5 ms·

From SaaS idea validation in 1 day to 150+ Beta signups

147 points by phil_rcketchart 7y ago

JMTQp8lwXL 7y ago
This might work for B2C products, but B2B is too niche. I have very specific people I need to get in touch with.
- dvt 7y ago
  I'm not sure what you mean, the product showcased is B2B. Most (all?) of their clients are other startups.
  - sombremesa 7y ago
    Are those startups listed on their page actually using them? Is this something you were able to independently verify? I find it extremely hard to believe anything coming from people who have lied to their customers from day one.
xmly 7y ago
If your customer is president of each country, you can only have around 200 signups.
- skrebbel 7y ago
  Also, the sky is blue. Bam! Qed!
the_gastropod 7y ago
“We have a SaaS that is running well (staff scheduling) since a couple of years” … “I hadn’t a SaaS "running well", nor a real product ^^” "Just before turning off the light, I sent a message to my brother. I asked him to like my post to get a bit of visibility." Ultimately, I don't think these things make a lick of difference. But it seems so common for "growth hackers" to do kinda sleazy crap like this. Why's this type of behavior so common?
- hanniabu 7y ago
  Because the world rewards this type of scammy behavior. It's no different than legit blockchain projects being overlooked for vaporware projects selling pie in the sky ideas that they know they can't live up to. (I used this example because I work in the industry and it kills me to constantly see this behavior being rewarded)
  - mmsimanga 7y ago
    I agree. Some call this marketing. De Beers telling everyone that diamonds are a girls best friend.
- rkuykendall-com 7y ago
  Because people feel a need to do something, anything. And in their mind, even if it probably doesn't help, it can't hurt.
- prutschman 7y ago
  How do people rationalize this? When people start out by lying to prospective customers, do they have a plan for when they will start telling the truth instead?
- throwmeoutplz 7y ago
  What's so sleazy about asking your brother to like your Facebook post? What's so sleazy about asking for feedback on a fake product mockup? Who exactly is hurt by this?
  - docdeek 7y ago
    I don’t think it is sleazy to ask a friend or a family member to like a Facebook post. I don’t think it is sleazy to ask for feedback on a product mockup. I do think there is an issue with claiming that the mockup is already a product that has been developed and is in use - there is no need to mislead in this way.
scarejunba 7y ago
Nice way to validate the concept there. Good stuff.
jacobvm04 7y ago
Wow this is a good article! Ill try this if I ever can come up with an idea (hopefully lol).
jaclaz 7y ago
Definitely I am way too old (and grumpy) for this kind of stuff, so I will refrain from commenting on the ethics of the procedures reported, but I would be curious on how the "plan" is to get to the $10k of Monthly Recurring Revenue. I mean is that 1 customer billed 10,000 bucks per month, 10,000 customers billed 12 bucks per year or (more likely) something in the middle?
- cryptozeus 7y ago
  I think they are just being honest, this has been followed by many many companies before them. Nothing wrong with advertising and getting the clients then building product from that point. Its all free anyway, its not like they are taking people’s money upfront.
  - jaclaz 7y ago
    >Its all free anyway, its not like they are taking people’s money upfront. More than "free" right now it is either "null" or "negative". If the non-product (in Beta stage) is given to the beta-testers for free, it is actually "null", Beta testers get (for free) an incomplete/unusable/unuseful product. (we are talking of a "serious" product that in perspective is to be used to manage "serious" matters, i.e. company money) If the non-product (in Beta stage) is given to the beta-testers (for free) AND it is (or even if it was at the time the testing began) in early Beta (as this seems the status from the narrative) it is actually "negative", beta-testers are spending or have already spent their time/knowledge/experience on actually making the product (not materially, but providing ideas, asking for needed features, reporting bugs and errors, suggesting enhancements or changes, etc.). So not only the testers have spent time (if not money) on it, they actually made a bet on the whole stuff, not even knowing if the product would have been ever delivered, let alone the actual future (monthly) cost for it.
martokus 7y ago
I must be missing something. The product looks a like a cloud accounting software. Why does this not new concept need validation?
- lukevdp 7y ago
  1. It is their own take on accounting software. You make it sound like it’s silly to need validation because the category exists. But every business ever needs validation. 2. They are new to the market (and seems like they are new to business in general) and need to learn about it
JaakkoP 7y ago
This is a prime example why people don't trust people in finance, and more recently, in tech. Imagine signing up for a service like this and the first interaction with it is a lie. How can you trust some of your company's most important financial data with a "partner" like this? Disclosure: I run a financial modeling software company.
