I shipped a new SAAS and reached 375 users in 3 days.

Last week, I launched a SaaS I’d been developing for a few weeks. By “launched,” I mean I planned a strategy centered around a Product Hunt release and leveraged social platforms—Reddit, LinkedIn, X, and Bluesky—to spread the word.

The Purpose of a Launch

In my view, the purpose of a launch is to “test” the market’s appetite for your product and start laying the groundwork for organic growth. Organic growth is self-sustaining: you don’t have to do anything extra to keep it going—it’s on autopilot. This can happen when your product is so good that people share it with their networks, or if it includes a viral feature that rewards users for inviting others. Then you get that exiting “snowball effect”!

Product Hunt Experience

I ended up as the #15 Product of the Day on Product Hunt on January 14th, 2024. That’s not bad, but it wasn’t enough to tap into the platform’s massive audience potential. The truth is, a Product Hunt launch ideally needs about a month of preparation, but I didn’t have that kind of time. I chose execution over perfection.

I did feel a bit disappointed in the system, because once the competition starts, you’re inundated with offers for paid upvotes. I suspect (and hope I’m wrong) that many top 10 products use these services. It also values quantity over quality: projects with more upvotes automatically rank higher, even if others have stronger, more substantial comments. This puts solo founders at a disadvantage, since we have fewer contacts to help boost our Product Hunt launches.

A Good Surprise From Superhuman

Then, 48 hours later—just when I thought everything would slow down—new users started pouring in. I was quite surprised when I saw all this users suddenly appear!

A quick look at Google Analytics showed that about half of the traffic was coming from Superhuman, one of the most famous AI newsletters. I happen to subscribe, so I checked the latest issue and found Founder Odyssey listed among the 5 most productive tools! It was an amazing and unexpected surprise—proof that hard work finnaly is paying off.

A Superboost From X

I was so happy and decided to share it on X. It was the best decision, the post went viral, I got 170k views and around 1000 likes!

What’s Next?

Now, the big question is whether this momentum will continue. Part of the answer lies in monitoring retention metrics to see if the product enough value added, and another part depends on adding the viral feature I mentioned. That’s still on my to-do list.

Regardless of what happens next, I’m already proud and grateful for:

• 375 founders validating their product ideas

• 2,415 messages exchanged on the platform

• 215 new projects

• A mention in Superhuman

• A few freelance opportunities

• The satisfaction of creating something useful

• The empowering realization that I can build a SAAS in record time

I wanted to share the platform’s metrics publicly, so I created this dashboard: https://www.founderodyssey.com/stats

We never know what tomorrow holds, but let’s keep showing up. Consistency will pay off in the end.

Cheers,
Eric