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19 Years Old - Building First SaaS

A detailed account of a Fastlane process...

Chx

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What's up :smoking:

I've been working on a SaaS project the last few months and I want to share lessons learned along the way + progress as I make it.

Some background:

Who I am​

I'm 19, freshman in college (and college has been very good to me, but it's not for everyone, would be happy to write more about this)

My Fastlane Journey​

I discovered @MJ DeMarco's books and FLF when I was 15. That year I bounced around between various shiny objects business ideas (crypto service, math tutoring agency, YouTube channel) before I finally made my first dollar online through freelance copywriting. Shoutout @Lex DeVille and @Joe Cassandra, their threads were incredible for getting started as a copywriter.

I kept copywriting until I was 18, making in total about $15,000. Not FU-money but very life-changing for a middle class kid like me, showing that all this was possible.

At 18 I quit copywriting to build something more scalable. But blinded by ego, I pursued ventures that sounded cool and gave me the most excitement, despite being unfeasible or having 0 market demand. DO NOT DO THIS. Don't waste as much time as I did listening to your ego instead of listening to the market! I wasted months on bizarre ideas like:
  • Translating YouTubers' videos into foreign languages
  • Creating aesthetic-looking contracts for freelancers
  • Self-talk training app where you listen to your voice on repeat to reframe limiting beliefs (cringing just thinking about this one...)
I realized that "inventing" something "unique" is coming from my own ego and is totally useless. I'll invent stuff when I'm rich.

What I'm Building​

So instead of making something new, I'm entering a market with 100s of competitors so TONS of demand: Lead Generation software

My idea is painfully simple. Type in an industry, location, and job title, and the app scrapes direct emails of that type of decision maker at that type of company in that location. Then it does some filtering to get rid of bad data, and then it verifies the emails to get rid of ones that bounce. It's so simple but it provides a ton of value to B2B service providers like email marketers, FB ad agencies, etc., enough that I can charge a lot for it.

I've been inspired a lot by @WillHurtDontCare's Data as a Service thread, definitely check that one out if you're in the Speedway.

What I've Done So Far​

  • Pivoted many times from my original idea which was scraping portfolio pages of other agencies
  • Reached out to a few dozen agency owners offering web scraping/lead generation services to figure out their needs. Made $100 doing small projects for these guys, helps to get the feedback loop going to make money as soon as possible.
  • Built an MVP which is a bunch of python scripts which, once strung together, can do everything I want my app to do
  • Built half of my frontend
  • Got accepted to the incubator at my college (which is pretty sweet, no commitment whatsoever and I get $10K AWS credits for free)

Current Roadblocks​

  • Need to find a good marketing partner or distribution channel ASAP - ideally someone who has an audience of agency owners
  • Am a bit paralyzed by fear of my product not working as intended once I launch.need to get over this somehow.
  • Need to make this project a bigger priority in my life. It's hard in college, but it's doable.
  • Need to stop blowing all my savings at campus restaurants lol sometimes I forget I'm bootstrapping this thing.
 
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MJ DeMarco

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Thanks for posting my friend, wish you good progress and great updates!
 

Thapaqazi

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Will be keeping an eye on your thread mate. Great post, good luck.
What's a MVP?(I got its a python script to automate). Is it Minimum Viable Product?
 
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Chx

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Will be keeping an eye on your thread mate. Great post, good luck.
What's a MVP?(I got its a python script to automate). Is it Minimum Viable Product?
Yes you're right - Minimum Viable Product

One important thing about making an MVP is that it does NOT need to be a website or software, even if your final product is gonna be a website or software.

Ex. If you want to build a dating matchmaking website, your MVP would be a Google form where people submit their bio, preferences, etc. and then you match them via email. It's super scrappy but most MVPs are.

MVP means the fastest thing you can build that can validate demand & provide value to a customer
 

Thapaqazi

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Yes you're right - Minimum Viable Product

One important thing about making an MVP is that it does NOT need to be a website or software, even if your final product is gonna be a website or software.

Ex. If you want to build a dating matchmaking website, your MVP would be a Google form where people submit their bio, preferences, etc. and then you match them via email. It's super scrappy but most MVPs are.

