Launching a Product with a $50,000 Budget and No Customers
Hi there!
It all started in August 2022 when I had an idea that I thought could make managing contacts easier. Having been in the entrepreneurial community for a while, I was aware of the common struggle of keeping track of one's contacts, and I wanted to create a solution. So, I decided to take the plunge and use my own money to create an app.
It was a huge learning experience for me and my team, as none of us had experience in mobile and cross-platform development. After 5 months of hard work, we finally launched the personal CRM for contact management and networking called Ordemio.com.
Now, I'm faced with the challenge of making this project succeed. It's cost me $50k of my own money to make it happen, and to keep it running each month it costs $8500 for development, hosting and services.
To make this project more than just a side-hustle, I need to make it profitable, but I'm not sure how to do that. That's why I'm reaching out to the Indie Hackers community for help. I'm looking for feedback and first users to make it better and more valuable.
If you’ve got a contact list of 1000+ contacts and are struggling with managing it, or you’re already using another solution like Notion, Airtable or a different app, I’d really appreciate a 20-minute call with you.
I’d love to learn more about you and get your feedback. It would really help me understand how to make the product better and more valuable.
If you’re interested, you can book a slot here: https://calendly.com/ordemio/20min
Any comments or feedback would be great too. Thank you so much!
Hi, your running costs are too high especially for saas that still starting and traffic is low. Unless the majority of the money is for maintenance and new features. I would advice implementing new features yet until you got customers and feedback
My first advice: advertise the correct link.
I mean you took the effort to write the post, double-check by reading it and checking the URL.
Yep. That.
@DmitriiChistov Congrats on launching a solution!
I am caught in your sentence "I was aware of the common struggle of keeping track of one's contacts, and I wanted to create a solution". It seems to me that you did not really spend enough time in "the problem space" and validate your idea before jumping into "the solution space".
Have you heard of the term "Innovator's bias"?
It means building solutions before even understanding the real customer need.
People do not buy products, they buy solutions to their problems.
Yes, keeping track of contacts is a problem however, you may need to ask yourself a few questions first;
---Is the problem big enough for these customers? As @nihalhassan mentions, individuals tend to solve some of their problems with free solutions whereas businesses pay for the solutions/tools.
---Is the problem important enough for these customers? As an individual, I have a problem of keeping track of my contacts however I am using LinkedIN to solve that problem and it works for me.
--- Are your customers happy with the solutions that they currently use to solve that problem? There are many solutions that tend to solve the same problem. What will you do differently to convince the users to churn and pay you instead of other solutions?
---How satisfied are your customers with the current solutions? As @AEsakova points out, there are already giant solutions in the market. If a customer is not satisfied with the current solutions, then this person may be willing to adopt a new one.
If satisfaction with the current solutions is high and the importance of the problem is low, then it means there is no business opportunity.
Given that you already spent $50K, it may be a good time to think about a possible PIVOT. But this time with a real idea validation mechanism. Ping me if you need more help on this.
Hi Ilke, just wanted to say that I agree with your comment. Thanks for this helpful content. It got me thinking whether this also applies to a solution you're just building for yourself. We developed a small tool that connects storeleads.app to Apollo.io, so that we always have new email addresses of our target group ready. Now, should I have researched first how other people are managing the storeleads leads currently? Maybe there would have been a solution, maybe we could have spent the development time (1 week) more efficiently.
Regarding the business case we are trying to sell: In this case we are completely relying on B2B interviews and trying to get pilot customers before we invest time in an MVP.
@nearmint Moritz,
---Can you tell me a bit about what problem you observed in the B2B space that motivated you to build a solution?
And when you think about the problem;
--- Is this a problem among the storeleads.app users?
--- Is this a problem among Apollo.io users?
--- Would these problems be prevalent even if storeleads.app and/or Apollo.io go out of business?
We're looking at automated reimbursement for lost packages. Claiming insurance money from logistics companies for our clients. Our current target group for this are B2C businesses, but there are probably also B2B businesses who send a lot of packages.
