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.:
Daniel Nguyen is the founder of KTool - a tool to send anything to Kindle.
Tell us about your product and what inspired you to start it?
KTool is a web app, a browser extension, and a mobile app to send _almost_ anything to Kindle. So far we support common news sources, blog posts, Wikipedia articles, Twitter threads, Hacker News discussions, and beta support for newsletters.
I'm a long-time Kindle user but I don't read a lot of books. My favorite content is blog posts, newsletters, and interesting discussions on online forums. Amazon provides a browser extension to send web articles to Kindle but they stopped development recently, leaving a lot of users frustrated. I was one of them and I decided to build a better alternative.
How long did it take you to acquire your first 50 customers, and what was your growth strategy?
It took me about 6 months to acquire 700 users. 56 of them are paying customers.
My primary growth channel was Twitter then recently, word of mouth is taking over. I also see some good traction from AppStore & Chrome Extension Store organic search.
I don't have a lot of time for KTool so I haven't explored other channels yet.
Which technology stack are you using and what challenges and limitations does it pose?
I use NextJS + TailwindCSS on the front-end and FeathersJS, TypeScript, and PostgreSQL on the back-end.
Infrastructure-wise: I use Cloudflare Pages for front-end, Heroku for API servers, Render for PostgreSQL hosting & SendGrid for email handling.
The web extension is a mix of TailwindCSS, Typescript, and Swift.I haven't found any limitations with this stack yet.
What are some of the most essential tools that you use for your business?
Paddle for Subscriptions and Payments.
SendGrid for Transactional Emails.
Crisp Chat for Customer Messaging.
CleanshotX & Xnapper for quickly capture beautiful screenshots.
FeedHive for Twitter & LinkedIn content scheduling.
TailwindUI & SaaSBlocks for fast UI development.
Logology for brand logo.
BlackMagic.so for Twitter analytics & CRM
Figma for designMixpanel & LogSnag for product analytics.
What have been some of the biggest insights you've gained since starting your entrepreneurial journey?
— Be patient. The moment you feel impatient is when you start making bad decisions. Of course, easier said than done though.
— Spend 80% of your time on short-term growth and 20% on long-term growth.
— The entrepreneur community on Twitter is so supportive. Don't be afraid to put yourself out there. Join a community, contribute when you can, and ask for help when you needed.
— Building an audience is not required to grow a SaaS company. But it helps a lot.
— Always have plan B.
Your recommended books/podcasts/newsletters etc.:
I don't listen to podcasts much. Here are some of my favorite books:
— Start Small, Stay Small by @robwalling
— Zero to Sold by @arvidkahl
— The Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick
— The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg
— Originals by Prof. Adam Grant
PS: a great fiction "The Three-Body Problem" by Liu Cixin
