How We Reached the Magical First 1,000 Customers

Show Bootstrapped
#1

Hey guys,

Growing a Saas from 1 to your 1000 customers takes a lot of effort. We have been working on Kinsta in the past several years and there are valuable lessons we’ve learned during this journey. Everything has been collected into a giant post as I wanted to share with other founders, co-founders and bootstrappers. If you have a few minutes please take a look and let me know what do you think!

Growing a SaaS Company – How We Reached the Magical First 1,000 Customers

Thanks,
Tom

#2

It seems I can not add a link to the post. If anyone can help me please let me know :slight_smile:

#3

Link added.

…

#4

Thanks @andrey appreciated the help!

1 Like
#5

That was a great read, Tom. Thanks for sharing it.

One section I found particularly valuable was the comparison pages. I really like what you have done with them:

To make our leads’ life easier we create dedicated landing pages where we compare Kinsta to the competition. These are not 200 words, biased, or thin sales pages. If you take a look any of these you will get the idea. A lot of time and research went into each of them.

That’s something I can learn from.

#6

In the comparison with Siteground, you’ve missed which Hosting plan of Siteground do you make the side by side comparison with (I guess its their GoGeek as it is equal to your lowest trier)

You also don’t mention do you provide Mail (POP/IMAP/SMTP), and how reliable are they. For example Siteground SMTP agent is pretty reliable (compared to 5$/m hostings where mails are rejected for “sending MTA low reputation”) but not as reliable as TheXYZ.com.

In essence your comparison is Ok for an IT manager, but misses important details for a geek like me

#7

I’m glad to hear you liked it! These pages are very important and I’ve seen a lot of these in the Saas industry. A page like this makes really easy for a potential client to see the key differences. I’d suggest anyone to create them!

#8

Hi,

This is a great read, thanks for sharing.

I liked this point:

Another way to stand out is with your website copy. However, this isn’t always the easiest thing to do. In fact, in some cases, it can be one of the hardest depending on your skillset.

It doesn’t just take time but it almost always requires customer research on your part. On your website, you have to use your customer’s language. You might find it strange or think you have to use complicated terms and expressions, but believe me, the language of your customers is what converts best.

I keep a card on our audience research Trello board for ‘how customers describe us’. I’m still surprised sometimes!

Thanks,
Hannah