MVP means the fastest thing you can build that can validate demand & provide value to a customer
Appreciate the reply Chx.

If you don't mind please answer this possibly silly question,
You would create a google form, present it to users who would fill it. At the backend, you would have logic that would make appropriate matches and possibly send emails to the users informing them of their matches. Is that correct?

In other words, could you call MVP a prototype?
 

Chx

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You would create a google form, present it to users who would fill it. At the backend, you would have logic that would make appropriate matches and possibly send emails to the users informing them of their matches. Is that correct?
Yeah, and you could probably do all that with Zapier and boom, you've created a product. (Although if I was doing the dating service idea I'd make the matches and send the emails manually at first, and that would still be an MVP because it can show whether people want it or not)

In other words, could you call MVP a prototype?
Yeah

I'm sure there's some technical distinction between the two but it's essentially the same thing.
 
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WillHurtDontCare

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I've been inspired a lot by @WillHurtDontCare's Data as a Service thread, definitely check that one out if you're in the Speedway.

Happy to hear that it helped. Message me if you have other questions.

Am a bit paralyzed by fear of my product not working as intended once I launch.need to get over this somehow.

Let's get this issue out of the way - every F*cking piece of software has bugs. As long as your SaaS still performs its main function people will get over it. Look at Microsoft - bugs haven't stopped them from being worth trillions.

There is a joke among programmers that 80% of coding is fixing bugs and 20% of coding is writing bugs.

Need to find a good marketing partner or distribution channel ASAP - ideally someone who has an audience of agency owners

Email marketing is effective and fairly cheap (depending on who you buy your lists from). Look up quickmail. Message me if you have specific questions on how to find lists.

Need to make this project a bigger priority in my life. It's hard in college, but it's doable.

Dedicate at least 2 hours per day to it. It will also become addicting when you get people using it or when you have features that are almost working and you want to finish the job.

Need to stop blowing all my savings at campus restaurants lol sometimes I forget I'm bootstrapping this thing.

I'm 30 and one of my biggest regrets is not socializing more when I was younger. You better be blowing that money to meet chicks. You're surrounded by women that every dude on the planet wants - go get them. Being good with chicks is a skill that translates well in business.

Though you can still get college aged women at 30 if you'd like to focus on business.
 

AnasHarn

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Amazing project wish you all the best and please keep us updated !
 

Thapaqazi

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Yeah, and you could probably do all that with Zapier and boom, you've created a product. (Although if I was doing the dating service idea I'd make the matches and send the emails manually at first, and that would still be an MVP because it can show whether people want it or not)


Yeah

I'm sure there's some technical distinction between the two but it's essentially the same thing.
Appreciate it Chx
 
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Chx

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Let's get this issue out of the way - every f*cking piece of software has bugs. As long as your SaaS still performs its main function people will get over it. Look at Microsoft - bugs haven't stopped them from being worth trillions.

There is a joke among programmers that 80% of coding is fixing bugs and 20% of coding is writing bugs.
You're right and I know you're right and it sucks that I still have that annoying voice telling me that it won't work and people will call me a scammer.

Shit, I just need to grow up and push myself to launch this so I can see first hand that it's helping people. and I can fix bugs along the way, that's the worst case scenario.

Email marketing is effective and fairly cheap (depending on who you buy your lists from). Look up quickmail. Message me if you have specific questions on how to find lists.
I like the idea of using email to get my first handful of customers, then once I have some traction switch to paid ads or partnering with an audience owner.

Honestly, I could use my own software to build a list of agency owners - will be a good test of how well the thing works as well as helping me get some initial traction.

Thanks for the detailed reply @WillHurtDontCare and I'm going to DM you as well :)
 

Chx

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Honestly, I could use my own software to build a list of agency owners - will be a good test of how well the thing works as well as helping me get some initial traction.

Ok, as things stand this will be my strategy to get my first customers

1. Use my own software to get a bunch of B2B service provider email addresses
1645592169036.png

2. Email them personalized messages en masse like:

Code:
"Hey NAME, saw you're from Atlanta, you watch the Falcons last season?

