€1,400 b-strapped prod that’s disrupting the market, 250 customers before launch

http://blog.bullethq.com/irish-business-builds-a-product-for-e1400-thats-disrupting-the-market-with-250-customers-signed-up-before-launch/

by connorp • 14 years ago

13 38 14 years ago

blog.bullethq.com

dclaysmith• 14 years ago

Link from your blog post goes to https://www.bullethhq.com (extra h)!

connorp18• 14 years ago

Thanks for the heads up - working now :)

https://www.bullethq.com/

corkill• 14 years ago

Awesome, great problem to tackle.

Nice demo process!

You might want to test different copy for "Get started in 5 seconds, no credit card, no signup" and the button at top of page, when I read it had to do a double take if your telling me I need a CC to signup or if it's not required.

Just saw on pricing page it says "No credit card or signup required." but didn't read that first time around. Or maybe it was a split tested page!

connorp18• 14 years ago

Thanks Man. My co-founder will be pumped the demo took a long time to build.

fiskah just said the same about the copy - I think we'll change it. It's mean to be the opp, I hate having to sign up to try stuff out. Doh!

evilswan• 14 years ago

Hard to imagine how they arrived at the total cost of €1,400 - what about the hours of work that went into the web app and iPhone app, and all the visual design? Are they calculating their hourly rate as insignificant?

Product looks good, but this €1,400 figure is meaningless.

connorp18• 14 years ago

Hey, the €1,400 amount is made up of every out going we had in the company. That included the logo design, to company formation which is about 300 euro in Ireland. I'm not a designer but I learned how to design so we could build it, we worked hard in the evenings and weekends to get the product built. So what we're really trying to say to people is you can do it. Sure it doesn't include our time, but running it so tight is a reflection of how significant we value our time. Everything we did, piece of copy we wrote had a time cost, that made us focus on what people wanted. So to me the €1,400 means everything. Hope that makes sense :)

femto• 14 years ago

What's the position on liability if the program generates erroneous taxation information and a (user) company gets hit with tax penalties?

connorp18• 14 years ago

Hey, the way Revenue work is your tax liability lies with the individual. So we've actually no way of underwriting that that goes for an Accountant to product. But like all good open companies we know if that was to happen our business would be dead. So ultimately that's the best way to underwrite your product we feel.

Bullet got built in the first place cause my co-founder John was paying an Accountant quite a bit of money and he failed to file his returns, resulting in an audit. Bullet Automates all the tax returns so to miss it you'd need to actively ignore it. Hope that answers your question.

philjohn• 14 years ago

In most places you are responsible for the accuracy of any returns sent to the tax authorities, not your accountant or creator of a software package.

stevoski• 14 years ago

disrupt: verb

* drastically alter or destroy the structure of (something)

I think this word is being overused. 250 customers for a new accounting product is not disrupting.

connorp18• 14 years ago

Hey, your right 250 users isn't going to knock the ball out of the ball park. But remember what the product is, it's an accounting product and that puts people into a coma with bodrum. So getting 250 on to the application with no marketing in less then a month I think sends a message that we've built something that people want, it's disruptive cause the 3000 other accounting products have all just copied Sage. When I was designing the UI - I hadn't looked at one competitor.

radicalbyte2• 14 years ago

Interesting. How long did it take you to develop your MVP? Did you build the system together with many customers?

kreeger• 14 years ago

Design or number of users regardless, people really need to stop using the word 'disrupt'. It's one of the top reasons I steer clear of TechCrunch.

iambot2• 14 years ago

There are already people doing this In Edinburgh where I'm based, with far more impressive numbers than 250 users pre-launch, FreeAgent (http://www.freeagent.com) If you think these guys are going well you should check them out. They actually DO have the figures to back up being called "disruptive". I don't mean to be negative with regards Bullet, just that when I read the post I thought wow only 250 and they're "disruptive". The guys at FreeAgent are doing a spectacular job and the funding they received and users they're pulling only serve to confirm it.

Tyrannosaurs2• 14 years ago

That's different, not disruptive.

It's a nice looking product, great price and not being Sage is (in my limited experience) a good thing, but you're a long way off of disruptive.

