Thread by @mikestrives

🎉 Last month, we've reached $20,000 MRR with our SaaS startup.

Here's how we did it 👇

Let's break it down into 2 parts:

The Road to $10,000 MRR

And

The Road to $20,000 MRR

The Road to $10,000 MRR

Before we launched, we already acquired some paying users and we could add the first MRR because of:

✅ Validating the idea

Really simple with a landing page and a sign-up form. Only after we got over 100 signups, we started working on the product.

✅ Private beta launch + paying beta users

We were in private beta for 3 months. During this period, we listened carefully to the feedback of our users and started building core features for them to solve their problems. This actually already resulted in the first upgrades.

✅ Narrowed down our target audience

One thing I can highly recommend is to narrow down your target audience. Think big, start small.

The big advantage of a narrow audience is that all of your output, such as the copy on your site, can be focused on one particular type of user.

✅ Listened to the feedback of our users

This was key as well. By listening to the feedback of our users - of course by using @upvoty - we could easily decide what to build next based on the needs of our customers.

We tracked popularity for new features:

✅ Customer support

From the very start, we tried to form relationships with our customers and talked to them to really understand their needs and problems.

One thing I did was sending personal emails to every new sign-up.

✅ Leverage on the name of your competitors

One of the smartest things to do, if you're just starting out, is to leverage the names of your competitors.

One of the things we did was launching 'alternative to' ads in Google which resulted in people switching to our product.

✅ Leverage your product

One of the most effective strategies of referral marketing was actually our own product. Simply by just adding a 'Powered by @upvoty' link in our product.

The Road to $20,000 MRR

While a couple of things still apply (and we'll never stop doing), such as:

✅ Listening to feedback
✅ Competitor ads
✅ Personal customer support
✅ Leveraging our product

A couple of new things brought us to the next revenue milestone:

✅ Building for bigger teams

We built features specifically designed for teams to attract bigger companies. We also launched a couple of integrations (which also resulted in attracting new customers who discovered our product through those marketplaces)

✅ Branding

We are starting to make name for ourselves and thus we can do more with our brand. We launched a new blog and newsletter called 'Upvoty on Product' (resulted in over 2,000 sign ups!) and soon we'll launch a podcast, YouTube channel, and more.

✅ Product upgrades & Pricing

We launched new features on higher-tier plans, which resulted in upgrades from customers that were on the lowest.

Besides having more revenue, one of the biggest advantages of getting more people to higher tiers is that they're becoming more loyal.

👉 Check out my latest vlog in which I'll explain all the steps we took in order to grow to $20,000/Month: