Building a SaaS used by Netflix, Product Hunt, and Zapier teams.

Hey Indie Hackers!

Every week, I send a marketing Case Study from a profitable Indie Founder.

Today I want to share with you the recent issue with Sandra, who will reveal the secrets behind Klu.so growth:

January 2023 — 10 users (private beta).
June 2023 — 2000 users (including Netflix, Product Hunt, Zapier, Gojek, and Dropbox teams).

Explain your product to an 11-year-old

Klu.so is the embodiment of the type of innovation I firmly advocate. It simplifies the complex landscape of information, empowering users to access knowledge efficiently.

By leveraging Klu, users can find the information they need, focusing on what truly matters to them. Klu's ambition is to redefine how we interact with internal data. It strives to unlock new possibilities and pave the way for companies to build workflows around their internal data.

Who’s your ideal customer, and how do you acquire them?

I want to share one key point with everyone reading this: identifying your ideal customer can be really challenging at the beginning of your journey.
​
Initially, you'll likely construct your ideal customer profile based on assumptions, and that's perfectly okay.
​
As you progress and gather data about the usage of the platform you're building, you'll gradually get a clearer picture of who your potential ideal customers could be, backed by evidence and not just assumptions.
Back to Klu. In the early stages, our ideal customer was primarily a tech-savvy product manager in SMEs. Now, as we've “grown” and evolved, we've begun to extend our focus to other personas as well.

With our latest updates, we're now also catering to customer support teams, marketing departments, and developers. These teams often grapple with the same challenge: efficiently managing and utilizing the wealth of internal data.

To reach these personas, we've diversified our acquisition strategies. We continue our engagement on Product Hunt and Twitter, but I plan to expand our content marketing to include topics pertinent to these teams.

Share your core metrics

I also want to add one more thing before diving into metrics.
​
At Klu, we track many metrics, primarily focusing on feature-focused ones. However, the two most important ones are revenue and user growth, along with retention.
​
Of course, all of them are interconnected and influence each other, but to make the most of them, I tend to break them down and treat them as separate pieces, approaching each one differently.
In January, Klu took its first steps with a private beta. We had the backing of 10 companies who saw the potential in our product and purchased our MVP on an annual basis. By the end of March, the user base had grown to around 200. Then, the game changed. We launched a public beta and witnessed an explosive surge in user numbers.

By June, we reached a significant milestone: 2000 users. Calculating the numbers, this translates to an impressive 900% growth. Now, to keep things realistic, we must acknowledge that transitioning from a private to a public beta naturally inflates this growth percentage. However, even considering this, our growth has been substantial and worth noting.

This is a testament to a robust demand for Klu and our ability to attract and engage users. And here's the kicker: we now have users from big-league companies like Zapier, Product Hunt, Klarna, Gojek, and even Netflix. This is incredibly exciting and underscores our value to the market.

How did you get your first 10 customers?

To fully answer your question, it's essential to distinguish between the MVP stage and the public beta stage of Klu.

During the MVP stage in early January, our primary goal was to validate our concept and determine if companies were ready to pay for our solution. We successfully sold Klu to 10 companies on an annual subscription basis. This initial validation bolstered our confidence in the market potential of our product.

So, how did we acquire these first 10 customers? We employed a proactive outreach strategy, engaging companies from mostly in tech. In some instances, we had existing connections with product heads or team leads who were keen to trial our solution.

As we transitioned to the public beta stage, we crafted a strategy revolving around a product launch on Product Hunt. Our target audience was teams within SMEs and startup entrepreneurs with smaller teams. Recognizing that these individuals were active users of Product Hunt, we saw this as an opportunity to reach a broader audience. On our launch day, we experienced significant success: around 10,000 visits and over 700 sign-ups.

It was an exhilarating moment, marking a considerable milestone for Klu. To round off, let's address the question of customer retention. Most of our initial customers from the MVP stage have continued to use Klu, showcasing the sustained value they're deriving from our product.

We're now focusing on how to keep growing and scaling to meet the needs of an expanding user base.

What is your top-1 marketing challenge and how do you plan to solve it?

Our top marketing challenge at Klu currently revolves around user retention.

I have successfully attracted users to our platform, but the next critical step is ensuring these users remain engaged and find continuous value in our product.

Improving retention can significantly influence our revenue growth, as retaining an existing customer is generally more cost-effective than acquiring a new one.
To tackle this challenge, I am in the process of building a more robust engagement and communication strategy, with a specific focus on email marketing.

Email automation is one solution I am looking to leverage heavily. By setting up an automated sequence of emails that are triggered based on user behavior, we can ensure our users receive relevant content at the right time.

I love Sandra's focus on Retention.

You can list your SaaS in 100 directories, buy ads, and get a promo with influencers. If your landing page is good enough, this traffic would even convert into customers.

But the real challenge is to retain these customers. The thing is that a good product can solve this problem only partially. We live in a world full of distractions and shiny objects.

If you stand out and solve a real problem, you will win.