Основатель Starter Story создаёт SaaS: $1K MRR сложнее, чем ожидалось

The pre-launch list converted directly into the first paying cohort.

“This got me about 7 signed up once launched, and after the launch I got 3 more that trickled in since, which got me to 10.”

Simple, unscaled personal promotion, not a channel tactic, filled the list.

“The rest was just me emailing, messaging, and tweeting/talking about the product and showing some early features.”

Every prospect who wanted the product had to be sold to personally on a video call before Google's warning screen would let them proceed.

“How to get around the danger screen issue? Direct sales. I would do a Google Hangouts call with every new prospect to learn more about their use case”

Even though calls sometimes led nowhere, Pat credits them with teaching him direct sales and validating the product beyond just producing revenue.

“these calls were invaluable in understanding my customers, building personal connections, learning how to sell, and to validate the product”

The list doubled as a standing marketing surface: every feature ship became an email plus a tweet.

“I've built up a small list (about 500 now) of people interested in Pigeon. I collected the emails pre-launch and through the website/Chrome extension.”

Visible, frequent shipping reassured both existing customers and undecided prospects that the product was alive and improving.

“People love to see that you're actively working on the product and improving it, whether that's prospects or customers.”

A simple chat widget, not a formal support desk, was used to talk to both customers and prospects.

“Just put a chat popup thingy on your site and chat with them over email - it doesn't even have to be about your product.”

Fast, founder-answered chats read as a quality signal to prospects deciding between Pigeon and competitors.

“If you can answer the chats from prospects quickly, it shows that you have good customer support and that you simply care about your customers”

Posting answers on Quora in the early days became an ongoing lead source he kept returning to.

“I have a lot of customers tell me they found me through Quora as I did a bit of posting there in the early days.”

Quora traffic was pre-qualified: people were already searching for the exact problem Pigeon solved.

“it meant people were actually searching for the solutions Pigeon offered”

Pigeon moved to self-serve freemium once the Gmail API restriction was lifted.

“Pigeon is now a freemium product. I was a bit nervous about how this would go, but after seeing a month of data, I think it's the right”

The funnel matched typical product-led growth: try, engage, hit a limit, pay.

“We're seeing people sign up, kick around the product, become engaged with the product, and eventually pay for the product when they need some extra”

A separate, unrelated viral page drove a traffic spike that Pat says clearly cross-pollinated into Pigeon signups.

“The response from 'How To Say No' has been crazy! The page has been visited over 50k times in the last month”

Pat frames it as evidence that unconventional, non-product marketing can move a B2B SaaS product's numbers.

“And for Pigeon, it's driven ~300 users.”