Insight
Suski: SaaS Under $10M ARR Should Charge Upfront Instead of Free Trials
“If you are just starting, or if you are just below ten million dollars ARR probably, you should focus on building a shut up and take money money product. So, focus on getting those early adopters. They will basically Either buy your product or not. They don't …”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Suski: Offering 7-Day Free Trial Did Not Increase Surfer's Conversion Rate
“And then we thought, yeah, maybe it's a good idea to let people try Surfer without, you know, paying up front 15, 59 dollars just for, like, a credit card details. We'll charge them after seven days. That's probably going to make the conversion much higher. An…”
Insight
Suski: SEO in competitive niches is impractical for early bootstrapped startups
“Our niche was highly competitive, so we were to compete with Ahrefs, SEMrush, HubSpot, big domains, big players, so if that's the case, you will need to wait for results for a long time, like a year or so, and you'll need to invest a lot of money, and if you a…”
Insight
Suski: Startups should wait until $1M+ profit before investing in SEO
“If you're profitable over one million dollar a year, you do invest in SEO, so we just waited for some time.”
Insight
Suski: Early-stage startups should prioritize local meetups over giant conferences
“Don't go to like, big conferences trying to sell your product if you're just getting started. What to do instead? Go for a local meetup. You will be able to form much more intimate relationship with your customers, area adopters. It will compound over time as …”
Opinion
Suski: Avoid generic conferences like Web Summit or SaaStock to sell software
“That, that can work, but don't go to, like, generic, ah, Web Summit or SAS talk conferences.”
Insight
Suski: Bootstrapped SaaS should price higher than competitors at launch
“You should start pricing higher, and not like lower than your competitors, because at the beginning you are looking for early adopters, they will have higher willingness to pay, so you can just capitalize on this and just get some money to get started.”
Insight
Suski: Bootstrapped SaaS founders should avoid discounts and lifetime deals
“Don't use discounts. Don't do lifetime deals.”
Insight
Suski: Users Given Product Credits Leave Good Reviews or None
“If you ask them to write a GTO review, they won't do, like, one star, because they would feel bad about it, so they either leave a good review or no. No review at all.”
Assertion Supported
Suski: Jasper Also Incentivizes Software Reviews With Credits
“Jasper does this tactic as well.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Suski: Surfer reached $15M ARR on under $1M marketing spend
“So yeah, my name is Lucia and I'm CEO and co-founder of Surfer, a B to B SaaS product that we grew to fifteen million ARR in around five years with less than one million dollar in, of marketing spent in total.”
Insight
Suski: High Affiliate Commissions Pay Off Through Pricing and Spillover Awareness
“But if your price higher, you have, you'll have some leeway to do that. So that's one. And the actual commission is lower. Because if you chase, like, big affiliates then you'll get brand awareness because, you know, they will show it to their community, sprea…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Suski: 20% of Surfer's Revenue Comes From Jasper
“20% of our revenue is brought by Jasper.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Suski: Surfer Converted ~15% of Signups to Paid Upfront Without Free Trial
“Where we didn't have any kind of free trial, so whenever you wanted to try Surfer, you had to Pay the money up front. So it's roughly 15%.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Suski: Surfer Generated Roughly $1.5M from Affiliates in 2022
“So here is, the slide is actually wrong because it includes Jasper partnership, but cut it, like, in half, and you'll, you'll have an idea how much revenue does affiliate partnership along affiliate marketing brings us. So roughly, like, million and a half for…”
Assertion Supported
Suski: Keyword Surfer Has 500K Users Driving Marketing Efficiency
“Right now it's like 500 K users, and it's one of the reasons why we are so efficient with our marketing spend.”
Disclosure
Suski: Surfer Pays 30% Commission for Jasper Customers
“30% commission, you know, it's freezing, but it's worth it.”
