Table of Contents
- Tell us about your product and what inspired you to start it?
- How long did it take you to acquire your first 50 customers, and what was your growth strategy?
- Which technology stack are you using and what challenges and limitations does it pose?
- What are some of the most essential tools that you use for your business?
- What have been some of the biggest insights you've gained since starting your entrepreneurial journey?
- Your recommended books/podcasts/newsletters etc.:
Martin Donadieu is the founder of capgo - live update systèm for hybrid app
Tell us about your product and what inspired you to start it?
i was building hybrid app myself and saw live update exist for them but it was expensive.i did complain on forum like github, even contact the company ( ionic )to ask for SMB pricing. they refused.
So i said in the forum i will try to find a solution for myself. And people answered back do a paid server we wanna paid.you can find the conversation therehttps://github.com/capacitor-community/proposals/issues/43the best will be to screenshot some message from there.
It tooks me 1 month to understand and learn native code for ios and android plus understand how to make it happen. Then I started to publish in open source my solution without any paying, until people asked for more. I then built a server to have that managed more easily. Making it paying took me one more month, plus one more to change the paying system to something working for users .
How long did it take you to acquire your first 50 customers, and what was your growth strategy?
I have now 350 user registered, and 50 in trial period.
I started the saas in free mode and put on the website it was in beta for now, it was necessary to understand usage of people and also how i will make them pay for the usage. After some time i needed to change the plugin function to be able to bill them . I forced all users to upgrade and then i activated the payments and let users start paying.
I have now 25 paid customers.last month i changed the price from number of update to number of active user they have.i got some big potential client asking for pricing and they all talked in MAU not in download number.i mainly acquired them by github forum, posting on twitter my achievements,making open source plugin for the community.and cold contact in a slack community about the tool i do plugin for.i'm very active in the capacitor community and help people that how i get know.i also made a awesome list for capacitor who has more that 200 stars now and put in the top a link to capgo.lately i will also try to create a open source organization with many plugin to become the biggest plugin provider.
Which technology stack are you using and what challenges and limitations does it pose?
i use supabase, netlify, vuejs and cloudflare.i don't have server all is egde, the only limitation is the price if you don't price well then each new client can make you loose money.
What are some of the most essential tools that you use for your business?
crisp is my support tool and CRM i have the unlimited plan and try to use only this.otherwise people pay with stripe.and i use logsnag for my dashboard,plausible analytics for web analytics.
What have been some of the biggest insights you've gained since starting your entrepreneurial journey?
doing > not doing. so i use a lot the method shape up from basecamp.i ship draft feature and if there no complain it mean it was useless anyway.
i'm against planning or overthinking i do quick and test quick. I have tried in the past all type of organization and the most efficient to me is the most simple .you cannot think for your users but you can have very effective process to make them try all you do.what is good with my business is there nothing really critical things can be uggly or a bit broken become this such a big need, that allow me to build fast and have very good agility.most of my user are in the discord community and got news from what i do, improve and change there.i have automatise a lot of task in crips for user when they need to upgrade or for let them understand new things
Your recommended books/podcasts/newsletters etc.:
community and talking to other like Wip.co is essential.otherwise podcast i'm launching "solos" for sharing story with makers who build all in solo like me
