🏄The Wakeboarder's SaaS Journey (1)
Hi guys!
One year ago, I joined STM Forum determined to scale sweepstakes. Thanks to this outstanding community, persistence, and some luck, I was able to quit my high-paying job and put all my focus on my own projects and ideas.
The Wild Boar Liquidator project is still doing good, but we are now more focused on offline retailers.
In this post, I would like to share the most important things I've learned so far as SaaS founder. You can read more about the Pinterest tool I'm working on here.
DISCLAIMER: At the time of this writing, we are generating low 4-figures in MRR, so don't take this post as expert advice, because I'm not SaaS expert neither experienced CEO/Founder. Just a hungry online marketer, eager to learn new things and build sustainable projects that can work on a long term. 
1. The Power of Community
At the moment, Pinterest advertising is not mainstream traffic source for direct-response advertisers. I soon realized there are no active communities for Pinterest (PPC) marketers. That said, we start building own FB community, an email database, YouTube channel, and Blog posts.
A few days ago, I opened a Private group for our Paid members where I'm posting Changelog, interesting funnels, what features the team is working on and trying to be in touch with our members so we can build features they will use it.
We don't have many users in the group yet, but the feedback I get from them is fantastic. I realized, that users are more willing to share input on DM than in public.
Building a community is a long-term approach, but I believe this can help SaaS founders learn what their users want. I'm willing to spend a lot of time to connect and be in touch with our users, so I can learn what they want and I can align their needs with our product development strategy.
2. Optimize the Workflow
Our team is small, 4 team members only, and we all have projects/jobs we need to work on. After a few months, I realized things are moving too slow because I did not setup good workflow.
After I start consistently using Trello due date function, going through tasks every morning and write comment and reminders to other members, things are moving much faster now.
I was insisting a few weeks to use Due data and Checklist features inside Trello board. Before that, I was all over the place. I think my life is less a bit less stressful now. 
Below you can see our Trello board. Very simple, yet so powerful.
3. Building Connections
Luckily, I love connecting with like-minded people, so this is not a challenge for me, but I just wanted to mention this here, because it's super important.
Every week I'm trying to get in touch with at least two new people that I believe we can help each other. I'm talking here about other product founders, our power-users, YouTubers, etc.
For example, I know that in July there will be an event that one C-level Pinterest person attends, and I know I will do everything I can to get an invite for the event and meet in person this guy. When I told him about our plan with the tool and everything else that's in my head, he will be impressed.
4. In-App Analytics
Sometimes I feel like I'm obsessed with analyzing the user-behavior, but I want to know how our users are using our tool. That way, I can see which features are people and what are they doing in general.
What's even more important is that I can track and see when users have a bad experience with our tool.
For example, if the user was searching for and did not receive any results, I can see what he was searching for so I can fix this ASAP. Even better is that we can send automated messages (email) to the user when this happens.
We're using Mixpanel and I love it. It can be very expensive, it all depends which package you choose. So far we are using free version, and It's more that enough.
Imagine optimizing eCommerce shop without Google Analytics and Facebook Pixel. 
5. Webhooks + Zapier = <3
Zapier is one of my favorite services. Let me give you a few examples of why I love it so much.
1) Save Development Resource
I want that our developers are focused on important tasks most of their time, like building new features and optimizing existing ones.
With Zapier, Webhooks and GTM DataLayer I can do many things on my own. For example, I implemented Mixpanel on my own, I sent DataLayer codes with Events and Parameters for every action inside the tool to our front-end guy, and now I have all the information in DataLayer and Zapier. I can not connect different marketing APIs without asking them for help and valuable time.
2) Automize Everything
Because we're sending every possible event/value to Zapier/DL I'm able to make automated reports and alerts within a few clicks.
A few examples of Zaps I build lately.
- A Slack bot which sends every day Number of New Ads into the channel (this is one of our most important metrics)
- When the user gets 0 results, I sent the search term and active filters into Google Spreadsheet file
- If the 500 Internal Server occurs, we receive Slack channel message, and bot automatically opens High Priority Trello Card with Server response code and tag developers
- When we receive new paid user, our Data Whore Bot sends a message with some motivational quote
6. Think outside the box
This one can be hard sometimes, especially where there are so many things going on. That's why we organize to work together, not remotely, before the soft-launch. I want that all team members are together and can discuss crazy ideas in in real-time.
Here is one of our most crazy idea that we came up with.
In my initial plan, I thought I would receive a killer case-study that will support the sale of our tool. How naive is that, huh?
Of course, I did not receive a case study, so we said, fuck it, let's build it on our own.
Here are step-by-step what we did
1) I used our tool and find products that are killin it on Pinterest, but are hard to copy. (no Aliexpress product)
2) We decided to go with an entirely personalized product (personalized star map)
3) A few days ago we started running Facebook ads so I can optimize the funnel
4) When we have a proven funnel, we will start running on Pinterest
5) At this point, we have in-house offer + a case study that will support sales of the SaaS tool
There are other, smaller ideas, of course. But I mentioned this one because I will be really proud if this works.
The second crazy idea that I have in pipeline, is to write a case-study with title How My Mom Helped Me Make First 1.000.000 Dollar?
Why?
Because I ordered my sister my make a video, how our mom is crying where she received the product we are selling. Then I created a simple Facebook vertical video on in Adobe Premier. Based on the initial data, I'm confident we will be able scale this video ad. We need to figure out pricing, but I think we can scale this very fast. It's different type of product than Wild Boar attractant, so I hope we can scale to the stars and back.
7. Have a Backup
So far I'm burning my own money, and other team members time , and I don't want to get to the point where I need to think how to pay the bills, rent etc. I was many times in this position, so I know this will kill my creativity and focus. That said, I decided to take one consulting client, that's paying me very good to help him with UA efforts for one of the fastest growing OTA in Asia. I know it's not the best for my focus, but at least I don't need to think about the money.
I think this backup can help me to burn own money longer and work on the project longer. It's true that online industry is moving fast, but still not fast enough for us. It takes time for marketers to test new traffic sources. The best time for Pinterest is yet to come, and I want to be ready, when this happens. Even if I need to work my ass off 14 hours / day. I don't care, I just want to work on projects, rather that thinking about money.
8. The Team
This is crucial. Working with the right people is one of the most important things I believe. I'm building a small, yet very powerful team that can build and scale project very fast.
At the moment, we can do almost everything in-house. Marketing, hardware, front-end, backend. Later on, I want to hire designer and copywriter, but for now, we just work with them on a project based.
My long-term goal that I have a team that's capable to build 2-3 projects per year that can scale. Personalized projects are something that we will probably focus on in the future, if we will be able to scale first two project.
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That's all I wanted to share with you guys. I hope you find this post valuable and you will get some ideas for your projects.
If anyone wants to connect and talk about Pinterest or SaaS related stuff, hit me up on FB.
Enjoy your Sunday!
Cheers,
wakeboarder
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