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Software Social

Raising a Business

Software Social
Software Social

Colleen Schnettler 0:00
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Michele Hansen 0:44
Colleen, can I ask you a question that you're not supposed to ask people?

Colleen Schnettler 0:50
Are you going to ask me how old I am?

Michele Hansen 0:52
No, I'm not going to ask you how old you are. I am going to ask you how much money you have made on your side project.

Colleen Schnettler
Ohhh!

Michele Hansen
Because we had talked about this a couple weeks ago, right? Like you had said that somebody had paid you $10 yet and that you had a bunch of people who would sign up on your free trial, and that their first charge was coming through in the middle of February. And now we are in the middle of February. And so I was curious if you would share with us what it is looking like, from a revenue perspective right now.

Colleen Schnettler 1:29
Okay, sure. So to customers were up middle of February, one churned and one paid the $10.

Michele Hansen
Nice.

Colleen Schnettler
So that's always exciting. Yeah. But the real exciting boost for me is, as of I think about a week ago, maybe 10 days ago, it's been live on the Heroku App Store. And I've had a couple people sign up and there's no free trial. So they're signing up at $35 a month.

Michele Hansen
Sweet.

Colleen Schnettler
Yeah, it's actually really exciting. I'm trying to not get too excited. But um, I think the important thing to remember about Heroku though, it's not like Stripe, I don't get paid up front, you're pro-rate build. So if they sign up to try it out, and then they deprovision it or, you know, cancel it, essentially, I only get $1 or whatever, you know, the 35 amortized over the number of days in the month.


Michele Hansen 2:21
Oh so it's month after? so if I say...

Colleen Schnettler
yes

Michele Hansen
February 1, for example, I would be billed March 1 for it. And if I cancel February 15, I'm billed on February 15, for two weeks worth of usage. Is that right?

Colleen Schnettler 2:34
I think that's correct.

Michele Hansen
Okay

Colleen Schnettler
So I haven't actually seen any of that money yet. And so but it is really exciting. Like, I wasn't sure once I made it, you know, paid if anyone would sign up for it. And I've had a handful of people sign up. So it's really exciting. Yeah, it is, um, it is very exciting. And I kind of don't know what I should be tracking. I'm kind of struggling with that. Because I'm not actually tracking churn right now. I don't know if that's important to track, like I see if someone cancels, but I don't not like tracking that metric over time.

Michele Hansen 3:14
I think more important than then the numbers and percentages right now is why did they churn, right?

Colleen Schnettler
I know. I emailed them.

Michele Hansen
Okay, good, good. That's what you should have done, right? So right now you say, okay, 50% of the people cancelled, which looks really bad on the surface. But that number, knowing that one out of two people canceled, those numbers will never tell you why that happened. And so, yes, it's a good idea to be attuned to those numbers. But at this stage, the most important thing is to try to figure out why.

Colleen Schnettler 3:50
That's what I figured is like, the goal here is to talk to people, so I am

Michele Hansen
Oh, my God. Finally,

Colleen Schnettler
Oh, my goodness. Lately, I've come around to it.

Michele Hansen 4:00
It's fluttering hearing you say that!

Colleen Schnettler 4:02
I mean, you know, I was thinking about something this morning. So if none of these people churn and they probably went, like I said, people are trying it out. But like, I'm at 120 MRR. I mean, that's amazing, right? Like, a lot of people never even launch a product. I've launched a product and that's amazing. 10 days, I met 120 MRR. So I'm trying like,

Michele Hansen 4:25
Dude, you have been working towards this for like, so like, I feel like there's so many milestones that you've gone through. And, you know, people like listening right now. Right? Like, like you're hearing Oh, my God, like Colleen, like got this thing launched. And she got it in the marketplace. And then she went through all these hoops and now she has people paying her like -- it has taken you years to get to this point.

Like, like a year ago, when we were still having our in person, weekly business chats before the pandemic and we were both in the same place and all of that, like you were trying, whatever you could even find a product find a problem you could solve, like the idea of like, if I had told you one year from now, you will have you know, 100 and something people using your product paying you 100 and something dollars for. Like, I think I don't know what you would have said you either wouldn't have believed me, or it'd be like, Can we just like fast forward to that?

Colleen Schnettler 5:28
Right, can we fast forward?

Michele Hansen 5:30
This is like this has this is the culmination of years worth of work for you like, yes, it looks like it's only been in the last three months. But you have been working towards this for such a long time.

Colleen Schnettler 5:42
Yeah, and I think that's super important to remember. Because I was thinking about, like, I was trying to in my head, I was fast forwarding to a year from now. And probably when I tell my hopefully success story, it'll be Oh, I launched it, you know, February 4 2021. But to your point, like, that's totally a lie, I have been working on ideas and talking to people for years. I mean, the whole reason I learned to code was so I could have a product business. So this is, this is really a lot, you know, a long adventure in the making.

Michele Hansen 6:14
I'm so happy for you.

Colleen Schnettler 6:15
I'm so excited. So I'm trying not to I mean, this is really where the work begins. This is where a lot of people stop working, I think. And I think that's why I know so many software developers that can't quite get their products off the ground. For me, this is where the work begins. Like I think I made a joke the other day to my husband, I was like, I thought having children taught me patience. What's really teaching me patience is having a business. You know, I have to like, avoid. So what I'...

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