Sjoerd

@nico_jeannen Thanks for posting this. It's not common to get such an honest peek behind the curtains. Scrolling through X you get a feeling everyone is crushing it with their SaaS that they vibe coded in 2 days. We need more of this. Best of luck grinding on!

have been stagnating like crazy since then 💀 MRR is actually lower now, back under $900 (less if I only count Adkit) I spent 3 days investigating trying to figure out what's happening using Claude code connected to Posthog, Stripe and Heyo Chat to investigate (more on that later if anyone interested). First, I got way less traffic, but also every new subscription I got was negated by other people canceling = no growth. So it’s like less traffic + bad retention, so it’s guaranteed fail The Churn indicated by Stripe is tricky, it showed ~10% but it was closer to 40% actually 😬 Reason is because churn updates retroactively when ppl cancel, so if you just check the last 4 weeks in Stripe it will always be lower cause ppl won’t have churned yet (it’s been less than a month). But when I switched to 3 month view I saw it was much higher than expected. I thought the product was fine but it was not at all TL:DR: most people did not use the app that much and canceled after 2-3 month (either cause of bugs, forgetting about it, not knowing all the features or just because they only needed it for a short time) For ex in Adkit, to get the value of the product (ads competitor tracking), you can either follow advertisers already in the db, or add your own. But the empty state when you search and no advertiser is found makes it looks like if it’s not there then you can’’t do anything about it I thought it was obvious cause there is a big button “add advertiser” but apparently not (I saw session replays of users getting frustrated) In this case. I think the fix is just to add a better empty state with a CTA to make it very clear that people can track their own competitors Another issue is that I didn’t took the time to setup email sequences, so people who purchased kinda forgot about the app and also might not know all the features available. Then they cancel cause they don’t really use it. So now I’m making a full onboarding sequence to help users take habits of using the app, give them tips, etc. (@bento is the best for that). And then the other issue is getting started. From the data I got, people who have 5+ advertisers tracked are more likely to keep using the app and stay subscribed. So one thing I’m going to add is Starter Packs = users can follow a bunch of handpicked advertisers for a specific industry in one click That way they don’t have to browse the list of advertisers to get started => Less manual work => Less friction => (hopefully) more usage There is many more issues (lots of actual bugs), I fixed a good chunk of them already so hopefully this could improve things Big mistake is that I stopped talking to users. I did it at the beginning while launching the app but then I stopped. So now I’ll try to talk to one customer per week minimum. Either people who use the app a lot, started using or churned. Only way to truly understand users IMO. ====== Now that was ONLY for activation/retention (keeping existing users). This is only half the issue. Other half is acquisition (getting new users) I thought the app was growing well on its own, but turns out most traffic came from X (launch post + general traffic) The launch posts died out after while so traffic died eventually. Then I also stopped using X in January / Feb to detox mental health (and it did work!). but then it meant I lost most of my traffic source. I dint launch ads yet cause of all the issues I have to fix etc, but it will be time to start! Relying launch for long terms is not a strategy, esp when it comes from just one platform. I should probably try to post more about the app again But I need to get rid of doom and political posts in my timeline cause it makes me angry/depressed :D Started working on SEO a bit but never got any success with it so I don’t hope much. My friend @aurelien_dio is helping a bit so maybe this time it will work (he did SEO for big French corpo). === So, TL:DR, issue is that not only I don’t have enough water filling the bucket but also the bucket has a hole so any effort I put in is wasted. First fix the bucket, then pour more water. I know Adkit has potential, I just have to put the pieces of the puzzle together. I managed to get from 0 to 1 but now I need to figure out how to go from 1 to 2. Plan rn is to fix issues, then try new acquisition channels SaaS is fking hard, cause you dont just have acquisition, you also have activation and retention, that's like 3x more stuff to work on compared to one-time purchases (that’s why I recommend doing one-time when you start out btw, much less to manage). But it's ok, learning on the go and (hopefully) figuring things out over time I know I can make a great product, and I will ==== Some great resources that helped: longform.asmartbear.com/max-mrr / longform.asmartbear.com/customer-devel… by @asmartbear (insane this is free) Product-Led Growth by @wes_bush Deploy Empathy by @mjwhansen (best resource to talk with users IMO)

@statamic All of that, plus Spanish scenery (que?) and a bad guy called B100.

@sjoerdsyntax If they give you warm, cozy, everything-is-going-to-be-okay, you are seen and cared for, be-exactly-who-you-meant-to-be vibes (plus puppets), then you've nailed it.

