How one Reddit post with 270k+ views helped our startup survive
Here's a story about my AI Headshot startup and some thoughts about it.
How the product works
You upload at least 10 pictures of yourself.
Then we generate 80+ photos of you in different styles.
September
I made the design in Figma and built an MVP with React and Flask. At the same time, we were making a huge number of experiments to get a good AI model.
We made experiments with Dreambooth, but it was so hard to achieve realistic photos without a lot of artifacts.
October
We found good parameters for training and launched a beta test. We worked closely with 20 users.
The initial results were not satisfactory and had several issues. However, with the help of the first 10 customers we improved our model, fixed some problems in the product, and after that we got 7 happy clients.
By "happy clients" I mean all of them have shared generated photos on LinkedIn, Instagram, Telegram, etc.
November
We globally launch the product. In November, we set a KPI: a minimum of 10 purchases. We started work on SEO (with zero impact), published 5 videos on Reels and Tiktok (also with zero impact).
In the first week, we had 2 purchases from people, who learned about the startup from our initial customers, who had already used and shared photos.
In next 2 weeks, we launched Google Ads, Instagram Ads, and got another 2 purchases (~40$), but spent more than 200$ on ads.
Six days before the end of November we felt defeated and sad, started to think about new ideas.
After 2 days, my cofounder wrote this post on Reddit. It unexpectedly received a good reaction, positive feedback, and new users on our platform who started to pay us.
We had more than 270k views on Reddit, 50 new users on our platform, and 20 purchases.
It gave us energy, motivation and ideas for next features, and we also achieved our KPI.
Result:
- AI Headshots generation has become a popular niche last months and there are a lot of competitors right now
- Expensive user spending (acquisition cost + renting GPU). It’s hard to be profitable.
Our startup: https://profilephoto.app
Update: Link to the Reddit post
I think the idea is sound.
I think somehow niching down will help your positioning more.
Ever thought about doing this for the dating market?
Guys would pay top dollar if you have testimonials/reviews that prove that your app gives them better results with women.
You can charge a lot more for that niche because of its higher perceived value.
Yes, it's a great idea and good niche.
We will think about this market.
However some of competitors work in this market too.
Thank you for sharing your expertise.
Thank you for feedback
Nice story Yuriy! You had a lot of support from your community - gotta love Reddit!
Yes, thank you for feedback
Fascinating, what is your ideas for next features? From my point of view product is basically one time use. You will be in constant search for new users.
Yes, we think about adding recurring purchases and features for regular usage
I had a similarly rocky start with my business, but only now am I coming around to IH, PH and Reddit as a tool to grow. Really glad to see it worked out for you!
Thank you! We think about PH, but we looked to launches of our competitors and they were not successful
I liked reading your post. How a Reddit post survived your SaaS.
I made 3 viral Reddit posts, which generated 1k+ visitors to my website https://www.pentaclay.com
Cool, thank you!
Great
Great insights on the success of Reddit as a platform to build awareness/engagement. Definitely my list to measure interest in my own product!
Yep, Reddit is a great platform for engagement
🎉 Congratulations on the progress of your AI Headshot startup! 🚀 It's amazing how you persevered through challenges and improved your AI model with the help of your customers, resulting in happy clients and great feedback. 😊 Keep up the fantastic work and continue to embrace new ideas and features for your platform! 💪🌟
How do you find marketing on Reddits? Is it an efficient and lasting platform for marketing for apps?
So it's really depends on your product and what type of post you write on Reddit.
Because for this platform we wrote promotional posts on SideProject subreddit but it had near zero reactions.
With Reddit you can have some users(I used "some" because it depends on success of post) in a short time, but it's really hard to write different posts about the same product. So it's very good point to get first customers and to share your experience.
Looks great!
It's fascinating to learn about the journey of your product development. The iterative process from experimenting with Dreambooth to refining the AI model and involving users in beta testing demonstrates a commitment to improvement.
The challenges and triumphs you faced in October, especially turning feedback from initial users into product enhancements, reflect a resilient approach to development.
