Openphone - How we got to 1000 paying usrs

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Getting to your first 1000 customers looks like this. The litany of posts I found was pretty useless... except the one by @darynakulya who co-founded @OpenPhone w/ @mahyarraissi It's a 15-min read, or here are my notes: only actionable, no bs insights! 🧵 #SaaS #Growth

When @OpenPhone got into @ycombinator, they had 60 users. Stage 1: 0 to 1400 free users in 5 months. How? 2 channels

a) Facebook groups No promotional posts but asking the audience if they ran into the pb they were solving. Ask if they'd like to join the beta, without adding the link (sounds spammy) b) Encouraging WoM Engaging with users in-app, informing them when their feedback was in prod.

Stage 2: 0 to 100 paying customers 60 free users converted to paying the $9/plan. @darynakulya found the other ones through a) Reddit: she monitored adjacent words and topics, engaged in conversations b) Facebook groups again, but different approach

No promotional posts, but she offered group admins to run Q&A sessions for their members on topics like customer engagement, building stronger customer relationships, and, of course, effective communication.

Stage 3: 100 to 1,000 paying customers They joined @ycombinator and started cold outreach. @) Sending 1000 emails a day did not work.

@darinakulya started breaking them in sub-segments, using PersistIQ. "You do have to invest more time into your cold outreach when you personalize your emails. However, the return on investment in terms of customer interest is worth it."

b) They also invested time getting a deeper understanding of users, the most useful question was: “How disappointed would you be if OpenPhone didn’t exist?” They used this @typeform that triggered a @slackhq notification. That way, they refined the personas.

c) PR also helped. @techcrunch @producthunt @darinakulya's advice: "If you choose to go down the media route, get targeted. Focus on the media sources your audiences naturally tune into rather than the national news sources."

d) Encouraging word of mouth again. How? rapid product updates + timely personal support, leading to glorious reviews

My fav 💛 part of the article is how @darinakulya would do differently today.

a) Share the mission earlier "Quite frankly, people don’t care about your product. It’s the “why” behind your product that resonates with them, and that’s even more important if you haven’t launched your product yet."

b) Start cold outreach earlier They started when the product was paying. It would have been easier when the product was in free beta

c) Building an audience before building the product "Customers are far more likely to purchase from a person they already trust than from a new startup with no recognition or traction."

d) Dive into customer data sooner They lost 96% of their users when switching to paying. Embedding a @survicate survey into an email would have helped understand why.

To wrap it up, the 4 questions we should ask ourselves:

The original blog post here: openphone.com/blog/first-1000-customers/ Thanks again @darynakulya! @OpenPhone path is super inspiring!