Just out of curiosity why not double down on the saas products to see if you 2-3x revenue on both instead of the agency? And what’s the % cost of revenue from the seller financing for MS if you don’t mind sharing.
I'd love to double down on the SaaS but I'm not yet at the scale where I can shut down the agency and just focus on the SaaS. PulseBanner has shrunk a lot (changes to the APIs of Twitter and conflicts between the app and Twitter Plus), and Meet Slack is doing well but its not an app I can grow through traditional marketing channels. It grows organically via the Slack app store. The conversion from free to paid is extremely low but it has very low churn and 15 - 40 new businesses sign up daily (all coming from the Slack app market place).
One idea I have is to create a fund and raise some capital which can be used to acquire SaaS but that's a big move and I'm not sure I want to go that route.
I send the previous owner of Meet Slack 2.5k a month so it's a significant portion of the monthly revenue. I'm sending more each month than I'm obligated to based on the loan agreement but I'm doing that on purpose so I can pay off the debt faster. The interest is very low on the loan so I consider it "good debt".
I see. PulseBanner might be hard to grow given the everchanging landscape with x/twitter.
MeetSlack is quite interesting. 15-40 new businesses is a ton. Wonder if you've reached out to those who aren't converting to paid users and just ask what would it take for them to convert to paid. And also it'd be interesting to see what would happen if you simply charge for the product instead of it being free from the start. Or make it 7-day free then paid or something. You can always test.
So Meet Slack has a 60 day free trial. After 60 days, the business has to upgrade to continue to use it. The reason for the long trial is the data shows that the more people in the company that use the app, the more likely the business is to convert. So I increased the trial period from 30 to 60 days to allow more time for the app to spread within the organization.
The reason so few upgrade to paid is that Meet Slack is very much a "nice to have". It reduces friction but it isn't solving a very painful problem.
Pulsebanner will continue to shrink and I may consider selling it to recoup some of the investment sometime next year. It's not a major focus of mine and works on autopilot for the most part.
Just out of curiosity why not double down on the saas products to see if you 2-3x revenue on both instead of the agency? And what’s the % cost of revenue from the seller financing for MS if you don’t mind sharing.
Great questions.
I'd love to double down on the SaaS but I'm not yet at the scale where I can shut down the agency and just focus on the SaaS. PulseBanner has shrunk a lot (changes to the APIs of Twitter and conflicts between the app and Twitter Plus), and Meet Slack is doing well but its not an app I can grow through traditional marketing channels. It grows organically via the Slack app store. The conversion from free to paid is extremely low but it has very low churn and 15 - 40 new businesses sign up daily (all coming from the Slack app market place).
One idea I have is to create a fund and raise some capital which can be used to acquire SaaS but that's a big move and I'm not sure I want to go that route.
I send the previous owner of Meet Slack 2.5k a month so it's a significant portion of the monthly revenue. I'm sending more each month than I'm obligated to based on the loan agreement but I'm doing that on purpose so I can pay off the debt faster. The interest is very low on the loan so I consider it "good debt".
I see. PulseBanner might be hard to grow given the everchanging landscape with x/twitter.
MeetSlack is quite interesting. 15-40 new businesses is a ton. Wonder if you've reached out to those who aren't converting to paid users and just ask what would it take for them to convert to paid. And also it'd be interesting to see what would happen if you simply charge for the product instead of it being free from the start. Or make it 7-day free then paid or something. You can always test.
So Meet Slack has a 60 day free trial. After 60 days, the business has to upgrade to continue to use it. The reason for the long trial is the data shows that the more people in the company that use the app, the more likely the business is to convert. So I increased the trial period from 30 to 60 days to allow more time for the app to spread within the organization.
The reason so few upgrade to paid is that Meet Slack is very much a "nice to have". It reduces friction but it isn't solving a very painful problem.
Pulsebanner will continue to shrink and I may consider selling it to recoup some of the investment sometime next year. It's not a major focus of mine and works on autopilot for the most part.