The November launch timeline, the pursuit of KPIs, and the struggles with initial advertising efforts showcase the realities of entering the market. It's remarkable how a Reddit post turned the tide, bringing in views, users, and purchases, providing a much-needed boost.
Your story exemplifies the importance of adaptability and community engagement in the startup landscape. If you're looking to enhance your online presence or considering new ideas, exploring creative advertising avenues or seeking inspiration from diverse sources might prove beneficial.
Regard: palmlivingae
Thank you, Sattar!
Very cool! Great to see persistence pay off!
Thank you for taking the time to share your wisdom and expertise.
Reddit can be such a sleeper. Glad it worked for you! I have seen some great results by participating and networking there as well.
I work in B2B, and am primarily on linkedin, but I found reddit to be a great resource for the following:
Backdoor SEO :
Many people (some not even reddit users) will add "reddit" to a search term, in an attempt to see real discussion. Having a well thought out comment on these threads can boos a brand's traffic measurably. It also imparts WAY more trust than a page on your site
Community Building:
I started several subreddits this year. I repurpose content from my Linkedin Account and newsletter and generally it doesnt require much effort to get hundreds of views on a piece of content, and my subreddit is sitting pretty at hundreds of users.
Content inspiration:
Some people love Quora for this, but i find quora doesnt have nearly as many compelling questions, despite that being its main point. Redditors of all levels of experience ask very thoughtful questions, all with real-world application. I couldn't count how many of my best pieces of content started as reddit comments.
Discovery:
I have found so many useful tools from Reddit. It's actually a reddit post that sent me here to indie hackers.
Thank you Noah, I'm curious about LinkedIn. How do you make marketing for LinkedIn?
That's a really tough question. When i started, i had a fairly narrow range of topics I would post about. Things I was professionally very involved in.
Over time, I have started using linkedin as my primary social account, where loads of tangential topics, still mostly professional, started to come up in my feed.
I would suggest finding creators in your industry/niche and looking at what they post about. Commenting is huge on linkedin, and I see people growing their accounts primarily via commenting thoughtfully, not posting very often.
Another tip i that I have used is to answer questions on industry subreddits (r/marketing, r/saas, r/hubspot etc. for me) and then converting those answer comments into posts on linkedin.
You should be able to find me there and see what im doing! I am the only Noah Stambovsky on Linkedin :D
Nice story Yuriy! You had a lot of support from your community - gotta love Reddit!
Nice and interesting journey, this is really a motivation to me
Thank you!
Thanks for sharing this. I have been wondering for a long time on how these headshot generation model works. What platform did you use to build your model? How much did it cost to finetune/build the model?
Everybody finetunes Stable Diffusion. There are some methods: Dreambooth, Lora.
Cost of one finetune: 3-5$ depends on method.
But the hardest part is to find good parameters of learning
hint for good karma and backlinks - offer the service for free for students. reach out to university career centres and they can suggest it to their students for their CV.
Thank you for idea, it sounds good
Hi Moshkov. If you don't mind would like to give you some free customer analysis report. From this customer analysis, you could understand what you potential customer are doing online and change your marketing strategy accordingly.
Here is the customer analysis : PROFILE PHOTO CUSTOMER ANALYSIS
From the customer analysis "professional headshot" subject are one of the most frequent things your potential customer are searching and interreacting online ( google traffic 74k and on average around 1k up vote and 200 comments on reddit on this subject ) . You can adjust you blog and reddit posts accordingly to get more right customer and readers.
Going deep on the subject here are top things that your customer are interested about the subject :
professional headshot in studio
creative professional headshot
corporate professional headshot
Catering your marketing effort to these topics will get you the right customers.
Hopefully it will help you gain more customer and eventually buyers. You can also do the analysis your self using decentool.com
Thank you for analysis. It's super actual for us.
Thanks for sharing this, preparing to release my product in the coming weeks. Where did you see much of your traffic from on Reddit? US, Canada, EU?
From Google analytics we had a lot of people from USA(90%), and other people from other countries
Great read! Could you share the link to the Reddit post to check it out? The post does not seem to have it
Oh sorry for that. Link to the post: https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/comments/18d1rh3/my_ai_headshot_startup_made_70_in_profit_so_far/
Thanks :)