In fact, we could contact fulfillment companies, they send loads of packages and they might also use or be interested in storeleads/apollo, so they might be interested in the tool we crafted for ourselves. So far we have not done this, because there are few fulfillment companies, so we want to have at least an MVP prior to burning through those.
And yes, the problem we're tackling is completely seperate from storeleads/Apollo, so it would still be prevalent if they go out of business. Would you give those companies the tool for free if they signed up for our automated reimbursement service? Or what are you getting at?
@nearmint Let me try to repeat what I understand.
Business Idea 1: You want to automate the reimbursement process for lost packages. While doing that, you have not really discovered who will be your early adopters; B2C or B2B.
Business Idea 2: While you are working on Business Idea 1, you developed a lead scraping tool connecting storeleads.app to Apollo.io. Now you wonder if this tool can turn into a single product.
Did I catch you right?
The question was not whether business idea 2 can be turned into a single product. It was more along the lines of: Maybe we shouldn't have developed business idea 2 AT ALL. Even though we have developed it for ourselves, we should have researched first if there is another service that is already providing the same thing. That way we probably could have saved precious time. :)
@nearmint Coming from a business background, looking for a service/tool first is a no-brainer for me. Why would I spend time of my development team for something that I can buy for 19.99 USD/month? :)
Exactly! My cofounder just surprised us with the tool one day.
I can't even get to your site because of errors, so...
Some blunt advice here,
Step 1 - Fire your tech team
Step 2 - Talk to users who might face the problem you are trying to solve. Don't build yet
Step 3 - If users say no, find another niche then another
Step 4 - See if the number of paying users would be large enough to make a business sense out of it.
Your tech is too costly & they have made an unoptimized tech for you. $8500 is way too much.
8,500 /month? Can you explain what are you paying for exactly??
As someone how has also burned more than 50K EUR on a company with only 10K in revenue I can feel your pain.
Some comments have already been done, but what I would do:
Reduce your burning rate, i imagine the 8.500 K must include some kind of developer, just stop development. Regarding infra, invest in reducing you hosting costs. Maybe if you can detail your burn rate, we can help more there.
B2C is quite hard. and 10 USD per month is not that much. Keep this in mind. Your user is very generic. Maybe you need to find some kind of niche, for example executives that don't have time to organize their contacts? Parents? I don't know, but try to find a niche, it will be much easier to reach them.
Look into the real pain point, and adjust your product and pricing according to this. Rembember that there is already Gmail, that costs 2.99 and has plenty of features besides contact management.
Don't be ashamed of accepting defeat. I should have accepted defeat a year earlier and I might have saved 15K EUR xD
$50,000 is alot of money to just waste away on a shot in the dark. You should test your idea with potential users way before ever spending that much money.
I believe Mark Cuban told Kevin Hart that he started his internet radio company back in the day with $7,000.
I would say you NEED to lower your burn rate. 50k $ for getting V1 is too much and 8.5k$ a month also.
Another thing is to validate as quickly as possible with potential customers: think about - where are exactly can you find people who have 1.000+ contacts (or have the problem you are solving)
It seems like you want to enter into a highly competitive market where the cost of acquiring a customer is very high. In order to grab a share of the market from existing giants, you need to have something that they don't, something that complements what they already offer. Do you have something that your competitors don't?
Very rarely does any tech cost $8500 a month to run without notable scale. Gut feeling is that someone has taken you for a ride.
I'd be interested in seeing what exactly was built for you for that 50k and what exactly the breakdown of that 8500 is
Why are the running costs so high???
Sorry, but 10 dollars a month is ridiculous for an app that doesn't much more than Google Contacts can do for free.
And I also do not really get why you need a team to create such a small app. It could by many developers be done besides their 9-5 job.
Finally, as already many others said, $8500 as running costs is really a factor 20 to high, absolutely for a small app as yours is.
Just a quick marketing idea: make sure that when new users upload their contact list, you ask for permission to invite them too into your app. This would make it more viral, that's what LinkedIn did too.
Did it cost you $50k for the MVP? Starting with an MVP and validating with customers are the best way to build product in a lean and cost-efficient manner. Having developed a full-fledged app will only cost you more if you are to re-do certain functionalities which most likely you will.
