DEV Community: karthik2206

6 years into our $3MN bootstrapped startup => Rebranded and launched 🚀

karthik2206 — Tue, 21 Mar 2023 11:35:01 +0000

Hey everyone,

We have been bootstrapping our startup for almost ~6 years now. The journey has been tough but also rewarding. It has been a slow burn for us to get to $3 million.

We decided to rebrand and productize our entire experience with a solid product. So, this new version of Flexiple has been launched that on Product hunt.

Would love your support: https://www.producthunt.com/posts/flexiple-3! :)

BUT, why did we rebrand & work hard on product?

So, here’s how our journey looked till now:

Finding first 10 customers
=>Through outbound hustle!
Basically, we leveraged our personal network. Used LinkedIn a lot for this and there was a lot of shameless outreach to friends and friends of friends :P. It is painful, but also a great way to take control of actually generating momentum.
Scaling customer acquisition
=> Building strong inbound pipelines
Well, as we got clients through step 1, we got some breathing space to implement slightly long-term initiatives. This involved working hard on SEO, building a social presence and more. This was a slow burn. We did try paid channels but our industry has some prohibitive costs and that stage we couldn’t afford to compete on that front.
Cementing our position in the industry
=> Through effective branding & productization
It is no secret that this industry is super competitive and one can get lost in it. It is also a market (like most others, but more so) highly dependent on building trust with your customers.

Till now, we had worked scrappily in establishing a real business - our marketing website was on $10/month NoCode platform (Unicorn platform) 😅

But, after scaling to $3 million, we felt that we had done that part to a good degree. Now we needed to ensure that we have our own identity and also back it up with a robust experience on our platform. Hence, this new launch :)

Once again, your support on Product hunt would mean a lot to me: https://www.producthunt.com/posts/flexiple-3.

Would also love to hear your thoughts & feedback :)

I want to enhance the performance of my cold mails

karthik2206 — Wed, 18 Nov 2020 14:03:04 +0000

Cold emails are 40x more effective in getting new customers than Facebook & Twitter combined. However, it's over usage and poor execution results in its poor performance. Getting the basics right will help you make the most of this high-performing channel.

So, today let us uncover the lost art of cold emails

How to convert leads through cold emails?

We break the process into three steps:

Addressing email deliverability: If your mail lands in the spam folder and not the inbox, you have already lost the game. You can follow simple steps to ensure a safe inbox landing.
Relevant personalisation: The bane of today's outreach is the one-size-fits-all approach to it. So, start the personalisation from the subject line, then move to the first line of the mail and finally, the mail content.
Appropriate follow-ups: A single try isn't enough. Have from 3 to a maximum of 7 touchpoints with your potential customers. Not just that - also modify the content in each of these mails.

What's the exact implementation like?

I tackle exactly that in today's report. From discussing the nuances of writing content to using tools like Hunter, Vocus, Outreach, etc., I share the steps to turbocharge your cold outreach!

And yes, I haven't breached 5 mins in this report either. Enjoy this report by clicking here.

To save more time for you, I have made it shorter on Twitter: Tweet Link!

Karthik Sridharan

@karthiks2206

3/ Relevant personalisation 🔧

🔫 Generic mails kill your cold mail chances. So, personalise:

A) Subject line

🧐 Most important factor for open rates

✅ Keep it short

✅ Include name

✅ Relevant to mail content

13:08 PM - 18 Nov 2020

0 11

I want to improve the reach of my LinkedIn posts

karthik2206 — Thu, 12 Nov 2020 10:30:55 +0000

Today, let's talk about one of the most important tool in building an effective marketing strategy for your business - your personal brand! It has so much upside that I would suggest you start working on it even before you begin working on your startup idea.

Using LinkedIn to build your personal brand

To grow your brand, we primarily focus on LinkedIn. Yes, typically when you think of LinkedIn, you probably imagine outbound efforts. But that's quite time & effort-intensive, making it tough to scale.