- swalsh 7y ago
  It's pretty true, he could have been more honest on the introductory post, and probably had succeeded the same. Except it would have felt like a more genuine interaction.
- gitgud 7y ago
  I work for a small startup and have never felt right about "fake it till you make it", sometimes it just goes too far. - Lie about user count - Lie about product features - Lie about your products existence? Enough with the lies...
jsploit 7y ago
I wonder if having a name so similar to RocketChat will be problematic for you. Currently, Google even suggests correcting searches for RocketChart to RocketChat.
xwdv 7y ago
Someday a savvy generation of consumers are going to catch on to these scammy “validation” schemes and it will only get harder and harder to actually get people’s attention as they grow to ignore anything that doesn’t demonstrate something more than a screenshot or video or a slick website.
dopamean 7y ago
At first I thought it was sort of a minor thing to lie about having a company that has been in operation for years but I think it's actually pretty significant here. He's pitching a product that doesn't exist yet by saying that it's worth everyone's time and money because his company has already been using it with success. That's just not true and not really fair to do to your would be first customers.
aazaa 7y ago
This appears to be long-form ad copy. It's characterized by extremely short paragraphs (often one sentence), one after another, and a winding story the reader must wade through to get to the payoff promised in the headline. I can't stand this format and associate it with scams. But many prominent marketers consider it the key to their success. The authors of the OP appear to fall into the latter category. After 1/3 of the way into the article, I don't know: - what RocketChart is or what it does - how the authors got 150 beta signups I have, however, gained numerous insights into the emotional state of the author, friends, and family, and have been blasted with memes from here to Timbuktu. If the article isn't long form ad copy, then it could use a thorough edit. Start with the actionable part and give me a high-level view of it in the first paragraph. However, I strongly suspect otherwise.
- nkkollaw 7y ago
  I find it extremely annoying.
- paulcole 7y ago
  I mean it's obviously a marketing piece. It's a blog post on a SAAS website. What else can you expect?
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- JeffreyKaine 7y ago
  The author themselves said this was their first time writing long form. I chalk most of your complaints up to this and the fact that english is his second language.
  - rhizome 7y ago
    I give some allowance for ESL, but I refuse to believe he made it all the way through school without having to write "long form," aka a book report or something.
- rhizome 7y ago
jonstaab 7y ago
A lot of negative comments here, so I'll offer my 2c. I agree that their initial post was deceptive, and inexcusably so. But the spammy tactic I think is outweighed by their total devotion to understanding their customers. Maintaining over 300 simultaneous conversations, just to get an insight into their users is a herculean, and praiseworthy, effort. The takeaways and tips are useful too, if you're thinking about starting a bootstrapped company. They're not pitched as "do this and you'll succeed", they're pitched as "here's what we did, you do you", which I appreciate. I'll borrow some and ignore others when I start my own venture. EDIT: curious why I'm being downvoted
- phil_rcketchart 7y ago
  Maybe, you were downvoted because you didn't criticize our article as all those genius guys are doing? ^^ Anyway, glad to see some useful comments that finally identify the bright side of this :) Thanks for your 2c
onion2k 7y ago
Making a one page site to 'validate your idea' by getting 'sign ups' is more a measure of how willing people are to hand over their email address than any proof that your startup could work. How many of those people will turn in to actual real money sales is the only metric that counts. If you can get 150 people to preorder and pay an actual fee based on an idea and a mockup then I'll be impressed. And it is possible...
rossmohax 7y ago
I am surprised people are disclosing their financials to third party that easily. plaintext accounting isn't very hard to use, yet it is much more powerful and safer.
- derivagral 7y ago
  There's a bit in the article where they directly ask for a CSV dump of transactions, only to get denied. What I thought was somewhat odd/ironic/funny/etc was that the thought of "hey give us your financials in a csv" was untenable, but effectively doing the same through a banking API was OK.
sails 7y ago
Seemingly well funded UK cashflow management tool fluidly [1] also validates the concept I suppose, although I'd guess that they (Fludily) are solving for what the user _needs_ and not what they _want_ (cashflow predictions vs cashflow charts) [1] https://fluidly.com/ https://fluidly.com/
stuartc842 7y ago
"hey guys, we're a successful company with a real product" - theranos

