Our AI personal assistant SaaS just hit $6k MRR with almost 0 paid marketing. Here's how we did it!
First off, here are our numbers as of Feb 9, 2024:
- MRR: $6K
- Subscribers: 141
- LTV: $343 (+48.1%)
- Churn: 12% (-26.4%)
Beta Launch
Our bootstrapping journey started in May 2023, when we created an MVP of our AI personal assistant product for solopreneurs and small startups, Olympia. We soft-launched our beta with a waiting list and started collecting emails from those interested in trying our product: https://olympia.chat.
My co-founder and I did that through our social media networks and online communities.
Meanwhile, we started involving friends and family and asking them to test our MVP and give feedback. As soon as we got some feedback (around 30-40 people) and implemented some changes to our software, we started sending private invites to our waitlist subscribers. Interacting closely with our early adopters allowed us to refine the product and gain our first fans. Word of mouth started its work.
Product-Market Fit
Adding Olympia to AI directories was a hit. After adding a listing to There Is an AI for That, our waiting list skyrocketed by five to ten pages of new email subscribers a day. At this point, we were actively sending private invites, and the number of customers was growing fast. We found our product-market fit pretty fast.
Besides constantly improving the product with the help of our first customers and adding new features, we began posting on socials and sending the newsletter out with our updates and plans. People loved it.
We continued adding Olympia to numerous AI directories and posting about it in online communities. Also, we bought ads in a couple of newsletters. Some of them gave us good traffic, but we were pretty disappointed with how overhyped they were. We didn't get too many signups from the newsletter ads.
Hard Launch
In September we rolled out of beta and raised our prices. As a token of appreciation for their help, we left the initial prices untouched for our early adopters.
At this point, we hired a customer support rep, improved our website, and focused on refining the product, implementing our marketing plan, and adding new features. Futurepedia and There Is an AI for That gave us good results, so we bought ads on these platforms (once). We were invited to a couple of Twitter Spaces to talk about AI and business, sponsored drinks and snacks at two events, and spoke/networked at a couple of others actively promoting Olympia.
Both my co-founder and I are writers. So we wrote articles on Medium, Indie Hackers, Entrepreneur, Hacker News, and HackerNoon. You can see some of them on my profile here. Previously, I ran my own PR agency, so I launched a PR campaign working on brand awareness in media. We also asked our clients to send us reviews and added them to our website.
Our Product Hunt launch was pretty successful and gave us a significant boost in traffic and sales.
By the end of the year, we had more speaking gigs at events and closed a cool partnership with a company well-known in the startup world. Networking and speaking at the events have proven to be very beneficial for us.
We tried target ads, but it was a failure. I think we found not a very professional specialist, or did something wrong.
2024
Since the start of the new year, we began implementing our content marketing plan, expanding our blog and newsletter.
One of the articles with a comprehensive comparison of Olympia to ChatGPT is the most engaging so far. I believe that adding real use cases of our product soon will as well add more credibility and trust for Olympia.
Velocity is very important. We improved our product significantly since the launch date. Besides having long-term memory remembering previous conversations and our clients' business goals, our humanized AI assistants now autonomously send emails, analyze and summarize uploaded data, create downloadable long-form copy, and collaborate with each other and our users in one conversation. We created a demo that customers asked for and added it to our YouTube channel and website.
Launching our affiliate and referral programs helped us get some help from our raving fans. One trick was to include referral links in the emails our AI professionals send on behalf of the users.
We do our sales calls as founders by ourselves, and it works pretty well. As a CEO, I contact all customers scheduled to churn, and see if there is something we can immediately fix to meet their needs for them to stay with us. This way I had a chance to recover some of the churned revenue.
We started working on third-party integrations to make our AI team do more stuff and ran some tests receiving good feedback from users. Our team of three humans and fourteen AI assistants is pretty creative :) We came up with a banger idea on how to increase our revenue and boost sales. I will definitely share all about it as soon as we go past the testing phase and launch beta. We will also have a PR campaign for the world to know.
There is a significant drop in the churn rate, and our customers' LTV increased a lot within the past few weeks. We will continue shipping new features and add third-party integrations, create partnerships with relevant businesses, speak and network at events, write articles, and treat our customers like family.
We also plan to launch an online community and our monthly virtual and offline events with a podcast and Twitter (X) Spaces on the way. If you happen to be in Mexico City, comment below, and I'll send you a free invite to our next offline event here ;) Thanks for reading till the end!
Congrats! and your method is great. I'll also try it as I am also launching something soon.
Thanks, and good luck!
Your method is very instructive to me, thank you, I will learn and try，thanks
Thank you! I am happy to help :)
This is so great to see. Congratulations!! Implementing some of this - thank you!
I'm absolutely smashed to help you! You're welcome :)
It's so cool to see you guy are off to a great start.
Do you have some case studies or examples of Olympia in action?