So, building a good audience on LinkedIn through consistent posts helps you set up an inbound pipeline of leads. What's more, it is much easier to get traction on LinkedIn than Twitter.

But, what are the steps?

The report broadly beaks it into 4 parts:

Content type: Of course, a clear focus on quality & type of content that aligns with your target audience as well as your interests.
Post structure: Getting your first line right, keeping sentences short & simple while avoiding link drops.
Building your LinkedIn account: Ramping your connections and optimising your personal profile for conversions.
Acing LinkedIn's algorithm: Using the first hour of your post smartly while avoiding external links in the content.

Where are the hacks? Is that it?

Of course, not. I take you deep into each of these steps which involves using tools like Phantombuster, Lempod, etc. I share examples from my experience and a lot more.

Of course, all this in 5 mins. Just click here to get started.

If you would like it even shorter, I have summarised on Twitter: Tweet Link!

Karthik Sridharan

@karthiks2206

6 months of personal brand building on LinkedIn. Here's what I learnt👇🏽

🪙Treasure trove of inbound leads

👌🏽Needs consistent quality posts

😲Quality required, but not enough

🤕Many best practices to be followed

Let me share what those are. Thread👇🏽

#Entrepreneurship

13:03 PM - 11 Nov 2020

4 20

My non-dev side project got me 700 subscribers & 4000+ traffic

karthik2206 — Fri, 06 Nov 2020 13:56:28 +0000

Hey everyone,

As a non-techie turned techie turned entrepreneur, I like to write about my experiences. When I started sharing them with my friends, they seemed to like it (surprisingly :P).

My effort

So, I started to do this more regularly and also in a more structured fashion. I put together a quick website and named these reports: "No-VC Reports".

Then, I wrote:
📃 An article
⏲️ Each week
🗓️ For 6 months

The launch

After all that hard work, I launched it on Product Hunt, which got me:
📈 700+ new subscribers
👑 #5 Product of the day on @ProductHunt
🚦 ~4000 new users to the website

Lessons

I am sure a lot of you work on side-projects. I just wanted to share what I learnt so that you can maybe imbibe it into your project launches too!

So, I have summarised it in my tweet thread. Do let me know in case of any question! Happy to answer them :).

// Detect dark theme var iframe = document.getElementById('tweet-1324696984456818689-517'); if (document.body.className.includes('dark-theme')) { iframe.src = "https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?id=1324696984456818689&theme=dark" }

Unlock your startup’s potential by automating internal processes

karthik2206 — Wed, 04 Nov 2020 15:12:18 +0000

As your starup grows, the processes that worked initially slowly start breaking down. So how do we tackle it? - By automating your internal processes.

When?
So, automating & building for scale from Day 1 of your startup is a mistake. You are going to be tweaking many processes and even getting rid of some. So, wait for internal flows to stabilise and then identify the tasks that suck the most amount of your time.

How?
But yes, then manual processes will cause errors, cost you new initiatives and become more challenging. So, in the report, we break it into:

Identifying areas to automate
Finding the right tools
Of course, implementing the automation

We discuss these three steps including the usage of CRMs, Airtable and Zapier/Integromat.

I also share, multiple other tools that supercharge processes! All this in this report. It is just 5 mins, as promised :).

If you would like it even shorter, I've summarised it on Twitter - here's the thread below!

Karthik Sridharan

@karthiks2206

The entire tech @Flexipletweets built on #Nocode.

Tools used:
1. @zoho
2. @airtable
3. Other use case-based tools connected with @zapier + @integromat

So, I want to share the advantages & the process of automating internal systems.

Thread👇🏽

Report: 2.flexiple.com/no-vc-reports/…

12:52 PM - 04 Nov 2020

5 12

I got 4 new customers and a 10x return by building a side project

karthik2206 — Mon, 02 Nov 2020 12:10:27 +0000

As with any developer & entrepreneur, my mind keeps searching for a new channel of growth for my startup. Sure, the usual marketing channels - SEO, Google Ads, Social Media - are super important.