Pitch..."

And then send that^ to all agencies in Atlanta.

I'm also considering sending something more 'meta' like "I just used this software to find your email, person@website.com. You can use it to find your next big digital marketing client. LINK"

Either way, if I use cold email to get my first few customers it will definitely put me more in my customers' shoes, which will help me fine tune the product in the future.
 
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Chx

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Making slow but consistent progress:

Wednesday- Bought my domain and made a simple landing page (didn't code it, used Aweber)
Thursday- Added to my website the place where users input which job titles to scrape emails of, reworked my user flow to be simpler
Friday- Tried learning Celery for Django, which enables background tasks to run. Haven't figured it out yet
Sat- Learned AJAX, which is how your app can load data without refreshing the page
Sun- Implemented AJAX so that users can wait for their search to load
Mon- Researched Google Places API as a source of leads

Much more to come if I continue at this pace.
 
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Chx

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Hate to be a broken record, but..

EGO is one of my biggest roadblocks in business and it could be yours too if you care about making shit that sounds cool vs actually valuable products.

Tell me, which one sounds more sexy?

Option 1: Rule-based AI that filters SERP results and analyzes their URLs to filter relevant leads from bad data

Option 2: just scrape google maps lol

Now, let's put them to the test.

Option 1
Screen Shot 2022-03-03 at 12.26.15 AM.png

Option 2
1646285400499.png

The un-sexy option outperforms the fancy algorithm by 2X -- and gets more accurate data.

If I'd stuck with what sounded good vs what worked best, I'd be giving up half my possible leads and giving customers worse data.

EGO KILLS
 

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Good luck on your venture. I'll be rooting for your future success.

Now for some tough love. The best order of launching a product:

1. Find a customer
2. Understand their needs
3. Satisfy those needs

Going from 3-2-1 will not work. Believe me, I've been there many times. Building something without finding customers and then trying to get a partner in to do all of the sales, also does not work.
 

Chx

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Good luck on your venture. I'll be rooting for your future success.

Now for some tough love. The best order of launching a product:

1. Find a customer
2. Understand their needs
3. Satisfy those needs

Going from 3-2-1 will not work. Believe me, I've been there many times. Building something without finding customers and then trying to get a partner in to do all of the sales, also does not work.
Hey @maverick, I appreciate your input. Here's why I'm building a product right now as opposed to doing demand validation:

1. In a saturated market, demand is already proven​

Lead generation software has proven demand, because there are already dozens of competitors in the space. Direct competitors to me include LeadCarrot, LeadGrabber, and D7 Lead Finder, and indirect competitors are ZoomInfo, Lusha, Hunter.io, and so on.

So the task for me is not to prove that people need leads -- because they do. Rather I need to prove that I can build something better than the existing tools on the market.

Also, I've proven demand for leads by doing some paid lead gen projects for agency owners. Now I need to prove demand for my specific software and what it does.

2. Scratching my own itch​

Months ago I sat down and wrote down all the annoying problems I faced as a freelance copywriter. Literally the first thing I wrote down was "finding a list of prospective clients." This is a need that I know exists from personal experience.

On top of that, I'll be using my own software to launch some cold email campaigns to get that first handful of customers.

Screen Shot 2022-03-05 at 3.22.57 PM.png

3. Personal growth​

I've never built a software product to completion and if I do it this time, it'll be 20X easier to build another one or pivot in a different direction.

Do you think my reasoning is flawed? What would you do differently in my situation?
 
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Chx

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SO - the core functionality of my software is done. You can type in any industry and location and get emails of releveant contacts according to that search.

I used my software to get 312 leads (across a few industries) for a web design agency owner and he paid $137 for it.

Things that went well:
  • The customer happily paid for this data
  • Software worked quickly - results were completed after 5 min or so
What didn't work well:
  • I had to manually remove some bad data (e.g. bad category, wrong location, mega corporation, etc.)
  • Total mindfuck why this happened but sometimes two of my datapoints would have their titles switched. Also had to fix this manually
  • Didn't find as many leads as I had hoped -- in one industry, I searched 8 cities and only found 21 leads. However, when I asked my customer about the size of the lists he said they were "perfect"
 

Chx

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F*ck. I'm using a 3rd party API to find verified emails based on name and domain, and before today believed that they were actually verified...