Out of interest it's applicable for just Ireland at the moment? Any plans to expand out?

fiskah• 14 years ago

Writing a headline such as "Irish business builds a product for €1,400 that’s disrupting the market, with 250 customers signed up before launch." about yourself just makes me leave the site immediately.

connorp18• 14 years ago

That's a shame, we didn't want to hire any PR company. We just want to be ourselves. So sorry if it p*ssed you off. We're just learning as we go, again we thought it was an interesting story to share with people who love making ideas real but don't have the cash.

mpeg2• 14 years ago

a little feedback in case the founders are reading this:

when I saw the "Try now" button with the line "no credit card - no signup" I first understood it to mean exactly the opposite than they intend it to :)

connorp18• 14 years ago

Thanks - We we're wondering about that. You know what it took us a month to build the demo tech - so you could save it as a live session. Any suggestions???

mpeg2• 14 years ago

As an engineer, I'm probably not the best person to ask about product copy ! But maybe even changing to a comma like further down the site? When I see - it makes me think there is a correlation between what is being said :)

Still, it might just be my nitpicking; the product looks great, I have "suffered" Sage myself and this looks like a simpler option for small businesses

garethsprice• 14 years ago

How did you get 250 users interested and pre-subscribed without spending a ton on marketing? (Really interested as I've built a few small apps that never go anywhere as I'm not much of a marketing guy).

Bootstrapping a product for such a low cost and having a high* number of users interested before launch is inspiring - good luck with the launch!

* - I know someone will come and say 250 isn't "high" compared to Facebook or something, but 250 paying customers is a nice income stream and quite impressive for a low-cost, bootstrapped product built as a side project from your consulting gigs.

connorp18• 14 years ago

Well Gareth, we didn't have any money to spend on marketing, and we're just learning to do it ourselves. Not to mention we're in a saturated market full of big guns. The biggest thing to learn about marketing your products I think is nobody really cares about the product they care about what it does for them or how it helps them. When you build something you're in love with it, but sadly you're the only one to think so. So we try and find out what people hate and twist it. From having people come to our current site we know the tag 'Automated Accounts', line doesn't mean anything to them. So we're changing it to Hello Bullet, Goodbye Accountant. If you need an hand with your app's I'm happy to help out a fellow startup. Follow me on @peterconnor and we can DM emails if that helps.

mise• 14 years ago

Fair play to ye, I look forward to trying it out.

> This allows its customers to remove their accountants and reduce their accounting fees, saving them €1,500.

My accounting fees are more around €300, so it depends on context how much you save.

€12/month is around €150/year, which also needs to be taken into account.

One might also want an accountant to check your return and tax credits and that type of stuff, even if using your app. I would be surprised if it removes accounting fees in many cases.

Great work, though, keep it up.

connorp18• 14 years ago

Thanks. The fee is taken for limited companies. What our thinking is. Don't spend 2k or 1,500 on an accountant to do your book keeping and fill out forms for you. If you're going to spend that kind of money spend it on a tax advisor etc. But there are a lot of business out there that spend 2k on their accountant and see them once a year, and 2k could help a lot of comps at the moment. Thanks again for checking us out.

muxxa• 14 years ago

Bug: site allows me to add a 'Who paid you?' before any invoices are created. Then when I create an invoice, it loses the 'Who paid you' info I entered.

What I'd really like is to have all my expense invoices set up to be sent to myaccount123@bullethq.com, and have your software parse out the details (VAT etc.) and arrange it nicely by date and company. It's currently easier for me to log into, e.g. my web hosting provider, pull up a list of invoices for the last year and copy/paste them into a spreadsheet. Your approach would have me manually enter info from dozens upon dozens of invoices one at a time into your webapp (using the 'Incoming Bill' form).

https://getitkeepit.com/ are an Irish company that parse incoming bills from an (admittedly small) number of utility companies, maybe you could look at something similar?

connorp18• 14 years ago

Hi, idea of 'Who paid you', is for people that do work then invoice later, say you have a regular client. I've just tried to replicate that error and can't - can you drop me a mail on peter at bullethq.com.

Yep we're 100% with you but it's tricky to build but on our list. What you see now it the MVP for saying good bye to your accountant.

We have GetItKeep it on our list but I think they're changed direction and are working in the US.

Pete

johnnyleitrim• 14 years ago

Hi muxxa,

The site will let you get to the "Who paid you" money in page, but it won't record any of the details unless you select which invoices the payment is for - that's why the details appear to be missing when you go back to that screen after having created the invoices.

Stay tuned for our iPhone app (and email service) which will be able to suck in your invoices and they are entered automatically for you, so you won't have to do any of the tedious typing.

€1,400 b-strapped prod that’s disrupting the market, 250 customers before launch

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