However, with these channels being so tightly contested, as a developer, I need to find my edge. So, today, I want to share my experience of trying something different to grow Flexiple, which involved building a side project called Remote Tools.

If you don't have the time to read the entire story, I have summarised it in the below tweet:

Karthik Sridharan

@karthiks2206

I got 4 new customers at a 10x return! 📈

👽 Spoiler: It was by building a side project @RemoteTools

I learnt from 3 examples:
👉🏽 Website Grader by @HubSpot
👉🏽 @unsplash by Crew
👉🏽 @BetaList by Openmargin

Let me breakdown my lessons & share my story.

Thread👇🏽

#Entrepreneurs

11:57 AM - 02 Nov 2020

0 2

What is a side project?

The goal of a side project is similar to any other form of marketing - to capture the attention of your target audience. To achieve this, you need to build something on the side that they value. Then just subtly market your startup in that. Pretty straightforward.

But there are some crucial nuances. Three companies in particular - Hubspot, Crew, and OpenMargin - executed this perfectly and were also blessed with some serendipitous events. In fact, their side projects were so good that the latter two companies actually decided to pursue them full time! That's something, isn't it?
‍

Let's look at 3 examples

‍

1) Website Grader by Hubspot

In a nutshell, Website Grader evaluates a website's online marketing performance.

Backstory
‍Hubspot was still a small setup. Brian (co-founder) would frequently ask Dharmesh (other co-founder) to evaluate websites on their inbound marketing potential. The latter would then manually review the source code of each. Finding this inefficient, he created a tool that automated this process. Recognising that this could be pretty beneficial to others too, he launched Website Grader, as a free tool.

Impact
Over 3 million websites have utilised it since. More importantly, it consistently generates a major portion of the 50,000+ leads that the company gets each month. Of course, such initiatives make Hubspot a very loved company too.

Learnings

Make a product that is not tough to build
Leverage an internal tool that is useful to your audience ‍

2) Unsplash by Crew

Unsplash is a platform that offers high-quality IP-free photos.

Backstory
While building a new website, the team hired a photographer for a few photos as they found stock photos to be unusable. Turned out that they had more photos than they needed. So, they chose 10 of those extra photos and put it on a $19 Tumblr theme, thinking that it might help others with a similar problem.

Impact
In a short time it started getting 11 million unique visitors each month and was the top referral generator for Crew. As alluded earlier, the team decided to sell Crew to Dribble, choosing instead to dedicate themselves entirely to Unsplash!

Learnings:

Utilise any resources (not necessarily a product or internal tool) that you already have
Spend as little money to launch it as possible ‍

3) Betalist by Openmargin

Betalist lists early-stage startups looking for beta users.

‍Backstory
To find beta users, Marc (founder) decided that getting listed on TechCrunch would be a good way. Great, but that's the obvious part. To make this happen though, even he used a Tumblr theme, listed a few beta startups and also included Openmargin in it. He pitched this platform as: "Be the first to discover and get access to the latest internet startups”.

Impact
Not only did TechCrunch publish it but even Forbes picked his story up. Do check out his cool but unintuitive mail to TechCrunch. Marc got all the beta users he needed but also realised the bigger promise in Betalist and invested himself into that.

Learnings:

Again, build cheaply
The initial traction really matters ‍

How did we use this to formulate our idea?

