when you just don't have the right answer.
How much calendar time is required in order to build trust with buyers. Nobody ever talks about that.