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.:
Amin Memon is the founder of Draftss - Draftss helps startup & agencies get custom websites & graphic designs on a monthly Subscription with a streamlined productized process.
Tell us about your product and what inspired you to start it?
I had been running my own design agency for some time, but I felt that the traditional model was outdated and there was an opportunity to innovate.
As a startup founder, it was a hassle to find a great designer who could understand my juggling between varied design tasks and the cost of hiring & compliance is a huge problem. The average cost to hire a designer in the US is around $60,000 a year. That's when I decided to create Draftss and revolutionize the agency model. We developed a subscription-based model that allowed customers to request unlimited graphic design tasks and get top-quality designs from our highly rated-team. Another great thing about Draftss is that you can cancel your subscription anytime. No Commitments. No Contracts.
How long did it take you to acquire your first 50 customers, and what was your growth strategy?
Comparing Draftss with different SaaS models, Draftss is a high subscription package, having average customer order value of around $500. So it took us some time to gradually reach the first 50 customers.
Within the first week of our launch we had crossed $3.2k MRR. Since then there is no looking back as we are increasing the number of customers over time.
Our strategy for achieving our first 50 customers was to leverage the power of community marketing. We connected with niche communities such as Indie Hackers, Facebook Groups, and Reddit, and used our side projects to launch product launches. Additionally, we sought out referrals from every customer and had some success with an affiliate program. This enabled us to get initial traction soon. This was a key factor in our success and enabled us to build a strong base of customers.
Which technology stack are you using and what challenges and limitations does it pose?
Earlier Draftss was completely built through Python/Django, but it was a bad idea to have the landing page built using python/django as for small little changes you had to push things to production which created a burden for us.
We revamped Draftss and built it ground up on WordPress/Elementor.
For the customer facing dashboard we use ManyRequests.
What are some of the most essential tools that you use for your business?
Trello is one of the essential tools for our day-to-day work at Draftss. Trello is used by our entire team of Designers, Developers, Managers & Client Service to communicate & manage.
We also use Prospectss, Calendly, SalesHandy, Gsuite & more.
What have been some of the biggest insights you've gained since starting your entrepreneurial journey?
It isn’t that the idea that matter when building the startup but the execution is. For building a great start-up, you must focus on the end result of the product which solves the customers problem and provide immense value.
So if the outcome of your product/service is not great your startup will continue to decline no matter the marketing or advertising efforts you put behind it.
For example there are tons of other companies that try to copy our model & build their own design subscription model as a service. But they eventually failed because they weren't able to obtain great designs & provide them at a fraction of the cost, with a fast turnaround time.
A lot of time you have great ideas about building a product and it's going to solve that problem. But how good the output of that product is what matters the most.
Your recommended books/podcasts/newsletters etc.:
I really love the book 100 Million Offers by Alex Hormozi. I think every entrepreneur should read that no matter what stage that entrepreneur is, definitely go to read. I also love podcast by Nathan Latka & MorningBrew.