So we learnt that we should offer something of value to our target audience using existing resources (tools or even knowledge) to build something simple, inexpensively and quickly. Super, so that's our learnings summarised in a line. Here was born, Remote Tools - a curated repository of tools for remote teams.

a) Value: Our target audience consisted of tech startups comfortable with remote working and typically in the US or Europe. Searching and evaluating tools for each use case is pretty painful. So, a one-stop platform to find the right tool, would be helpful to such companies.

b) Existing resources: Since, we regularly used such tools, we had already done the work of evaluating them. The effort needed thereafter was to only organise and structure them into an easily consumable format.

c) Simple and inexpensive: We decided to have a purely informational website. No upvotes, comments, etc. It was built in Wordpress so that it also had an existing system to support content management.

d) Subtle marketing: We wrote "Remote Tools powered by Flexiple" in prominent places. Further, we also placed Flexiple in the "Hiring remote talent" category.

e) Initial traction: We posted the tool across various FB & LinkedIn groups, slack communities, etc. However, the clincher was our PH launch. We received ~500 upvotes, became the #2 product of the day and also got a lot of positive reviews.

‍

What was the impact on business?

Over 10,000 users visited our website spending an average of 2 mins on our website. As promised, below is a screenshot of our google analytics dashboard.

All of this wouldn't matter, if we weren't able to achieve the original goal - generating leads for Flexiple. But we were. We closed 4 client deals, where the clients stated the lead source as remote.tools.

In a period of a month, we made 10 times the money we had invested into the product! We had validated the idea and it now made sense to invest more into it and polish it further.

Closing thoughts

Every such initiative can't be a success and neither does it have to be. But to achieve big dreams with little money, you need a non-traditional channel to start delivering leads for you.

I keep sharing such lessons of my entrepreneurial journey on Twitter. You can follow me there: Twitter Profile.

I want to understand the deal with Google Ads

karthik2206 — Fri, 30 Oct 2020 13:32:34 +0000

Today, let us discuss about an important channel to get quality leads for your startup - Google Ads

Why Google Ads?

You see, SEO takes time and it isn't always possible to rank for all keywords.

However, Google Ads:
a. Gives you the ability to present yourself in front of a potential customer immediately
b. Has almost no dependence on your domain's reputation
c. All this when customers are searching for something relevant to your product

This is a power most other channels can't give you.

Process
So, we discuss the process of:

Keyword research: Steps, tips & also great tools.
Writing Ad copy: Pointers to improve quality score.
Landing page optimisation: Focus on both quality score & conversion.

I discuss all this in quite a bit of detail, in this report. Do give it a read. Just 5 mins from your schedule - please :).

If you liked this post, would be great if you could share the below thread on Twitter 😃

Karthik Sridharan

@karthiks2206

Is Google Ads overrated?

Not by a long shot!

It lets you:
🪞Get in front of a potential customer
⚡️Immediately, irrespective of a domain's reputation
🔍All, when they are searching for something relevant

What else? Thread👇🏽

Report: 2.flexiple.com/no-vc-reports/…

#Entrepreneurship

12:09 PM - 30 Oct 2020

2 11

I want to find new ways of marketing my startup

karthik2206 — Wed, 21 Oct 2020 13:50:23 +0000

Sure, SEO, social media, etc. are extremely important. However, since they are highly contested channels, you need some trump cards to help you find regular spikes of growth in your early days. Using side projects to give consistent boosts to your startup is a great way to do it.

What is a side-project?
In a nutshell, it involves building small projects around what your potential customers will find useful and then marketing your startup subtly through them.

Side projects aren't meant to replace the conventional marketing methods, but to supplement them. But how do you go about this?

I broadly breakdown the process into three steps:

Finding the idea: Pick something relevant to your audience (not necessarily your industry), which can be built with the resources you already have.
Packaging it into something marketable: Eye-catching stuff do better. So, you need to package your information. Amazing tools exist to convert even simple google sheets to beautiful products.
Marketing your startup subtly: Of course, this is the main goal. But this is an art and doesn't involve dumping loads of links.

I discuss all this in quite a bit of detail and also the tools to make this process easy for you, in this report. Do give it a read. Just 5 mins from your schedule - please :).

If you like the report, do support me on Twitter - I usually wait for you to give me a like :).

Karthik Sridharan

@karthiks2206

Make side-projects your marketing departments 📈

Build small projects around what your potential customers will find useful and market your startup subtly through it.