JMTQp8lwXL 7y ago

This might work for B2C products, but B2B is too niche. I have very specific people I need to get in touch with.

dvt 7y ago
I'm not sure what you mean, the product showcased is B2B. Most (all?) of their clients are other startups.
- sombremesa 7y ago
  Are those startups listed on their page actually using them? Is this something you were able to independently verify? I find it extremely hard to believe anything coming from people who have lied to their customers from day one.

xmly 7y ago

If your customer is president of each country, you can only have around 200 signups.

skrebbel 7y ago
Also, the sky is blue. Bam! Qed!

the_gastropod 7y ago

“We have a SaaS that is running well (staff scheduling) since a couple of years” … “I hadn’t a SaaS "running well", nor a real product ^^” "Just before turning off the light, I sent a message to my brother. I asked him to like my post to get a bit of visibility." Ultimately, I don't think these things make a lick of difference. But it seems so common for "growth hackers" to do kinda sleazy crap like this. Why's this type of behavior so common?

hanniabu 7y ago
Because the world rewards this type of scammy behavior. It's no different than legit blockchain projects being overlooked for vaporware projects selling pie in the sky ideas that they know they can't live up to. (I used this example because I work in the industry and it kills me to constantly see this behavior being rewarded)
- mmsimanga 7y ago
  I agree. Some call this marketing. De Beers telling everyone that diamonds are a girls best friend.
rkuykendall-com 7y ago
Because people feel a need to do something, anything. And in their mind, even if it probably doesn't help, it can't hurt.
prutschman 7y ago
How do people rationalize this? When people start out by lying to prospective customers, do they have a plan for when they will start telling the truth instead?
throwmeoutplz 7y ago
What's so sleazy about asking your brother to like your Facebook post? What's so sleazy about asking for feedback on a fake product mockup? Who exactly is hurt by this?
- docdeek 7y ago
  I don’t think it is sleazy to ask a friend or a family member to like a Facebook post. I don’t think it is sleazy to ask for feedback on a product mockup. I do think there is an issue with claiming that the mockup is already a product that has been developed and is in use - there is no need to mislead in this way.

scarejunba 7y ago

Nice way to validate the concept there. Good stuff.

jacobvm04 7y ago

Wow this is a good article! Ill try this if I ever can come up with an idea (hopefully lol).

jaclaz 7y ago

Definitely I am way too old (and grumpy) for this kind of stuff, so I will refrain from commenting on the ethics of the procedures reported, but I would be curious on how the "plan" is to get to the $10k of Monthly Recurring Revenue. I mean is that 1 customer billed 10,000 bucks per month, 10,000 customers billed 12 bucks per year or (more likely) something in the middle?

cryptozeus 7y ago
I think they are just being honest, this has been followed by many many companies before them. Nothing wrong with advertising and getting the clients then building product from that point. Its all free anyway, its not like they are taking people’s money upfront.
- jaclaz 7y ago
  >Its all free anyway, its not like they are taking people’s money upfront. More than "free" right now it is either "null" or "negative". If the non-product (in Beta stage) is given to the beta-testers for free, it is actually "null", Beta testers get (for free) an incomplete/unusable/unuseful product. (we are talking of a "serious" product that in perspective is to be used to manage "serious" matters, i.e. company money) If the non-product (in Beta stage) is given to the beta-testers (for free) AND it is (or even if it was at the time the testing began) in early Beta (as this seems the status from the narrative) it is actually "negative", beta-testers are spending or have already spent their time/knowledge/experience on actually making the product (not materially, but providing ideas, asking for needed features, reporting bugs and errors, suggesting enhancements or changes, etc.). So not only the testers have spent time (if not money) on it, they actually made a bet on the whole stuff, not even knowing if the product would have been ever delivered, let alone the actual future (monthly) cost for it.

martokus 7y ago

I must be missing something. The product looks a like a cloud accounting software. Why does this not new concept need validation?

lukevdp 7y ago
1. It is their own take on accounting software. You make it sound like it’s silly to need validation because the category exists. But every business ever needs validation. 2. They are new to the market (and seems like they are new to business in general) and need to learn about it

