- Hey, whats up everybody?
Welcome to unstoppable.
This is unstoppable Friday.
We're in episode number ten
in our zero to one million ARR challenge.
In this specific format, I launched this every Friday.
We're taking you behind the scenes
of taking a SaaS business from zero dollars in revenues
to a million ARR.
So we take all the principles that I teach
in growing SaaS businesses
and getting the product market fit
and the next stage of growth,
and we're applying it to our own business
and I'm taking you behind the scenes.
In this episode, I'm talking about the glimmers
of product market fit on the road to product market fit.
We'll give you a behind the scenes
just what it feels like as you're navigating this process.
Now we are on episode ten.
If you want to look at prior episodes
you haven't seen it yet,
I'll include a link to the playlist below
so you can check it out.
You don't have to go to it right now.
If you're new to the channel, welcome.
I'm TK, I'm an experienced SaaS Founder,
I help you navigate the path to the next stage of growth
for your SaaS business.
I drop an episode every Sunday, Wednesday and Friday.
Sundays and Wednesdays are more actionable strategies.
Fridays are behind the scenes.
So if you're new be sure to hit the subscribe button
and that bell icon so you get notified
every single time I drop an episode with the TK energy.
Also, if you're already part of the community,
if you probably the SaaS market program, welcome back.
It's really great to have you here.
Also for some context,
the SaaS application that we're building
is called unstoppable Sunday.
Unstoppable Sunday is a SaaS application
where I train you how to go into every week
with an unstoppable plan.
It's a very specific process.
The application and the training videos teach you
how to adopt the right mindset for founders,
how to actually navigate your week in the right way.
keep the right mindset, so you can go execute
on your bigger goals.
So if you want to check it out,
go to unstoppablesunday.com.
Today, I want to talk about the roads product market fit
because something interesting happened
that I wanted to share.
Now I call it, when it comes to product market fit,
this is one of my most favorite visuals
I've talked about it in a prior episode.
This startup curve, we all go through this.
I call it The Shawshank crawl to product market fit.
In prior episodes, I've talked about
how to actually measure
if you are approaching product market fit.
If you missed that, I'll link to it below.
But the startup curve is so true
because before, there's happiness over here.
And then there's just a path over here.
And this was done by Paul Graham is the founder of YC,
incredibly smart person.
And before the startup, you're kind of neutral.
And when you started off,
there's initial enthusiasm
and then you go through this trough of sorrow.
And then little by little you go out there.
And if I were to be honest in terms of unstoppable Sunday,
our SaaS application, we're making some revenues,
we're still figuring out our unstoppable sales funnel.
We're still testing the messaging.
I've covered that in prior episodes.
We're over here, we're like literally right here.
where we're going through it, we're experimenting,
we're pivoting, we're tweaking the stuff.
We're trying to get everything to like just click perfectly
and we're going through some specific things
like how do we activate users?
How do we retain them?
How do we drive trials
and I've covered all of those in prior episodes.
But something happened recently,
and this happened to me my prior startup, that's how I know.
That's the plus side of being a second time founder
versus a first time founder.
Something happened that tells me that we're like,
right in this zone where there's like wiggles.
The wiggles of like promise.
And I'll tell you this story in two parts.
The first part is what happened just like this week.
I'll tell you what happened
when the same thing happened in my last startup.
So what happened this week
is I essentially got a text
from one of our users of the platform.
She is a friend of mine,
and she has been using it regularly.
And she texts me she's like,
hey, why is my account suspended?
And I'm like, what are you talking about?
What do you mean it's suspended?
She's like, yeah, I try to log into Sunday
and it says, it's suspended.
Like, what did I do?
And I'm like, I don't know.
So I like literally go to my computer
and I log on and I'm looking at her account.
I'm like, oh, it says it's canceled.
I go to like the stripe screen.
I'm looking at our admin screen.
In the meantime, I'm taking screenshots of this
and messaging my co-founder,
I'm like, hey, I think there's something that's broken.
This person can log in.
They're supposed to be on this plan, but it's not working.
And so he jumps in, he's like,
well, don't change anything manually.
I'm like, I'm not gonna say anything manually,
but we need to fix this.
We're all just like, frantically trying to fix it.
And in this moment, he's like freaking out.
He's going through it.
He's a first time founder is probably
my third or fourth company.
And (laughs) he's like, kind of freaking out.
And I'm kind of like, isn't this awesome?
He's like, what is wrong with you?
Like, what are you talking about?
This is horrible, we should not have this.
I'm like listen, we've got to fix this
and we won't fix this.
But this is awesome.
And he's like, what are you talking about?
I'm like this is awesome because it's starting to work.
Meaning people care enough about
what we're building where it doesn't work.
If it's broken, they will text us,
they'll hunt us down and they'll go,
like I need to get into the application.
Like, that means that we're creating something of value,
which is powerful.
Which tells me we're like right over here somewhere
where it's like starting to work.
And it was really exciting for me.
And Steven, he got it.
He was like, okay got it.
That's it, that should make sense.
And then I was like listen,
we need to fix all this.
And we're getting more and more users,
they are trusting me with their data,
we need to make sure everything's solid.
We need to make sure our backups are solid, all that stuff.
We can't have things breaks.
We're like, okay cool.
Let's have a meeting where we really dig into this stuff.
So this is part of the startup journey
on the path to product market fit.
There are other things.
Other heuristics to really figure out.
If you're hitting product market fit,
I'll link to that video below if you want to dig into that.
But in this journey,
this moment where someone is willing to hunt you down
because they can't access the software
or there's some error instead
of just hitting the back button or just moving on,
this is special and I honestly didn't think
I would experience this again in my life, but I did.
I'm glad I did.