Let's discuss the whys and the hows of it!

Thread 👇🏼

Report: 2.flexiple.com/no-vc-reports/…

#Entrepreneurship

12:34 PM - 21 Oct 2020

4 15

I want to increase my website's traffic

karthik2206 — Wed, 14 Oct 2020 13:03:16 +0000

With 3.5 billion searches performed on Google with definite intent, SEO is the unequivocal answer to help bring relevant visitors consistently to your website and to convert them into your customers

I breakdown the process into three steps:

Building your website's reputation: Without a good reputation, it is almost impossible to rank on Google. Guest posts are your best friend to build this.
Keyword research and writing content: The critical aspect is to never start writing an article without keyword research. Optimise your blog and use the tools mentioned in the report to make it easy.
Distribution: Just writing your blog doesn't guarantee ranking on Google. Distribute it across various platforms (included in the report), social media, and also a newsletter.

Then, keep repeating step 2 and 3.

I have shared many pro-tips, tools and important concepts in today's report. Do give it a read. Just 5 mins from your schedule - please :).

If you like the report, do support me on Twitter - your support will really help me :).

Karthik Sridharan

@karthiks2206

How do you drive consistent traffic to your website?

For 2 years, I focused on everything but SEO - foolish to not recognise its power.

Not anymore. In the last 6 months, I've grown:
📈 DR to 38
🚀 Monthly traffic to 10,000

Report: 2.flexiple.com/no-vc-reports/…

Thread👇🏻

#startups

12:21 PM - 14 Oct 2020

4 15

No, it is not shameful for a developer to use No-code

karthik2206 — Tue, 13 Oct 2020 15:19:16 +0000

Let me start directly - do you consider "no-code tools" to be "anti-developer"? Do you consider it beneath you to use no-code tools? Does it hurt your ego?

I would hope that the answer to all of these questions is a No :).

This movement has been in the works for a couple of years. I also caught onto this a bit late - I just wrote about my brilliant failure in building our product at the very beginning of Flexiple, a few days back. However, ever since, almost the entirety of my startup runs on no-code/minimal code.

So, I thought I should write about it. The aim is to motivate you to explore no-code a bit - not as the anti-thesis of code, but as something that supplements and makes it easier.

If you prefer the shorter version, you can follow it on this twitter thread:

// Detect dark theme var iframe = document.getElementById('tweet-1293526957402062850-642'); if (document.body.className.includes('dark-theme')) { iframe.src = "https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?id=1293526957402062850&theme=dark" }

‍

Setting the context

4 years back, I hardly wrote any code beyond the classes taken during my college. I felt that as a founder of a tech startup, that was a big handicap. So I started picking up the skills - it started with basic HTML/CSS (sure, that's almost not code), to Javascript and also a bit of Ruby on Rails. Now, I have become an average developer.

I share this because despite knowing how to code, I feel no-code should be chosen wherever possible. And the great thing is that the ambit of "where it's possible to use it" is increasing each day.

The advantage of using no-code is:

The obvious one: you don't need to know to code.
Anyone in the team can take up product building initiatives - no single person becomes a bottleneck.
Focus shifts more to the goal the tech is meant to achieve rather the tech itself. People who have built software products would recognise this. It is very easy to just get consumed in building the product while forgetting its original goal.
The underlying products keep improving. So what you can achieve through them also increases proportionally.

Details of Flexiple's No-code infrastructure

Firstly, this is not meant to be a no-code tutorial. Rather an illustration of how an entire startup's tech can be powered by no-code. And as a result, to inspire you.

Here's the overview of how our tech is setup. So that you understand this in context, Flexiple is a premium tech freelance marketplace.‍
‍

1) Website

This is set up on Unicorn. Unicorn is a simple landing page builder that offers predefined templates. I think for all static pages - where all you are doing is displaying information - such builders should be used.

