secondmod

Very interesting. Kind of similar to https://dialworks.io

Looks like link was not parsed in your post so here is a clickable link (to save you from copy-paste): https://helpwise.io

Great insights! Which traffic source converted the best for you?

Will bunch of Cessnas do?

50k to 150k per plane

https://www.globalair.com/aircraft-for-sale/Cessna-172

- Outsource non-critical tasks using upwork or odesk for under $1k

- Raise some from http://www.indie.vc/ and then, upto 30% of your ARR as debt. Repayment done as x% of your rev.

If you think, these two steps will charge you up to build & grow this business to 10m or 100m revenue biz, then don't sell.

Else, $12m is pretty much FU money. Buy 250 bitcoins, buy bunch of rental properties, invest in your health & fitness. And, travel a bit to come up with the next idea.

I have sold two companies in last 5 years. But this time, I'm building bootstrapped business with an aim to remain bootstrapped till we touch $100m ARR i.e. building for long term

All the best. There is no right answer to this so, in future, never regret whatever route you pick at this juncture.

Thank you so much. Please do give a shot & share your feedback.

Hey Dave,

It already has number of business operation functionalities like: - Call center functionality or Ring Groups (you can setup who all should get a call when say a sales number is called) - Availability feature (you can set your office timings & if someone calls you after that, he/she is directed to voicemail option without disturbing you) - You can sent another preference like - if you are not available to take call, call will get forwarded to other team member, if he/she is not available it will be forwarded to another team member and finally to voicemail - SMSes option is alway available. For users who have used Stripe's Atlast program and formed a company in US while operating from SE Asia or South America or Europe, they can use Justcall to manage mobile banking (get bank texts or call verification etc - most banks require US number) - We are building this Phone Tree option where more customization will be given to users - Also, building IVR system to let users setup IVR layer on incoming calls. Businesses will be able to deliver information to users like Ticket status (say Airline or Movie hall), Account balance (say Uber or Pizza Shop) without having someone to answer such calls for them - CRM integrations are already in place and we are adding more CRM integrations (one in every 2-3 days)

Plus, we are very customer focused and will be all ears to your feedbacks, ideas and feature suggestions.

Whenever I build apps, along with giving best possible product, my focus is always on K-factor (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-factor_(marketing)).

Viral Factor, K = No. of invites X Conversion rate

As long as, K >1, your app is growing. And best way I figured out to do that was to make people tweet and make that tweet provoking enough to let her users click on that tweet. Example, I encourage people to boast about number of repins or followers they got because of Pinwoot and tweet reads something like : 1) I got 954 repins on #Pinterest using @Pinwoot. Add your pin here https://pinwoot.com

2) Try @Pinwoot.com to get free followers on #Pinterest https://pinwoot.com

Tweet Copy 1 performed 267% better than Tweet Copy 2 in getting new users.

Thanks for sharing. I wrote similar post here on HN sometime back, would like to share here to add value :

After 30 days of launch, I managed to get 7000+ active users, about 100 paying users and $6129 in revenues.

My learnings : 1. Build your first main feature really well

2. Dont launch with 100s of features, keep the product simple

3. Make sure to have some influencers on your board as users from day one and make them super happy

4. Use tweet button very smartly - this is make or break up for your side project

5. Dont hurry up into making money, let your users ask you for more feature and then roll out paid features.

Shared here : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5600281

Big fan of you and Buffer. Thanks for the tip. I am actually focusing on that now. I don't have much idea about guess blogging, any tips on that like how to pitch a blog for guest blog?

Thanks. I was always confused about my email's subject line but the post your mentioned above gave me some idea. I approached around 7 bloggers in last 4 days with personalized pitch with different subject lines but didn't even get a reply.

I tell them 4 things : 1. How I found them (like read your post regarding Pinterest tips on XYZ.com) 2. What is Pinwoot? And why we started? - 5 lines 3. Traction info - 2 lines 4. About me and my cofounder in 2 lines.

I will be using tips from link you gave. Lets see how it goes.

We tried with both Tweet it or Share on Facebook. 83% people clicked on tweet it only button. 12% clicked on both and rest 5% on Share on FB only. All the new users that we got from this "Got_Followers" social sharing where from twitter only. Yes, zero converted from Facebook posts. Hence, we decided to stick with twitter only.

Another test we ran on our Facebook page (http://facebook.com/pinwoot) was to have a tab called "Try Now" which was basically connected to our Facebook connect app - that was great, many many conversions. So, we are still using it.

My answer would be No for now because yes, traction is great but as a programmer(who loves hacking to find solutions to different pains/demands in market), my challenges will go lower with time because there are very few other features that we can build for this app, hence I don't see it motivating enough to focus all my attention on this. I may hire someone full time to take care of daily work at Pinwoot to give myself ample time to keep trying better ideas that I can see myself working on for next few years atleast.

Thanks. As I mentioned in the post, I made sure that everyone sees the benefit of this product within 30-60 minutes on the platform (algorithm pushes new users on top of list to get them few followers quickly)

I waited for users to start asking for some extra features or more seeds/credit points (people get 15 seeds to start with). I also clearly mentioned that we have two things in pipeline 1.) Another useful free feature 2.) Pro Accounts as low as $15(will be available for only first 100)

So, by first week, people had tested the fruits of being on pinwoot, so they started queuing up for pro accounts.

In 2nd week, I allowed people to start buying seeds for as low as $5 and maximum $29. So, my users are buying those seeds on regular basis for last 2.5 weeks. I haven't launched pro accounts yet - once those are launched, I may see monthly rev at around $15K.

In nutshell, make that one feature super awesome but add a limit to it such that people get addicted to it and in want for more, they pay you.

We have to engage/activate our existing users to get more users. For that twitter is the best mode.

On signup, we request users to tweet (just a request) - about 10% new users to do this tweet. The language of this tweet was selected after number of (sort of) A/B testing with different texts.

In the dashboard, when ever a user gets more than 10 new followers, we start showing a message that provokes them to share a message like "Woot! I got X #Pinterest followers from Pinwoot for free. If you are on Pinterest, you must try it". This tweet is resulting in 15% of new signups daily.