Hi, thank you, yes, we're working on case studies with our customers at the moment. We've shared some content on our blog (and working on more ofc), for example, how Olympia outshines ChatGPT and why it is better for entrepreneurs - https://0lympia.substack.com/p/ai-for-business-how-olympia-outshines, and here's an article on how Olympia tackles business challenges for solopreneurs with examples: https://0lympia.substack.com/p/how-olympia-ai-tackles-business-challenges. Here's also our demo with all the features available atm: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxi309PEkHs
Great. I'll have a look at them all.
I feel that that's also really missing on the homepage.
Google search summary is done by Google Bard as well and so far my experiences with strategy discussions with ChatGPT have been very underwhelming.
Some good examples could convince me to see more value here, because who doesn't like a personal assisitant.
Hi, thank you for your comment. I didn't really understand what you meant by "Google search summary is done by Google Bard as well."
We're working on case studies with our customers at the moment. We've shared some content on our blog (and working on more ofc), for example, how Olympia outshines ChatGPT and why it is better for entrepreneurs - https://0lympia.substack.com/p/ai-for-business-how-olympia-outshines, and here's an article on how Olympia tackles business challenges for solopreneurs with examples: https://0lympia.substack.com/p/how-olympia-ai-tackles-business-challenges. Plus, there you can find all our recent and previous updates. Here's also our demo with all the features available atm: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxi309PEkHs
If you have questions and would be open for a chat, feel free to scroll down to the footer at the main page and book a call with us by tapping the button Chat With a Founder. We'd be happy to discuss Olympia and AI with you!
Wow big congrats on this!
Congrats and good article! Keep doing your best!
Thank you, we're always doing our best!
Do you think it's worth it to pay on Futurepedia and TAFT for a new SaaS?
It depends on your budget. First, I'd recommend doing everything in your power to use and potentially invent new methods for promoting your tool for free and analyzing which of those methods are working and using those more.
Congratulations on your success with Olympia! It's inspiring to see how you've grown your MRR to $6K with minimal paid marketing efforts. Keep up the great work, and best of luck with your future endeavors, including the exciting revenue-boosting idea you mentioned!
Thanks a lot :)
Love how you slowly let users in and improved around their feedback. Congrats on the success! Any advice on doing how to get quality user feedback, tried with MVP but before doing Hard Launch, looking for some more feedback ?
Thank you! We sent out a questionnaire and also set up an automatic email asking for feedback that is sent to customers who have been using our product for some time. Besides, we added a button to our website Chat With a Founder, and people can schedule a call with us anytime. We add that CTA to our newsletter as well as a reminder that they can have calls with us, and also proactively invite power users to chat with us. I love building relationships with our power users; the data they give us is gold for business development and meeting their needs.
Futurepedia is toooooooo expensive, TAAFT featured us for free and brought in good traffic.
I don't think it's worth paying so much for a website where the traffic and customer sources are not precise match. With $250, you can get more than 1000 precise customer clicks on Google Ads.
yes, Futurepedia became more and more expensive at some point
I love your journey and story of marketing Olympia. The content you share is really helpful. By visiting your site, I also noticed that you set up an affiliate program and chose firstpromoter as the platform. Previously we were using Shareasale but now we want to change the platform. Can you tell me why you chose firstpromoter?
Hi, thank you very much. We chose Firtpromoter because it is easy to set up and for our users to sign up; it's also easy for all of us to track the earnings and the payouts. No stress
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Congrats! Can you share some numbers regarding your ProductHunt launch? My product (wunderboards, 200 upvotes, 0 to about 400 users) launched a week ago on PH and I am curious about how it compares.
Why don't you host the blog on the same domain as the website?
It should boost the SERP value for olympia.
That makes sense; thank you, we'll do it!
You’re ignoring some important negative signals from the market. I know this comment will seem almost aggressively harsh for most people but instead of dismissing the target ads as innefective you should figure out why that is.
I think it's good to hear some critical feedback. Can you elaborate on "negative signals"?
It’s possible that the ad campaign was badly made but generally that’s not the case. if targeted ads fail it signals there is a mismatch in market/product fit at the next stage. It could mean a pivot, so that’s why those signals shouldn’t be ignored.
In their website, the startup positions itself as better than ChatGPT, why? Because it can autonomously send email? There are plenty of tutorials online in which one can learn how that’s done; but Sam Altman just threw a 7 trillion dollar moonshot at transistors. This could turn off potential customers who aren’t playing the startup community share-and-care. They’d question what proprietary tech do they have that could possibly compete.
I would say they need to reevaluate their product/market fit before scaling up
Hi, thanks for your comment. However:
Who said we're ignoring it?
Yes, we're better than ChatGPT specifically for entrepreneurs, and it's been proven by our customers' feedback and gratitude. Here's the article with an answer to your question, "Why?": https://0lympia.substack.com/p/ai-for-business-how-olympia-outshines
Yes, your comment is aggressively harsh, and also, you are assuming things, which is rude. It would be much more pleasant to communicate with you if I'd receive questions instead of assumptions.
If some entrepreneurs prefer ChatGPT, it's ok. They either do not need functionality more than that or simply do not know about us or other solutions that can solve their problems.
This is epic and congrats for the success. At Pareto, we work with many AI startups and we can attest that's not easy. So seeing you achieve such a huge feat in such a short time is remarkable. All the best.