The redirect doesn't work. I am a growth marketing guy and can give you some tips. Tho I am shocked you've spent so much money without MVPing first. Feel free to email me at [email protected]
As others have said, I think your starting costs are way too high. Also curious, what have you done for marketing?
Target a niche.
Most indiehackers or people in tech would give it multiple thoughts before paying for a product that's some big names are offering for free. They will think about privacy too.
But this can be breakthrough product for other less-digitalized folks/industries, i.e. sales people in non-tech. On top of that, if AI is integrated and that can help to automate boring tasks - that's a win-win.
Know their pain-points, partner-up with industry specific micro-influencers, request them to talk about/endorse your product.
Hey Dimitrii,
That's a high burn rate you've got there.
Startups fail because they run out of cash.
You more than most people on the website need to find breakthrough growth FAST.
Problem is though that selling your product is the worst way to do so - instead I'd suggest using the same strategy that another CRM company used, Salesforce, to become a juggernaut in the industry. I've talked about it here quite a lot but you can check out this website (www.thebluntmethod.com) to get a full breakdown of what it is and see the Salesforce case study (amongst others).
Best
Chris
I would stop development, and put all your energy into getting in front of your target market. If you don't know how to define and reach your target market, then I'd get clear on that before anything else.
Turn it into some kind of a sales app for enterprises, dude. People do not pay for SaaS, businesses do. There are very few personal apps that are making money (Calm, etc.) and even the ones which do make money, have had to raise a ton of capital to do it. Other bootstrapped examples (Hey, Superhuman, etc.) you may find have grown because the founders had a huge community that they could tap into for early adopters.
Congratulations on launching Ordemio!
To make it profitable, consider getting feedback from users and offering unique features that competitors lack.
Best of luck with your product!
Your link in your post for Ordemio.com looks right, but directs to Ordemio.com.com, which doesn't work.
8,500 per month is too much for monthly maintenance, including cloud and other related costs. I would see to lowering those costs first. I developed conduitcrm in its entirety and it probably would've cost me around 50k or more, but our infrastructure (GCP) is around $300 per month only. I would be interested in giving you feedback... though my experience in CRMs are most geared towards real estate :)
As a software engineer, I am also confused.
Maybe he is continuing development?
Keeping a project running should be on the order of hundreds of dollars or less, as you say, not thousands.
I think this is clickbait marketing to secure customer interviews but sadly the wrong channel for it - the founder seems to be a seasoned tech entrepreneur 😂
Hi Ilke, just wanted to say that I agree with your comment. Thanks for this helpful content. It got me thinking whether this also applies to a solution you're just building for yourself. We developed a small tool that connects <a href="https://downloadingbeasts.com/">Downloading Beast</a> storeleads.app to Apollo.io, so that we always have new email addresses of our target group ready. Now, should I have researched first how other people are managing the storeleads leads currently? Maybe there would have been a solution, maybe we could have spent the development time (1 week) more efficiently.
Regarding the business case we are trying to sell: In this case we are completely relying on B2B interviews and trying to get pilot customers before we invest time in an MVP.
Hi @DmitriiChistov
UI looks awesome. I love CRMs.
I'm a lifelong user of CapsulCRM for https://techcelerate.ventures and use HubSpot for https://skilledup.life
If you are struggling to gain customers, why not build three teams using SkilledUp Lifers?
We now have nearly 27,000 of them from 111 countries.
Best regards
[email protected]
@ManojRanaweera I see that your repeatingly plugging your product in comments.
Please consider adding your product to IH. Much easier for us to see your timeline, growth path.. how you tracking. Good, bad and ugly. it is what we are here for -- to help.
In my world is uncool to continually plug via comments. Undermines a businesses cred, and given what you are attempting selling, I would have hoped you had got that.
What is cool, is when indies use the use the IH product feature. I see you have listed one of your apps that you plug here often, but not both. Is there a reason?
I can't work out whether you are a bot or just a busybody.
Talking about one's credibility:
And all you have done is comment on others, as a means of building your own social equity.
We all have our own styles - some are more unique than others. I have my preferred way of engaging and you have your own. Let's just agree to co-exist, shall we?
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