Killing SaaS - Part 2
Actually selling the software you built :)
In the first part, we saw how to build a SaaS alternative in a couple of hours using cloud code.
Great, you have a successful MVP(Open Wisprflow alternative). What’s the next step for making your product famous. The previous playbooks used to be posting on producthunt and many other saas and micro saas launch pages and reddit and hackernews and make sure you respond to every comment and keep the conversation going. It is generally at that time you realize that building a startup does not mean coding. It is everything other than coding. The SaaS playbook is well defined and we have experts in that. Build SEO, calculate ROAS etc.
But that rate of growth is not enough in this AI world. In this AI world you need to do $10 million ARR on 2 months.
That will not happen with the old playbook.
The hustlers have found a new playbook for this. Supported by the VC money.
They are calling it UGC, user generated content. It is basically influencer marketing.
You see all these posts everyday about some new AI tool and how it’s completely changed the life of so many people, that’s UGC. You would have been surprised at how frequently the disruptions are happening given the posts from these influencers. You would have assumed the whole world has changed multiple times. Well, the influencers lives certainly changed with the money they are getting from the companies :).
I have been following enough AI people and their posts to know that almost everyone is posting ads without disclosing.
So, let’s say you have $1 million dollars. How would you spend to get users for your AI product.
You would identify, the best influencers for your product(high followers, right content etc), reach out over DMs and make an offer. They will post about how great your product is and how it will kill off other products and create fomo for users.
Say your product is $10 but your are giving for $1. Let’s say you are able to get 1000 influencers. And each gets you some 10 customers. They all sign up for the discounted $10 plan. Make sure you run this campaign on a particular day. So, on that day you get 10,000 signups and and $100,000 worth of MRR or more than $1 million ARR.
Now announce you are fastest to $1 million ARR and create more fomo and reach out to more influencers and ask them to post about fastest to million dollars and suddenly you are at 10 million ARR.
Now the VCs are behind you to give you a billion dollar valuation.
Congrats!