🦄 First User Fridays Issue #1 - How Lukas Hermann got Stagetimer.io its first users
The Story of how Lukas Hermann (along with his wife, Liz Hermann), was inspired to build Stagetimer.io and how he found its first users.
Hey all! 👋
Welcome to the first issue of F.U.F. (doesn’t seem like a nice abbreviation does it..) let’s just stick to First User Fridays.
What’s it about?
Well in my relatively short stint in the indiehacker, microsaas, solopreneur world, I’ve experienced this sort of hunger for learning about how successful founders have done it.
How they started from an idea, validated it, and then found their first users/customers, which is basically the whole premise of this newsletter!
Thought that I could chat with founders and share their story to others that might find it valuable and interesting. 😊
Let’s kick it off! 🔥
First, just for an introductory thing for readers, can you tell us a little about yourself? 😁
Lukas: I am a German, married to a Brazilian.
In 2020 I started working on my first side project that was designed to become a SaaS business.
In 2021 I got laid off and decided to go full-time on it. And I'm determined never to go back to employment.
Can you give us an overview on the product that you're sharing today?
Lukas: The product is called Stagetimer.io and is a tool for live events, video production and conferences to time presenters on stage remotely.
Think of TED events and how the speaker always has a big countdown in front of them. This is the kind of product we built.
Dante: Awesome yes I've actually been following your and your wife's journey since launch and been really inspired with it tbh. It's a product that stood out to me because it served a very specific niche and it was unique in that I don't know any other tool that does what stagetimer does!
How did you come up with this product idea?
Lukas: I'd claim credit, but it was really an accident. A friend has a recording studio with a two-room setup. One room for cameras, light, set and presenter. The other room where he sits with all his gear.
To start the countdown before each recording he had to run into the room, press a button on a laptop, and hustle back out.
I thought by myself "surely there's a tool that let's you open a website on that computer and controller it remotely. I could build that in a weekend!"
I checked, there wasn't, so I built it.
Dante: It's actually crazy how the best ideas come from the most unexpected moments
Lukas: Totally. When my wife and I travel we always have a notion list for these unexpected ideas. The list is long by now. 😄
Dante: Hahahah that's like a solopreneur starter pack, that and a dozen unused domain names?
Lukas: I'm religious about not buying domains until the thing is launched. 😇
Dante: That's some serious impulse control! 😂 Personally I even have 1 to 2 alternative domain for ideas on my list just so I have choices to pick from haha
When did your wife, Mrs. Liz Hermann join stagetimer? From the very beginning?
Lukas: Later on. She was a bit disillusioned with her job. So I decided to ask her to join forces. It was the obvious move in hindsight, but at the time I wasn't sure. I made it very clear to her that she had to learn marketing and how to use tools like Google Ads and Facebook Ads Manager.
Thankfully she was up for the challenge, devoured like 5 books in a month on the topic, and is doing a terrific job now.
Dante: And now you two are kicking ass! 😁 Inspirational even when it comes to couple goals HAHA
How did you find your first customers? Was it your friend?
Lukas: No. I think he doesn't use Stagetimer to this day 😆
After crunching it out in a weekend I put it on reddit. The post got a few comments, fortunately from the right people. So I kept tinkering on it with all the suggestions I got there.
Then I added payments and a few reasons to buy an upgrade (hide logo, limit features, that kind of thing). That was 6 months later. It was free all that time.
The day I released the paid features someone from that original Reddit post saw my Tweet. I had only like 300 followers then mind you. The person purchased on the spot and became my first customer. He's paying to this day!
Dante: Do you remember which subreddits you posted in on?
Lukas: I posted in /r/commercialAV and /r/VIDEOENGINEERING. It took me a while to find the subreddits too. I wasn't at all familiar with that niche!
You mentioned that for 6 months it was free, any reason you waited until then to start a paid plan?
Lukas: The features that were free in the beginning are still free today. I wanted to add enough value to justify a paid plan.
I like releasing things for free. It gives you a good sense if it solves a real problem. Once you have that solved, payment is easy.
How do you find your customers today?
Lukas: 50% Google (that's SEO and paid) and 35% mouth to mouth.
Can you share an approximate of how many users you currently have?
Lukas: That's surprisingly hard to answer because we don't require sign-in to use our free tier. A conservative estimate would be around 5000 monthly active users.
Dante: Recently you've shared some MRR details on twitter, has some things improved since then?
Can you share some current revenue numbers?
Lukas: Sure thing!
We are almost at €5,000 MRR and if growth continues as projected we should hit €5,500 by the end of the year.
Now I have to add that our revenue is much higher than that. We offer a 10-day-access license with no subscription that is our most popular item.
Early on we had very high churn after the first month. So Liz started to ask all of them if something was wrong with the tool and if they would like a refund.
All of them, without fail, were excited about the tool but said they only needed it for a single event. So we created the "single event" license. This lowered our churn and raised our revenue. 😄
Dante: Super congrats to you guys! What an awesome milestone! Love how the "talk to your users" mantra is actually being used to do custom business models that work for unique use cases.
Lastly, do you have some insights that you can give founders who are just starting to look for their first users?💡
Lukas: So one thing I say is…
"In 6 month you wish you had started 6 months ago"... Nothing can replace experience and better fail 3 projects than never started a successful one.
Another is about finding the right partner, which is a weighty topic. There's only so much you can do before you commit.
True love is important, but more so is learning to communicate well.
Most frustration and all happiness long term comes from a relationship that can communicate well. The same is true for business relationships.
Dante: Thanks for the time and thanks for the insights man, here's to you and Mrs. Hermann!🍷
Where can we go to learn more about you and your projects?
Lukas: I'm most active on Twitter @_lhermann, and so is my wife @lizmhermann 😊
Thanks for reading! 👍
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See you next week!
Thanks for sharing! I tracked down Lukas's original Reddit Stagetimer post here: https://www.reddit.com/r/CommercialAV/comments/jx3j8i/advice_for_presentation_timer_app_in_the_making/