We think that we built a pretty polished "beta" for our web app. We know we are still missing a bunch of features.
The issue is that my partners and I are not sure if we should continue or shut it down. We have very few paying customers, almost all feedback we get is POSITIVE.
We have not done any marketing though, so part of us feels that we might be killing it too soon. On the flip side, it's been several months why don't we have more paid subscribers (i.e. more validation)?
Should we invest more money/time/effort into marketing? Product development? Or call it quits?
How do we know if it's time to pull the plug?
As a part of the MVP and customer research phase, and mostly because it is quite relevant to our intended customer base, we did some market research by talking to potential customers regarding the use of time tracking software.
We got feedback that most potential customers looked at using time-tracking software but almost all of them did not find suitable tools because of lacking integration to other software.
Time tracking itself appears to be quite worthless as long as it does not have export functionality (in a commonly used format) or integration.
Just my humble opinion based on our research, may or may not be of any interest for you :)
Ads really suck at our pricing point. Google & Bing are $5+ CPC for most of the main time tracking keywords. Facebook ads were horrible from my experience (and none of the other major time tracking tools are running them).
I don't really have any advice, but do want to wish you the best of luck!
I love that I get to chat with customers and see what really are their pain points (something devs rarely ever get to do).
If I can double the MRR and relocate outside of Vancouver, I can most likely go full-time.
- $300 negative a month is very, very little cost for running a SaaS. You have fixed cost up front.
- No marketing means you have not really started yet "for real".
- Any real traction takes at least 3 years.
- Having a product is step 1 in the 100 step SaaS trajectory.
You just need to take a break. Get some perspective. Then you will see you have just started out and it is waaaaay to early to give in.
From my experience: don't build anything for profit/public unless you have a marketing/sales plan/person. I've seen quite a few ideas fizzle out because all involved were working on the product and none were able/willing to work on getting people/companies to use the product.
If after that time, traction isn't happening: adjust prices or make the offering clearer. If that doesn't work, then pivot/try something else. When/if it gets to $1-2k+/month, then it's probably worth selling to someone for $20-25k and not just apoptosisizing it. It can take as long as 10 years or never for something really good and ahead of its time to catch on with insufficient hustling. HUSTLE! :)
And for heaven's sake, don't throw away a good team if it vibes and flows just because one project doesn't work out immediately.
1) Try to add voice interface (e.g. alexa). 2) Try to sell it specifically to professional users who care about time tracking (e.g. lawyers). I.e. in a non scalable way. 3) Increase the price.
Thanks!
Stop developing and start selling.
Also your price is too low.
Advertise on Facebook. Target business professionals.
Marketing has been very minimal. A couple of blog posts, a few tweets/fb posts/linked in posts/etc, a Show HN post - i think that's about it.
if not how much are you bleeding?
I'm ignoring for the moment that there is a cost to servicing each customer - you might need to factor that in to you breakeven calcs.