‍
Earlier we only had our google ads marketing pages on Unicorn and had custom coded other pages. Now we have shifted all our pages here - just took me a week to do that.

For Flexiple, we had the following reasoning:

We have a high bar in terms of the design quality of our web pages. But we also think that after a certain level, custom design etc. is just superfluous and a distraction.
Next, with predefined templates, we are able to direct our entire attention to content. Sure, your website can be very beautiful. But, I am a big believer in customers converting on what you have to say to them than by pretty pages.
Now anyone in our team can build new pages for our website. This has given us great agility. With content creation becoming easy, SEO initiatives have also consequently become simple.
Lastly, custom design and development is a costly process. There is also the need to manage a server, etc. which is no longer needed.

2) Database

Our intermediate database is Airtable. Let me explain: freelancers apply to join our network. This involves filling a form and we need to capture those details.

For this, we have just embedded Airtable's form: Check it out here. So, whenever a freelancer submits their details it gets seamlessly stored in our Airtable database. No custom coding for this.
‍

3) CRM

We use Zoho. To be honest, there are probably better options out there. However, we started using Zoho and have all our processes set around it. That's the B2B stickiness for you 😑

‍
You see Airtable is great for storing data. But when multiple people access it, its easy editing interface puts the data at risk - a careless edit and field values can be changed, new records can be created, etc. So, Airtable isn't a great place for the entire team to be sitting on.
‍

4) Glue connecting all

With so many different applications in the picture, we need a service that connects all these to one another. Here we use Zapier and Integromat.

‍
As you can see in the above image, Zapier enables Airtable to seamlessly talk to Zoho. We have such automation flows set up. We also send standard mails automatically based on certain conditions being met in our database - for e.g. scheduling of calls with freelancers.

So basically it doesn't matter where the data sits. We always have the ability to connect our applications easily and execute any use case we want to.
‍

5) Recommendation engine

Our client form is set up such that even partial form fills are recorded in our database - which is again Airtable! This required a custom-coded solution and is the only part of our entire system to be custom coded.
‍

In this database, any person in our customer-facing team just needs to click a button to receive the first set of shortlists for a project. Airtable launched a new feature called script blocks and we wrote a simple code snippet for this. This does get into the "code" arena but, frankly, it was very straightforward.
‍

We had multiple intermediate processes before, which has now been replaced by a singular button! This singular automation is probably going to save us an hour of work each day.
‍

Parting thoughts

So, that's a major part of our tech ecosystem at Flexiple explained. Hope it changes your opinion of no-code a bit :)

If you liked my story, do follow me on Twitter. I write about my startup lessons, code & no-code projects and community building.

My first mistake as an entrepreneur 🙄

karthik2206 — Thu, 08 Oct 2020 09:08:10 +0000

I have been working on my startup(s) for about 4 years now. Building a startup is a journey of many mistakes and a few successes.

The successes, while few, still get most of the limelight. So, what I notice is the same mistakes being repeated by various entrepreneurs.

So, I thought of sharing my own "first mistake". This mistake, I think is the most common one made by each entrepreneur. Do give it a read and share with your friends, so that they don't make the same errors as me :)

Here's a startup idea. Of course, I need to build a solid & costly tech product‍

Lots of people have ideas for a potential startup. Ideas by themselves are a dime a dozen, the execution is the clincher. Don't really have to harp on that - never seen an idea take me on a cab ride. Else, Travis Kalanick wouldn't be a billionaire today.
‍
So, even I had an idea. It was to connect top freelance tech talent with quality companies who need them. Seems simple enough. And as people do, I began to complicate it. Let me explain.

My idea‍

I didn't want to build a pure marketplace - a platform where all I did was to ensure both parties (freelancers and companies) registered and found each other. I wanted to curate the experience. A screening process would handpick the best software developers who would become part of our network. These developers would then be connected with great tech startups & companies who were looking for top-notch talent.

