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    Startups 10K users Reddit. I think we did it.

    December 09, 2017

    Startups 10K users Reddit. I think we did it.

    10K users Reddit. I think we did it.

    Posted: 08 Dec 2017 04:29 AM PST

    Hey /r/startups,

    I have been here for a long time...4 years is a long time, right? I don't spend that much time on here these days though.

    Anyways, I wanted to share my story with you guys in hopes that if you are where I was when I started you might relate to this and get some motivation.

    I created a startup with a friend in the social media niche 2 years ago. Our pricing was high (starting at $100 a month) and we did not have the skills to sell it. Lack of sales eventually affected our friendship and startup went down.

    I then saw another player in the market, they were doing a part of what we were doing but they were successful. I realized that our problem may be that we had a lot of features - good features nevertheless - but only useful to pro marketers and not SMEs who we were chasing.

    I decided to create something simple. I looked at our competitor, did my research to see what were the chief complaints of their users and set out to build my own startup.

    Lo and behold, in little over one year we have crossed 10,000 users. We have a freemium plan so not everyone is paying but we are able to keep our lights on without worrying for a long time.

    Lessons

    1. Try to remove everything people do not want. It will make it easier for them to use your product. Always remember that you know your product inside out but your customers don't and they probably never will. They know enough of every product they use and that is how it will be.

    2. Don't shy away from taking inspiration from what is out there in the market. As long as you can do something better, you are fine. For instance, our competitor did not have mobile apps and they did not allow posting video on social media. We have those features and now they are catching up. Well, there is a lot more but you get the idea.

    3. Free is a good way to get people to try it. However, don't assume that your free users owe you anything. If your product is not good or needs improvement your customers will tell you. Accept it and improve.

    4. Make sure you touch base with your users for first few days and after that as well but at a lower frequency. Make it easy for them to give you feedback. Have a Facebook group as they seem to like it.

    5. Some people will try to misuse your free plan. Do whatever you can to avoid them. Add checks in your system to avoid those who misuse it. In our case we do not let anyone create multiple accounts. We check this by making sure they haven't added any of their social profiles to our system under any other account.

    6. Some people are nightmares. Don't lose your cool. It may take longer for them to understand what is clear to you. Work with them as long as you can. However, some people are dicks and when you know that's what is going on tell them to go away politely. We had a user who wanted to manage multiple social accounts by creating multiple free accounts. She gave us tons of reasons to prove why our checks to avoid duplicate accounts are a bad idea. I knew it was a cheapster and thus I let them know that we will let her know if we change our policies based on her rationals.

    At the end, there is only so far you can go if you don't make money. If no one is using it, there is probably something wrong with your product. If people are not ready to pay for it, you don't have anything worthwhile or you are chasing the wrong people.

    Feel free to ask any questions you may have.

    submitted by /u/prostartme
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    Thinking of quitting a startup I'm running as we raise our first round.

    Posted: 08 Dec 2017 01:14 PM PST

    Looking for some outside advice for a situation I've "fallen into" in the past year or so.

    Since early 2016 I've consulted for a wealthy individual for a technology product that they envisioned. In many ways it is a person with a lot of money and an idea -- but zero experience in building a tech product, or managing a startup (I will call them the founder for sake of clarity). I have a longstanding relationship with this person for many years. From the beginning, the "startup" was funded by the individual, and everyone involved has been contractors, myself included. My background is in business development and operations and over the past 24 months my role has expanded to where I am now leading the company. The "founder" has continued to bankroll us us to date.

    Since May we have been seeking outside funding for the first time ever. This was an attempt to really set up the company as an independent entity. Our move to find investors is part of the reason that my role expanded -- I essentially became the "figurehead" of the company -- the "founder" in a way. I was comfortably with this at first -- as it was discussed by all involved parties as a transition between the wealthy individual (more of an investor at this point) to myself, who would run the day to day of the company, hire a CTO, staff up etc.

    To clarify -- we had many discussions between myself and the original founder about the "transition of power" and it was made abundantly clear that the OG founder was stepping back and wouldn't be involved in day to day.

    For many reasons we did not close the first capital round as quickly as we anticipated. We are pre-revenue, don't have an internal tech team etc. We took a step back over the past 3 months and have made solid strides on the product and customer side. Over the past few weeks we've had more success in getting committed capital, in light of the progress the company has made.

    The largest issue is that the original "founder" has continued to influence the company and team members, sometimes behind my back. This includes reaching out to individual team members with instructions and tasks. It includes pitching potential customers and making promises to clients that we are not able to fulfill. It includes reaching out to outside companies to create partnerships. All of this is done without true insight into the daily activity of the startup itself, or even a core understanding of the product. I have a very small equity stake in the company.

    I have serious misgivings about my ability to run this company with continued interference from the original founder / investor. And I can't even necessarily blame them because it is truly "their baby." But as the company is close to bringing in its first round of outside investment, I am less comfortable "running" a company that I'm not truly in control of. As I have misgivings about this I feel responsible for making a decision now, before we close the round. The difficulty of making this decision is that if I decide to not join the company now -- I may destroy the relationship with the original founder, destroy relationships that I've built with our investors, and could also potentially derail the investment round itself.

    The original founder isn't based in the same area as I am so I am considering how I may discuss this with them. I would rather not do it via phone etc. but may have to. It is a difficult decision and a big one to make, any feedback from someone who has been in a similar position would be appreciated. Thank you all in advance.

    submitted by /u/mdh264
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    Where are my app(iOS) users after the download?

    Posted: 08 Dec 2017 11:23 PM PST

    Hi There, This question might not be relevant to all the folks but I thought it would be a good place to ask for help.

    We have launched our iOS app a month ago. The stats in the app store suggest that we have 17 downloads for our app, so far. But the problem is, we are not seeing the new users in our database as supposed to. The users have to log in to use the app, which pings our backend services with their email and first name.

    Could it be possible that our users are downloading and not logging into the app? We have tested extensively to make sure that the login is working (we use google sign-in) correctly. We still cannot understand what is happening to our users.

    Any help would be really appreciated.

    submitted by /u/Yamuna522201
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    Just launched my beta. When will I know if what I built is something people want?

    Posted: 08 Dec 2017 08:44 AM PST

    Spent seven months by myself developing and designing my MVP. I released it on a subreddit and immediately got a lot of traffic, and a few hundred signups on the first day. A month later only about 10% of those users kept using the service and the traffic has all but dried up.

    Until now I haven't spent any money on advertising so I made a Facebook and Adwords account to start getting some metrics for clicks and conversions. I ran these for a few days. The results were pretty depressing. Out of $80 spent and 131 clicks I only got 1 conversion (app is still free). I'm not a marketer, but I spent a lot of time researching how to properly advertise so the campaigns were pretty targeted to my user base.

    Is this an early sign I may have built something people don't need or want? How long should I keep spending money and grinding until I realized my startup is just not going to work?

    submitted by /u/Pr1meNumber7
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