Thanks a lot!
Super insightful! Love that you focused on addressing the churning users.
How did you figure out your pricing model? Was it hard getting people going from beta to paid users?
Thank you! Because AI is expensive as a service, our beta users paid right away, just a smaller amount, and we did everything to accommodate their needs right away on a case-by-case basis. And when we raised prices, we never raised them for early adopters.
congrats
Thank you! What are your takeaways? 🤓
Congrats !😉
Thanks! What did you find useful?
The product market fit section and how paid directories can be a game changer ;)
It warms my heart when I'm useful for others, thanks :)
Awesome journey! Your success with Olympia is inspiring. Wishing you the best, Vika.
Thanks so much! What inspired you the most in my story?
6k$ without paid marketing for one. I have just launched my product and am trying to find my foot in marketing it.
Well, not completely without paid marketing. But yes, just with a bit of it. You can follow our path and use free methods first. Also, we used our own product for growth and planning promo etc. Try our AI assistants for creating a strategy: https://olympia.chat
Will do.
Congratulations!
Thanks! What are you taking with you? 🤭
Congratulations! Seeing your dedication and calculated approach in encouraging.
Thank you 🤓 Can you pls share more on what encouraged you in my story?
Impessive! Beside all the efforts you took and take it looks like you're pretty on top of your numbers. Would you mind sharing how you do that? Thanks a lot!
Hey! Thanks for your comment 😊 We have a budget sheet that we update regularly and many metrics are automatically calculated on Stripe we use for payments.
Thanks! Appreciate it.
Congratulations! Thank you for sharing your journey. It's inspiring to see your progress and the valuable insights you've provided. Keep up the great work! 🎉
Thanks very much, I appreciate your kind words! Whar are you working on?
Thanks for your interest! I've created NavifyAI that aggregates over 100 AI tool directories, making it easier for AI tools to submit and acquire backlinks more efficiently. Hope it helps streamline the process for AI tool promotion. Check it out and let me know what you think!
Best regards,
Oh, that’s cool! I’ll defo check it out 😎
Are either of you technical founders?
Hey, yes, my co-founder is the Chief Scientist behind the product.
This is great.
Keep going
Now what's your future plan are you going organic way to get customers ?
Thanks! Our plan is to grow organically, to build a community, but also start using paid marketing more. We are planning to expand our team as well when the time is right.
Great product and strategy! What would you say was key to having a successful Product Hunt launch?
Thank you! For us, a successful product hunt launch was preparation. They have a whole section on how to get ready, and we just followed the steps. Plus, we used our AI assistants to answer the questions of the audience in one conversation, and it was a hit: https://app.olympia.chat/c/6eb2a4c3-05df-472f-8f9c-8d4bf1f5be1e
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Congrats! I like how you slowly invited users instead of doing an email blast inviting everyone to get the MRR boost. Instead, you patiently let users in and learned from feedback.
What would you say was the most difficult part between May 2023 - full launch?
Hey, thank you 😊 The most difficult part was building a good working product and improving it to meet customers’ needs. The churn was high at the beginning.
Super insightful thank you. Is there anything you would do differently or start doing sooner?
Thank you, I appreciate it 😎 I would probably start doing sales and content marketing sooner. Although I know that every day we did and continue doing everything possible to make Olympia a success. We developed a good product and grew our audience super fast, just the two of us at the beginning. No regrets.
Great post congrats
Thank you 🥹
This is amazing. Thank you for the insight!
Thanks for reading and commenting! 😊 Happy to be helpful!
Wow
This is so inspiring.
Well done.
Wishing you all the best
Thanks so much! 🤓 Writing this made me realise how far we’ve come actually, and where we’re at instead of always thinking how much is there still to accomplish 😅
Truly inspiring read! It's refreshing to see such innovative and customer-centric strategies in action. Congratulations on your success, and thank you for sharing your valuable insights with the community!
Thanks a lot, Dmytro! I’m happy you found the info I shared valuable 🤓 What’s your project?
Right now, I'm working on building a comprehensive support for launching and growing AI startups and businesses. This includes 1) aireferral io - a directory of AI tools referral programs. It's also a source of inspiration for Influencers. 2) aitrendsetters io - a platform that connects companies with AI influencers. In one click, you can send out a press release about your AI tool to hundreds of YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn and TikTok Influencers with an audience of thousands. Today I'm adding here the most complete list of AI tool directories for 2024 with monthly visits, country of readers, paid or free, prices and links to listings. I'll value your experience and feedback.
Sounds good and useful. We’d be happy to check it out! Are you in beta or not yet?
Yes, absolutely! You can already try both of our products. If Olympia Chat has an affiliate program, you can post on aireferral io right now. You can also contact AI influencers on aitrendsetters io to ask them to review your AI tool and post on their YouTube and TikTok channels.
I read in your article that adding Olympia to AI catalogs was a hit for you. Let's amplify that! Use our analytics of AI tool catalogs to pick the best ones and make new placements.
I'm ready to personally accompany you on this. Feedback is very important to me.
Let’s chat!
nice! thanks for sharing.
Thank you for your comment, happy you found it useful 😊