JaakkoP 7y ago

This is a prime example why people don't trust people in finance, and more recently, in tech. Imagine signing up for a service like this and the first interaction with it is a lie. How can you trust some of your company's most important financial data with a "partner" like this? Disclosure: I run a financial modeling software company.

swalsh 7y ago
It's pretty true, he could have been more honest on the introductory post, and probably had succeeded the same. Except it would have felt like a more genuine interaction.
gitgud 7y ago
I work for a small startup and have never felt right about "fake it till you make it", sometimes it just goes too far. - Lie about user count - Lie about product features - Lie about your products existence? Enough with the lies...

jsploit 7y ago

I wonder if having a name so similar to RocketChat will be problematic for you. Currently, Google even suggests correcting searches for RocketChart to RocketChat.

xwdv 7y ago

Someday a savvy generation of consumers are going to catch on to these scammy “validation” schemes and it will only get harder and harder to actually get people’s attention as they grow to ignore anything that doesn’t demonstrate something more than a screenshot or video or a slick website.

dopamean 7y ago

At first I thought it was sort of a minor thing to lie about having a company that has been in operation for years but I think it's actually pretty significant here. He's pitching a product that doesn't exist yet by saying that it's worth everyone's time and money because his company has already been using it with success. That's just not true and not really fair to do to your would be first customers.

aazaa 7y ago

This appears to be long-form ad copy. It's characterized by extremely short paragraphs (often one sentence), one after another, and a winding story the reader must wade through to get to the payoff promised in the headline. I can't stand this format and associate it with scams. But many prominent marketers consider it the key to their success. The authors of the OP appear to fall into the latter category. After 1/3 of the way into the article, I don't know: - what RocketChart is or what it does - how the authors got 150 beta signups I have, however, gained numerous insights into the emotional state of the author, friends, and family, and have been blasted with memes from here to Timbuktu. If the article isn't long form ad copy, then it could use a thorough edit. Start with the actionable part and give me a high-level view of it in the first paragraph. However, I strongly suspect otherwise.

nkkollaw 7y ago
I find it extremely annoying.
paulcole 7y ago
I mean it's obviously a marketing piece. It's a blog post on a SAAS website. What else can you expect?
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
JeffreyKaine 7y ago
The author themselves said this was their first time writing long form. I chalk most of your complaints up to this and the fact that english is his second language.
- rhizome 7y ago
  I give some allowance for ESL, but I refuse to believe he made it all the way through school without having to write "long form," aka a book report or something.
rhizome 7y ago

jonstaab 7y ago

A lot of negative comments here, so I'll offer my 2c. I agree that their initial post was deceptive, and inexcusably so. But the spammy tactic I think is outweighed by their total devotion to understanding their customers. Maintaining over 300 simultaneous conversations, just to get an insight into their users is a herculean, and praiseworthy, effort. The takeaways and tips are useful too, if you're thinking about starting a bootstrapped company. They're not pitched as "do this and you'll succeed", they're pitched as "here's what we did, you do you", which I appreciate. I'll borrow some and ignore others when I start my own venture. EDIT: curious why I'm being downvoted

phil_rcketchart 7y ago
Maybe, you were downvoted because you didn't criticize our article as all those genius guys are doing? ^^ Anyway, glad to see some useful comments that finally identify the bright side of this :) Thanks for your 2c

onion2k 7y ago

Making a one page site to 'validate your idea' by getting 'sign ups' is more a measure of how willing people are to hand over their email address than any proof that your startup could work. How many of those people will turn in to actual real money sales is the only metric that counts. If you can get 150 people to preorder and pay an actual fee based on an idea and a mockup then I'll be impressed. And it is possible...

rossmohax 7y ago

I am surprised people are disclosing their financials to third party that easily. plaintext accounting isn't very hard to use, yet it is much more powerful and safer.

derivagral 7y ago
There's a bit in the article where they directly ask for a CSV dump of transactions, only to get denied. What I thought was somewhat odd/ironic/funny/etc was that the thought of "hey give us your financials in a csv" was untenable, but effectively doing the same through a banking API was OK.

sails 7y ago

Seemingly well funded UK cashflow management tool fluidly [1] also validates the concept I suppose, although I'd guess that they (Fludily) are solving for what the user _needs_ and not what they _want_ (cashflow predictions vs cashflow charts) [1] https://fluidly.com/ https://fluidly.com/

stuartc842 7y ago

"hey guys, we're a successful company with a real product" - theranos