To be fair to me, this wasn't the crazy part. This I got right, and it did make sense. There were hundreds of marketplaces out there and Upwork, the behemoth, was leading the pile. It had space for no one else. Even if it did, that would not be a business I would enjoy building. Okay, enough said about this. Now comes the complication in the execution.

The complication‍

I decided that to achieve this, what I need is a cutting-edge platform. This platform would automate the early part of the evaluation process, such that the number of people remaining for the later more manual testing rounds would be lower. Features such as automated scoring, seamless scheduling of interviews, a communication pipeline (among, of course, loads of others) were part of this vision.

Seems logical. If too much of manual work was done in the earlier rounds, then I would just not be able to scale the startup. Wait a second, did I just say scale the startup. Did I have any scale at that point of time? Did I have anything that could be called a startup? What were my revenues or how many people had I started interviewing? Ahemm, ZERO on both counts.

So, what I had done there (very nicely, might I add) was to start solving for a problem that didn't exist. You wouldn't be wrong to assume that I had also invested in the latest home security systems to protect the millions I would make in the future :/.

My mistake‍

I have laid out the context and probably the mistake is there for all to see. But let me embarrass myself in detail, by breaking it down.

An idea is beautiful. The beauty is that it has endless opportunities. Unfortunately, that's the painful part too - you need to make choices from the vast sea of options. When you haven't even started executing, your choice is defined by logic powered by ignorance. The tricky thing is that since it sounds logical, it might seem correct.

To me, the logic of building a smart product to ease manual effort sounded solid. But I hardly had a clear picture of what the talent market would be like. Where would I source such people? What's my exact pitch to them to dedicate a significant amount of their time to get into my network? Well, I could go on. Sure, I had done my "market research" on each of these questions. But the truth is unless it is tested out, the research means nothing.

Result‍

We did end up building a product - one that costed a decent amount of money and a lot of time. Piece by piece we realised that the way the product was built didn't align with the reality of what was needed. And we kept omitting things, till one day our garbage bin contained the entire product.

Just onboarding 15 developers into our network and working on 3 engagements with clients, taught me so much about the market. This could have been achieved with a simple excel containing everyone's details with all processes being conducted manually. Pretty much what we did.

Learning‍

Don't build any product till you have tested your thesis out. Get as close to actually doing business as you can. Nothing is as true as that. No startup book. No mentor's advice. No investor's direction.

Even if you are a tech startup, before writing a single line of code, there might be ways for you to:

Verify the need of your offering
Identify the exact problem you should solve for your customer
Build an audience for your product

If you liked my story, do follow me on Twitter. I write about my startup lessons, code & no-code projects and community building.

I want to find my first paying customer

karthik2206 — Wed, 07 Oct 2020 14:12:11 +0000

It is great to get users to your website once you have launched your startup, but it doesn't guarantee paying customers.

Not even a "successful" launch can. Finding that first-set of paying customers for your startup is the goal of the seventh No-VC report!

Well, the key is to leverage your personal network. People you know. Individuals who will be more receptive to what you have to say.

With them, you can get actual conversations started. Hence, there is a high chance of converting them to your initial paying customers.

But how do you find the relevant people in your network? In the report share two ways:

Starting with your immediate LinkedIn connections
Looking at the startups you want to target and then finding people in them

For both these methods, I have given a step-by-step breakdown of how you should go about it. Highly powerful tools like PhantomBuster make the process very automated.

Do read this report: https://2.flexiple.com/no-vc-reports/i-want-to-find-my-first-paying-customer and let me know if you have any questions. Take out 5 mins from your schedule - please :).

If you like the report, do support me on Twitter - your support will really help me :).

Karthik Sridharan

@karthiks2206

Use your personal network to personally bring in your first set of customers. But, how do you put a structure around it?

I cover that in No-VC Report #7.

Report link: 2.flexiple.com/no-vc-reports/…

Thread 👇

#startup #Entrepreneurship

12:36 PM - 07 Oct 2020

1 11