SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
He spent $30k to build a text based version of Calendly, here's how he got first 50 customers
01 Sep 2022
Chapter 1: How did Naveen S.G. get his first 50 customers?
So you went from zero to 50 customers in the past 30 days?
Yeah, first 45 days, yes.
You are listening to Conversations with Nathan Latka, where I sit down and interview the top SaaS founders, like Eric Wan from Zoom. If you'd like to subscribe, go to getlatka.com.
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He's the co-founder of leadmonk.io, having 20 years of IT industry experience across sales, product development, consulting, and entrepreneurship. LeadMonk is an online appointment scheduling software.
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Chapter 2: What makes LeadMonk different from existing scheduling software?
Naveen, you ready to take us to the top? yeah hi i'm okay look i'm looking forward to this and here's why a lot of people go you can't invent another appointment scheduling software cal only has already won how would you respond
OK. As you know that we are all moving towards mobile-first business world. And in this world, mobile number is fast becoming the customer identity file. And all the traditional softwares which are there, like Calendly or Acuity scheduling, they're all built for email address based appointment only.
so that's the reason we decided to come up with this okay because you know as you can see here not everyone is comfortable using the email address except millennials and working professionals think about people in the informal sectors retired professionals who are not net savvy so for them if you ask them to book appointments only using email address then it's a friction for them okay and also in first yeah for some sectors
Yeah. For some sectors, email address-based appointment is really not needed. Like a real estate agent, insurance agent, doctor's appointment, dental appointment.
Chapter 3: When did Naveen launch LeadMonk and what was the initial pricing?
They don't need. See, mobile number is the customer identifier. You can call them. You can message them. You can send a quotation. You can do everything.
I mean, understood. When did you launch the company? What year?
Only in this year, January.
Chapter 4: How did Naveen build a waitlist of 500 users?
This year. It's been eight months.
And what do you, how did you decide what your first pricing would be? What are customers paying you per month?
Right now they are paying $6 per month. That's an annual plan. So how we came up with this pricing is we just compared with the benchmark with the other applications that are available. We said like, why don't we introduce an introductory pricing so that people who are not familiar with this mobile number based appointment scheduling, they can explore it.
And if they like it, they can start using it. So that's the introductory pricing.
Chapter 5: What strategies did Naveen use to convert free users to paying customers?
And what month did you sign up your first customer?
Last month. Because last month only we activated the subscription. In fact, we had not activated. We had a lot of free users. We enabled the subscription. And in the very first week itself, we were fortunate to get a paid user from California.
How many free signups did you have before you launched the paid plan?
We had 500 plus. 500.
Chapter 6: How much did Naveen invest in building LeadMonk?
Okay.
And how many are now paying?
Yeah, around 10% of them are paying. So 50, five zero? Yeah, yes.
So you went from zero to 50 customers in the past 30 days?
Yeah, first 45 days, yes. And the main point is we have not invested even a dollar in the digital marketing campaign.
Well, hold on. Before we go there, Naveen, so you built a 500-person wait list.
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Chapter 7: What marketing tactics does Naveen plan to use for growth?
How did you do that?
Okay, how did we do this? We went ahead and listed our lead monk in all the listing sites. Name a bunch of them. Yeah, lead monk. In every listing site we listed.
No, no, Naveen, name a couple. Product Hunt, where else?
Yeah, Product Hunt and then GetApp, Captera, all the review sites, like 50 plus review sites are there, like Good Business, SaaS Finder, and Google Workspace. Google Workspace is also Google Workspace Marketplace.
Chapter 8: How does Naveen measure the success of his content marketing?
Yeah, we get a lot of leads from there. And then there's Microsoft App Marketplace. We get a lot of leads from there as well. So in all these marketplaces, we listed. And that's where from there only we are getting good. Yeah, yes. And we have users from 24 countries.
Okay. So you listed on these marketplaces for free. Is that the only tactic you use to build a waitlist of 500? Yes. Okay. So you build the waitlist for five. And when did you start building the waitlist? What month?
Um, from January to Okay, so right at the beginning, January this year, January through sort of July, you're building a waitlist, you launch pricing in early July, and now you have 50 customers. Okay, so my next question is, you have a 500 people on the waitlist. How did you convert 10 of those into paid customers? What was sort of the paywall that you put up?
So, I mean, they were all using this and like many of those customers did share the requirement as well. And to be honest, from that 500 list, we could convert only like, you know, hardly 10 customers. But remaining 40 plus customers we got in the last two months who are the new customers who came on board.
See, what happens is all these pilot customers, they will have some kind of a preconception like, okay, this platform is that, this, okay, this, okay, some features are not there like that. But all the new customers who signed up in the last two months, they were very happy with that because when they signed up, they got most of the features they were expecting.
I mean, did they sign up for a free trial or did they start paying on day one before they used it?
No, we have 14 days trial period and we also have a freemium model.
Do you require a credit card in the free trial? No.
no okay so they went to your pricing page that says six dollars per user per month best value they click on they click on get started yes and then what you basically say is okay and i'm actually doing this now so i can ask you better questions i sign up for app.leadmonk.io i continue with google and eventually i'm going to basically say i can use it for free for 14 days yeah free for 14 days and if you have a basic scheduling requirement it is free forever
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