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I had a side project that I posted on HN, and which was subsequently covered by Fast Company, Gizmodo, and a couple dozen other tech/news sites. I kept the soft
by gnicholas 3y ago
I had a side project that I posted on HN, and which was subsequently covered by Fast Company, Gizmodo, and a couple dozen other tech/news sites. I kept the software (Chrome extensions) free for a couple years, but eventually started charging, partly to prove user demand for the purpose of fundraising or convincing technology partners that end users viewed our tech as "aspirin" (which they were willing to pay for), not just "a vitamin".
After the initial batch of signups (from the free users who wanted to support further development), new customer signups were infrequent enough that I didn't have an email filter for the Stripe notifications — and my phone wasn't buzzing all the time. It was a humble beginning!
Nowadays, most of my revenue is B2B (largest customer is Blackboard), but I still do all the customer service for my B2C customers, who pay a couple bucks a month to be able to read faster.
Thanks, HN, for getting me started! [1]
1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6335784 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6335784
- mr_o47 3y agothats pretty impressive how did you landed your first B2B customer
- gnicholas 3y agoMy first B2B customer was an app dev who approached me about including my software in his reading app. He paid an initial fee, and a a revenue share. His app was eventually acquired by another company, and they're still paying customers! In general, you may have to give stuff away for free to break into a sector. Then you prove your value with the first customer or two, and use the qual/quant data from those pilots to get paying customers.
- mr_o47 3y agoYour are totally correct sometimes you gotta provide something for free to prove the value of your product