We recently interviewed the founder of a company doing 5-figures in MRR which was a white-label social media API powering 250K+ accounts currently that's been in business for 1.5 years. Both founders are still working full-time jobs, but they’ve grown to consistent five-figure MRR in under two years.
Here are some of the learnings from the interview:
1. Validate with users who are paying
They never ran a landing page test or built a waitlist. Instead, they solved their own problem (posting across multiple accounts) when they realized their competitor product was charging thousands of dollars. They had friends in the e-commerce space ask for access. Those friends paid even when the product was rough. That signal was enough validation to continue to invest in this project.
2. Cold emailing
They built lists through Apollo and SEO tools, & sent thousands of emails. The format of the email was kept simple: a short intro, proof they were a legit company, and a 3-touch follow up. No long copy led to conversations. The conversion rate is currently at: ~2% from email sent to paying customer.
3. Reddit
The team spends time daily in relevant threads answering questions, giving advice, and only mentioning the product when it makes sense. They approach reddit with a value based approach, when they deliver value first and plug the product second. He mentioned it was easy to spot threads that feel disingenuous and to avoid that if possible.
4. Live chat for pre-sale
They run a live chat platform on the site and most buyers actually initiate the chat first, asking for details about features. That quick back-and-forth often flips them into paying customers once they realize that their needs are met.
It also provides them with the ability to handle objections, highlight their quick response rates & offer deals or free trials to reduce friction.
5. Free month to remove migration risk
Instead of asking people to pay right away, they offered one free month of the Pro plan. It gave time for new customers to connect accounts and test end to end without worrying about long setup processes. By the end of the month, most converted to a paid plan.
proofstories•3mo ago
Here are some of the learnings from the interview:
1. Validate with users who are paying
They never ran a landing page test or built a waitlist. Instead, they solved their own problem (posting across multiple accounts) when they realized their competitor product was charging thousands of dollars. They had friends in the e-commerce space ask for access. Those friends paid even when the product was rough. That signal was enough validation to continue to invest in this project.
2. Cold emailing
They built lists through Apollo and SEO tools, & sent thousands of emails. The format of the email was kept simple: a short intro, proof they were a legit company, and a 3-touch follow up. No long copy led to conversations. The conversion rate is currently at: ~2% from email sent to paying customer.
3. Reddit
The team spends time daily in relevant threads answering questions, giving advice, and only mentioning the product when it makes sense. They approach reddit with a value based approach, when they deliver value first and plug the product second. He mentioned it was easy to spot threads that feel disingenuous and to avoid that if possible.
4. Live chat for pre-sale
They run a live chat platform on the site and most buyers actually initiate the chat first, asking for details about features. That quick back-and-forth often flips them into paying customers once they realize that their needs are met.
It also provides them with the ability to handle objections, highlight their quick response rates & offer deals or free trials to reduce friction.
5. Free month to remove migration risk
Instead of asking people to pay right away, they offered one free month of the Pro plan. It gave time for new customers to connect accounts and test end to end without worrying about long setup processes. By the end of the month, most converted to a paid plan.
Hope this helps when going to market!