Today on a whim I sent a test email to 7 of the email addresses my system had obtained and one of them bounced.

Which means, my system will need to independently verify the addresses instead of relying on the third party. Commandment of control!

Glad I found about this sooner rather than later.
 

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f*ck. I'm using a 3rd party API to find verified emails based on name and domain, and before today believed that they were actually verified...

Today on a whim I sent a test email to 7 of the email addresses my system had obtained and one of them bounced.

Which means, my system will need to independently verify the addresses instead of relying on the third party. Commandment of control!

Glad I found about this sooner rather than later.
I've read your thread here through multiple different sittings and just picked up your last post here and wanted to throw in my two-cents in the event you're not already thinking of it.

You've got an option to kill two birds with one stone here. You can verify the email addresses on your list by sending an automated sales email/pitch to the addresses for your own lead-generation product, and if you see that the email successfully sent, then shazam, you've 1) verified the email address(es) and 2) potentially gotten yourself more leads for your own product.

Let me know if I missed anything here.
 
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Chx

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What I've done since my last update:
  • Added a second layer of email verification, through another 3rd-party API that has a good reputation for catching bounces. Now, when I use BOTH layers I can add the value skew of "Double-verified emails" and have better results for my customers, because there will be even fewer bounces
  • Made it so that users can request X number of leads so they don't blow through all their credits on one search
  • Added a dynamic loading page so users can see the progress while my system scrapes for leads
  • Added users (login, logout, profiles, change password) through the SaaSpegasus boiler plate
  • Made the frontend better
  • Arranged some beta testers
What I still need to do:
  • Add subscriptions through Stripe, build the subscriptions page, give users monthly credits
  • Add tutorial videos to 'Dashboard' page
  • Create a better landing page
  • Make the Search page better
  • Add email
  • Fix these things:
    • Extra leads: sometimes user requests 20 leads and gets 24
    • Data getting matched to the wrong Django element for some reason (?)
    • Sign in with Google doesn't work
    • Missing data in output
Launch is well within sight -- when the website is ready I will send it to my beta testers (give them some free credits, as agreed) and also send it to a list of marketing agency owners scraped from my own service, as per @BMT1987 great suggestion.
 
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Chx

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I need to stop f*cking around and LAUNCH.

Today and tomorrow I'm going to finish all essential features (payment processing, email)

Anything else, at this point, is a distraction. I've been getting a lot of urges to improve the UI, start posting on Twitter, fix small bugs, and add new features. I need to resist this and just get my product out there.

Plan for the week is to finish the MVP and then send 100 cold emails. I cannot wait to start getting real users for this thing. Even though it's f*cking terrifying.
 

Chx

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Launched yesterday and sent ~80 cold emails today, to a list of marketing agency owners scraped using my own tool.

Got 3 responses. 1 wanted a demo next week, 1 got on a call right away with me but was not a good fit customer, 1 said the tool was "perfect timing" for them but hasn't subscribed yet.

It's very nervy not having any paying users yet. Getting filled with doubts that my product isn't good enough, my landing page (below) isn't good enough, etc. But I need to push through it and keep hustling until I connect that feedback loop.

Screen Shot 2022-05-20 at 11.00.06 PM.png
Screen Shot 2022-05-20 at 11.00.15 PM.png
 
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Great work.

If I were you, I'd think carefully about what kind of brand you want to build. It's a pretty cool service, though when you compare with other companies you make yourself sound very "me too".

Two books you might wanna check out are "Start with Why" by Simon Sinek and "100M Offers" by Alex Hormozi. Especially the latter.

But anyway, if I were you, I would double down on email marketing using your own service to find leads. Instead of 90 emails send out 900. You'll definitely find paying customers, and you get to experience the point of view of your customer, which should help you identify what needs tweaking on the operations side.

But yeah if youve got a mvp now just send it. Email everybody. Once the money flows in you can hire software experts to make everything watertight, and then focus on brand and exploding sales.
 

