Congratulations if you’ve opened this email

Because if you did, you’re ready to grow to new heights

and stop making some weird mistakes and assumptions

Be ready to crush your past world view and see things as they are….


Anyways, I hopped on so many calls in those past few weeks
Seen a few mistakes that SaaS companies make

Ready to share them with you in this 1 email

It’s going to be long, around 7-minutes long, so sit tight

Here are the pitfalls you can fall into:

#1 Engineering issues

This is the most common one.

Listen closely - DON’T HIRE ANYONE IF YOU CAN’T ADD 20 USERS AND NOT CRASH

Because if you realize that you already have some problems in your SaaS

aka people are already complaining in your customer support

YOU DON’T NEED MORE USERS

You need to sort your engineering issues first
(otherwise your churn will be huge)

If you have enough confidence to first onboard users then fund a good engineer, go for it, definitely

But if you don’t want to take risks, better find the solution first

Otherwise, your ship will crash faster than a ChatGPT startup rises

Okay, the basics are done - what’s next?

#2 Don’t let people slip through

You must already have some way of acquiring users

It might be through cold emails, cold DMs or maybe even calls
(is the last one from the 2000s?)

Anyways, notice one word in here - COLD

What does it mean?

People aren’t ready to buy the subscription yet

The amount of people who are is usually around 3-5%

Markets become sophisticated, it’s hard to convince people that they need something unless it’s
1) Urgent problem and you came in time (big luck)
2) Something they heard about a LOT

The first point is something that you can’t control or rely on
(therefore, as stoics would suggest, it’s meaningless to fight with)

But the second one is completely in your hands

“How do I put my name everywhere?”

Oh, there are plenty of options to grab attention!

1) Ads (would cost a lot)
2) UGC (won’t cost that much)
3) Organic Content (takes time)

I’d introduce here short form as another alternative - it’s cheap and effective

BUT

You will still let people slip through

You can’t really get into their minds on ANY of the platforms

We need to WARM people up (after all, they’ve been so cold for a long while)

Again, there are two ways to do it as well:
1) Emails (but they won’t give feedback)
2) Community (two-way communication, finally)

And the second option is better than the first one
IT’S NOT BECAUSE I BUILD COMMUNITIES, NOPE

It’s because you can identify fans more easily
You can cut your feedback loop in half
You can see requested features faster
You can improve what matters faster
You can dominate the market

Isn’t it better to see actual feedback rather than email open rates?

I guess the answer is simple

Let me illustrate what I mean:

You can let people think and not lose them.

How many people are “on edge” of buying but never actually buy?

Now you can make them pull out their credit cards faster than a gun on a West

#3 Your community sucks…

Now, you funnel some people into your community

And it’s silent…

Like a ghost town, nobody talks

It sucks, doesn’t it?

But what else did you expect?

It’s like making a product and expecting it to sell itself.

People won’t start talking unless you make them do that - that’s it

There’s no other way to go about it, there must be some soul of the party

Or

There must be some unique content that is for community members ONLY

It’s not some “YouTube video” (that is available to everyone)
or some other guide that made its way onto Twitter

NO

Have a unique reason for people to join the community, otherwise, your hopes and dreams will be dead before they even begin to unleash.


Even if you have just 200 or even 100 people inside of the community, those are PEOPLE

Real live human beings that have their own reasons to join this community

If treat people like potential users and not just numbers, you’ll see some wonders happen

Those are 3 simple keys to unlocking the full potential of your SaaS without breaking the bank or having way too many trials and errors.

In the next issue, I’ll talk about simple fixes of the community itself that can help you bring more people on board.

See ya this Friday,
Valeria