🖼️ Featured Feature – Image Cropping Now available in Statamic 6.5.0. 🫶

@statamic Oh but we had Bassie & Adriaan. So, not sure who's losing. (I am sure, it's us)

@sjoerdsyntax Such a shame, you don't even have a cultural equivalent! 😭

@robj3d3 "Watch out! That man has two guns!"

If you’re a founder you should be training like an athlete: > 8hrs sleep > no alcohol > daily sun > lift 4x a week > 10k steps/day The #1 reason founders fail is because they quit. If your body is fit, you won’t quit.

@statamic ^ cries in Dutch ignorance ^

@sjoerdsyntax That business casual dressed man is Mister Freakin Rogers 🐐 and heck yeah he can pronounce it. Pronounce it like a boss.

@robj3d3 @levelsio This guy knows

@levelsio Does the $1K/mo account for a freezer full of steak?

Hard to say I spend about $5K/mo and then another $5K-30K/mo on Airbnbs/rentals/hotels if we traveling If not traveling more like just $5K/mo cause I own my own house And GF likes to spend on being beautiful But me I if I'm solo can live off $1K/mo I think, I don't need much

@d__raptis @oguzyagizkara Geez, so nice. Well done @oguzyagizkara

This is what real attention to detail looks like → demo.define.app by @oguzyagizkara

This bebeh would fit nicely with my other home office stuffadoodles. 11/10 would buy

@levelsio Might move abroad just for Starlink tbh hehe. Early 2000s satellite internet: 3 kB/s mp3 downloads that took forever.

Get Starlink, it works great in Portugal I get 350mbps Soon they will roll out Gbps Never had any issues, meanwhile my friends always have issues with regular ISPs like Vodafone, MEO etc

@bartek_marzec Very smooth, great stuff. Also, love the name shapeshyft 👌

Animated Web sections. Working on a showcase reel snipping the best & most exciting moments from previous projects. shapeshyft.co.uk

@blvckledge Swipe

deleting soon a collection of the best LPs to use for google ads rn ... all in an editable Figma you can dupe our internal landing page team have swiped these to cut our CPAs by 2-3x, some brands have scaled to 6 and 7 figures in spend alone giving it away for the next 48 hrs like + comment "swipe" and I’ll send it over (follow so i can DM)

@jamesm Capitalising could be ChatGPT content. I’ve Seen That Happen Quite A Lot Actually.

There really needs to be a study on why so many designers insist on capitalising every word in a heading and cranking the letter-spacing so tight it’s practically illegible.

@PetrKrehlik @dennis_smink I do wonder where you can get a managed VPS for €35? Serious question

@dennis_smink Why is it so expensive? €35,63 for 1 vCPU and 3 GB RAM? You can get managed VPS with much better specs, honest question what benefits you get?

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@ModestMitkus That does look pretty slick. Are those your own card images or did cursor provide that as well?

It's getting crazy how much easier it is to design with Cursor than with Figma. I literally just prompt what I need until I get it. No images, all UI elements which also makes it easier to make changes later on (instead of going to Figma and redesigning and uploading again).

@levelsio That’s solid free advice right there! And also more reach. Helping others. Nicely done. 👌

Congrats Add an og:image (ask ChatGPT how) Don't tweet the URL, it will get deranked on X, add as a reply Post your launch tweet with an image or even better a video of you using it with you talking through it and explaining it (ask ChatGPT how) Right now your tweet is 100% unclear what you made Good job you launched something!

@hanne_van_briel Oh I really dig these. 👌

GN 🖤 lost in dreams with this --sref

@hanne_van_briel Oh I dig this. Reminds me of "The Bone Algorithm" dance performance I saw the other day. (offprojects.nl/projects/the-b…)

🤍

@blakeandersonw @cormachayden_ @testimonialto @QUITTR_app @levelsio @chatbase_co @tdinh_me @carrd @dannypostma @SeedOilScout @marclou Love the honesty! Still 10m .. damn son. 👌

@cormachayden_ @testimonialto @QUITTR_app @levelsio @chatbase_co @tdinh_me @carrd @dannypostma @SeedOilScout @marclou Appreciate you brother, but I have cofounders for every product I've built haha. I am a big advocate of working with cofounders. If we take the sum of my equity * arr across products it would be around 10m,

We've entered single-player founder mode - @testimonialto $1.5m arr - @quittr_app $3m arr - @levelsio $3m arr - @chatbase_co $3m arr - @tdinh_me $1.2m arr - @carrd $2m arr - @blakeandersonw $18m arr - @dannypostma $3m arr - @seedoilscout $1m arr - @marclou $2m arr

@nico_jeannen It's missing a "CORS #$%^&*@(#@#" commit

POV: You're trying to fix a CORS issue