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I gotta say, the marketing image looks mighty slick. Well done! I'm glad you're making more progress on your app than mine -- I've been making progress but it's an uphill battle and I've been horrible at updating my progress thread. I'm gonna finally do that today in a few minutes after I stop being pissed-off about getting a new cellphone and not having my 2FA info transferred to the new one so now I can't login to my domain registrar account. I'm never enabling that %$#@ again; total PITA and the added security ain't worth the hassle. :humph:
 

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Oh yeah I forgot to ask something -- @Chx : How did you generate such a nice-looking marketing page? Did you do that yourself or are you using a third-party tool to whip that up for you?
 
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Launched yesterday and sent ~80 cold emails today, to a list of marketing agency owners scraped using my own tool.

Got 3 responses. 1 wanted a demo next week, 1 got on a call right away with me but was not a good fit customer, 1 said the tool was "perfect timing" for them but hasn't subscribed yet.

It's very nervy not having any paying users yet. Getting filled with doubts that my product isn't good enough, my landing page (below) isn't good enough, etc. But I need to push through it and keep hustling until I connect that feedback loop.

I mean this in the nicest way possible - do you have any idea how little work sending 80 emails is? Start worrying when you've sent out 1000+. And send more than one. You can use a tool like quickmail.io to handle sending out email campaigns with sequences of multiple emails / text messages.

Also, try cold calling if that doesn't work. Or messaging people over LinkedIn. You have a lot of things that you could try.

Overall your site looks good - marketing is always the hard part, but that doesn't mean that it's not doable. Put a lot effort into getting your first few users - look them up, read about their careers, their companies, and really try to understand exactly how they specifically would want to use your product.

One of the double edge swords of SaaS is that because you can scale quickly you think that you shoud always be scaling quickly, and the reality is that until you have your product-market-message etc fit, then you shouldn't worry about scaling. Read Paul Graham's thoughts on this topic - Do Things that Don't Scale

You might also get website copy info from this site: Online Email Scraper | Klean Leads
 
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Chx

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I mean this in the nicest way possible - do you have any idea how little work sending 80 emails is? Start worrying when you've sent out 1000+. And send more than one. You can use a tool like quickmail.io to handle sending out email campaigns with sequences of multiple emails / text messages.

Also, try cold calling if that doesn't work. Or messaging people over LinkedIn. You have a lot of things that you could try.

Overall your site looks good - marketing is always the hard part, but that doesn't mean that it's not doable. Put a lot effort into getting your first few users - look them up, read about their careers, their companies, and really try to understand exactly how they specifically would want to use your product.

One of the double edge swords of SaaS is that because you can scale quickly you think that you shoud always be scaling quickly, and the reality is that until you have your product-market-message etc fit, then you shouldn't worry about scaling. Read Paul Graham's thoughts on this topic - Do Things that Don't Scale

You might also get website copy info from this site: Online Email Scraper | Klean Leads
Thanks for the kick and the a$$ and also for linking that Paul Graham post. These parts stuck out to me:

Screen Shot 2022-05-22 at 11.49.58 PM.png

Screen Shot 2022-05-22 at 11.54.02 PM.png
Plan for the week is to do a lot of 'comparatively untargeted' outreach and see what sticks. Hustle to my first user and then my first 5, 10, etc.
 

WillHurtDontCare

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Thanks for the kick and the a$$ and also for linking that Paul Graham post. These parts stuck out to me:

View attachment 43611

View attachment 43612
Plan for the week is to do a lot of 'comparatively untargeted' outreach and see what sticks. Hustle to my first user and then my first 5, 10, etc.

Happy to help. Also, I should have linked this great talk by Jason Cohen (founder of WP Engine, $100M+ annual revenue)
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otbnC2zE2rw


When he started, he messaged 40+ WordPress consultants and asked if he could pay them for their time to help him validate this tool that he was building for them. 38 agreed to talk to him, and none of them took payment for their time. In fact, I think all 38 agreed to sign up as soon as he released the product. You could take that approach to figure out what would make people sign up for your product.
 

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