Growing Our SaaS Company To $1M+ ARR: 7 People, 3 Years, No VC Money. Key Lessons Learned

Synthetic testing can sometimes fail to detect a serious problem. If you use your product daily you will be sure everything works.

Outsourcing is much easier and faster to organize than a profitable product. The fear of borrowing and the need to meet high expectations is a big factor. We did several "Pivots" because misunderstood market demand. We could find ourselves in a situation when we add feature by feature until realize that we neither have a good product nor the money. We have to equally devote time to current projects, communication with existing customers and the product.

Free users more often contact support (due to their larger number), they react more sharply to your failures, they ask absolutely different features rather than those who are paying, etc.

And the conversion from free to paid is very low. Expect about 0.5–1%.

Annual Subscriptions will significantly increase your cash flow, approximately +10–15% to your Mrr. It reduces the number of monthly failures and delinquent Churn. If users on average use your product for less than a year, the annual subscription will increase your LTV.

Lead conversion from a partner directory is about 30%. We tried Google Adwords several times, spent several thousand dollars, and received 0 paid customers. Another great channel for us is organic. This is great, but a long-term investment in content and Seo.