Because this tells you that you're onto something,
people care enough.
Attention is the hardest thing to get today
and that means they really, really care.
And that's there's like real power to that,
versus people just moving on
and saying this is not worth it.
I don't care, and they'll move on.
And so that was really exciting.
And I'll compare this to the time this happened for ToutApp.
And as a first time founder,
I dealt with it very differently.
I'll never forget this.
And this is a little bit of a personal story.
I'll share it anyway,
because that's the whole point
of this behind the scenes video.
like ToutApp, we were just starting to get users
or starting to get traction, and people were using us.
It was cool.
This is before we raised any money.
And so I was bootstrapping and we were generating revenues.
And it's just like just me.
And it was one random weeknight,
and we had just integrated ToutApp,
which was our outbound emailing solution.
We had just integrated it with,
I think it was called Ratcliffe,
Ratcliffe external data provider.
Something happened with that integration
like rapidly Ratcliffe or like they turned off our account
or something or something went off.
It wasn't their fault, it wasn't our fault.
What I did was it would make it
where no one could send an email with Tout.
It just crashed.
And this is one of the first times anything quite
like this happened.
The site wasn't quite down
but because of this external dependency,
and something happened with our account with them
like everything crashed.
It was my fault because I coded it.
Anyway was weeknight, for some reason
I didn't bring my laptop with me.
I was spending the evening with my then partner,
romantic partner and I caught the email
and I look at it.
Our customers are complaining like what is wrong with you?
It's not working, I paid for this. and I'm like,
oh my God, what is happening.
This first time anyone complained
like this for Simon broke like this,
and I was just freaking out and I just like,
it was not my best moment
because I was just taking it so seriously
kinda like how Steven was dealing with it.
And I was like, listen to it.
It's okay, this is all fixable.
Pluses is a good thing.
But at that moment as a first time founder,
I didn't know how special that was,
that we finally hit that point.
Yes, it was broken but early stages broken you fix it.
But someone cared enough
where they were writing in and I was so pissed off.
I was like, oh my God, I have to go to the office.
I had a we work at the time.
I'm going to go get on a couch living in New York City.
I get in front of my computer.
I need to fix this and I'm emailing the people
rapidly because I'm pissed off.
My ex-romantic partner was just pissed off at me.
She's like, how could you do this?
This was our night.
I can't believe you're working so much.
And I'm like, this is what it takes.
It wasn't my proudest moment,
because I took it out on the Ratcliffe people.
I was like, I can't believe you guys suck.
I can't believe you did this
and it really wasn't about them.
It wasn't their fault.
That conversation got so bad.
It actually got escalated to their founder, then founder.
His name is Rebecca Cedera.
And we had it like, we do it on
and he was like dude, you suck.
You're out.
We're cutting you off.
And I'm like, screw you.
And I was angry and it wasn't his fault, it was my fault.
I was acting the wrong way.
And I don't think we ever reconciled this.
It's not important.
I haven't talked to him in years.
But I took it out on them.
My romantic partner took it out on me
and I took it out on them.
And I got in a cab and I went to the office
and I fixed it and everything was fine.
I hated that moment.
But looking back, I realized how special that moment was,
because aside from all those things,
that was the moment that I really understood
that what we were creating mattered,
like it was really starting to work.
It was a really special moment.
And there were moments after that,
but that was like if someone's chasing you down
because it's not working,
that means you're getting closer to product market fit.
So embrace that and love that, remember that moment.
And remember these are just problems
and problems and solutions
and don't take it out on other people.
They will be fixable.
Even your customers might be get angry with you,
but just embrace that with a smile.
So look, we're fixing it.
I'm sorry early and just fix it.
And so the second time around,
like now that I'm experiencing this again
on unstoppable Sunday, it was cool.
I looked, I'm like this is awesome.
They they care, they really care.
No one got hurt, we fixed it, everything was fine.
And we build more resilient software
than I did back at tout days.
And so I just wanted to share that this journey,
as you're going through
like you may be in the trough of sorrow,
you may be in this pivoting mode,
you may be in the scaling mode,
like this is a very true thing the startup curve.
It's wrought with emotion,
it's wrought with ups and downs, it's wrought with fear.
There's just a lot there.
And that's part of why I created this channel
because I wanted to just tell you, it's okay.
As you're going through these different cases.
Maybe it's not working, maybe no one cares.
You'll figure out a way to make people care.
Maybe it is working and you're having trouble keeping up
you'll figure out a way, it's all figurable.
You'll figure it out.
I just wanted to share that in today's episode.
If you got value from this, please smash the like button.
I drop an episode like this every Sunday,
Wednesday and Friday.
So be sure the subscribe button in that bell icon.
If you are building a SaaS business
and you want to get to that next stage of growth,
check out my five point startup strategy guide,
and go to a lot more detail on how to navigate this path
to park market fit and to get to the next stage of growth,
to get to a million ARR, and then three million ARR
and the ten million ARR.
It's completely free guide, I go into a lot more details,
you can go to get unstoppable.com/strategy
or just follow the link below.
Also if you got value,
feel free to share this with your co-founder or your friend.
That's why we create these videos.
And also, building a startup is 50% mindset.
So I give you a lot of these strategies
around how to get the right strategy for your startup.
But it's just as important to get your mindset right.
So I encourage you to practice unstoppable.
They'll help you plan every week.
Just go to unstoppablesunday.com.
You don't have to do it on Sunday.
You can do it on a Monday if you want to.
And lastly remember,
everyone needs a strategy for their life and their business.
But when you are with us,
yours, it's gonna be unstoppable.
I'm TK, thanks for watching.
Thanks for letting me share this relatively personal story.
I appreciate you guys,
I love you guys and I'll see in the next episode.
(upbeat music)