4 builders who never spoke to each other

Give the hardest customers your hours

Time spent untangling one confused person is not a billable hour badly spent: it improves onboarding for everyone after them and converts that person into somebody who sends you others. The least technical customers, the ones who hit your worst early bugs and waited, and the ones you forgave an invoice for all show up later as the loudest advocates. Talking to early customers about their whole business, including parts you have nothing to do with, does the same work.

The method

1. 01

   Spend hours with the least technical customers rather than the usual few minutes. At FeedbackPanda those teachers became the biggest fans and went on to help other non technical users get started.

2. 02

   Forgive the invoice and hand out a free month when a customer genuinely cannot pay. Marginal cost on SaaS is near zero and those people became the loudest advocates for FeedbackPanda.

3. 03

   Some of your longest-standing advocates will be the people who hit your worst early bugs and waited patiently while you fixed them.

4. 04

   Never divide your hours into the revenue from an early customer; unlike a billable hour, time spent untangling one customer improves onboarding for every customer after them and turns that person into a possible referrer.

5. 05

   Overdeliver hard on those first few buyers, because the testimonials, referrals and repeat work they generate are the actual return on the exercise.

What it returned

• $20

  The author describes spending four or five hours over a fortnight to convert someone onto a $20 monthly plan

• 40

  Hours were spent on conversations unrelated to the app itself with hundreds of store owners in the first 40 days, and customers reacted to how far the founders would go.

• $1M

  The founder names befriending customers as his main lesson from taking RepairDesk past $1M in annual recurring revenue, and attributes the company's organic growth to it.

• The author says several of the longest-tenured, most devoted Storemapper accounts started out this way

Sources

• The $1,000 Weekend ChallengeJustin Welsh · justinwelsh.me · Sunday Afternoon (and beyond): Deliver and Delight · 2024-08-24
• The Bootstrapped Founder Newsletter Episode 12 – January 31st 2020 – The Bootstrapped FounderArvid Kahl · thebootstrappedfounder.com · Bootstrapping in Practice · 2020-01-31
• Chapter 1: What Is Micro-SaaS & Why Should You Read This - Tyler TringasTyler Tringas · tylertringas.com · Owning a Craft · 2016-05-11
• Chapter 6: Thriving in the Long, Slow, SaaS Grind - Tyler TringasTyler Tringas · tylertringas.com · 1. Don’t compare the hourly rate · 2017-03-14
• Customer Support for Solo Founders - Tyler TringasTyler Tringas · tylertringas.com · The Guiding Principle: Every support ticket is an opportunity · 2015-09-14
• Turning a Personal Problem into a $100k/mo SaaSUsman Butt · failory.com · Since starting RepairDesk, what have been your main lessons? · undated
• How I grew my Shopify micro SaaS to 2000+ users in 40 daysPreetam Nath · preetamnath.com · Ranking on the Shopify app store · 2019-12-29