The story of a Side project
my Friends, Hello! For more than a year we are developing a new project on the global market and I want to share with you our experience with the launch of the so-called side project (side project), which is now growing at 30% a week and serves as a source of users for the core product. Welcome to under the cat.
the
A few words tell us about yourself and our new product to better understand the context. In 2010, I with my friend on his 600 thousand roubles has launched a SaaS service for creating communities of customers, about 5-6 years ago wrote on Habre. In this project, we have attracted more than $1 million investment and tried to bring it to the international market. In late 2014 I was the initiator and the angel of another HelpDesk system for small and medium-sized businesses. This project was closed a year later, when I changed already the 4th account SEO and losing a few hundred thousand.
And so, in the end of 2015 with a new team, we launched WhatsHelp — platform for sales and customer support via instant messengers WhatsApp, Viber, etc. This project is launching initially on the global market and now the majority of users from Italy, Spain, Taiwan, Brazil, etc. for this project we decided to try starting our Side project: widget to chat with customers via instant messenger on the website.
Why we made this product? In my opinion starting a side-project can be useful in three cases:
Now, we originally wanted to use this product to understand the market (section 3) and to test the idea of lead generation (p. 2). I want to say that everything turned out even better than we expected.
the
Following the Golden rule of any startup — make shit and sticks, but this week, we launched the first version of the widget with support for only Facebook Messenger. It was decided to place this experimental product on third party domain (http://msgus.io), in order not to waste time on integration into the primary service and in case of failure just close the project.
At the time I didn't know where to start promotion on the global market and does not think of anything smarter, just posted a link on Hacker News in the Show HN. They usually post new projects for feedback. After collecting about 12 upvotes and a few of the comments we have received explosive growth... in Taiwan.
The first few days of the hieroglyphs twinkling in the eyes, but after the hundredth viewed the site with the installed widget. on second thought I even began to understand something. I don't know how this is useful, but now with confidence I can distinguish the characters of traditional Chinese, for example, Japanese =).
As it turned out, a link on Hacker News said the editor of the most popular techno-blog in Taiwan and published an article about the widget. Next was the census articles on other sites and forums. So we have received over the last month more than 200 installations of the widget on websites.
Thanks to this simple steps we have learned a lot about the market of Taiwan, Thailand and the Philippines, talked with local entrepreneurs and found that this product has to be developed further.
the
After the launch of Amargosa (there we call this project), we realized that not FB Messenger'th one is full of the world, and businesses often use several instant messengers simultaneously. Thus was born the idea to rework the widget and add support for all popular platforms: WhatsApp, Viber, Telegram, VK, Snapchat, Line, etc.
It is done! And after a couple of months we have born our side-project WhatsHelp Chat Widget. We long thought, whether to develop a new widget on a separate domain or make it part of the core product. As item 1 (test product hypothesis) and 3 (exploration of market battle) kicked in, it was easy and fast to try to generate leads. The easiest thing to do, placing a new widget directly on the website of the main product. So, the constructor of the widget on our website (http://whatshelp.ru/widget):
the
For the time past since the launch of the first version of the widget has been read dozens of articles on launching the projects on the global market and this time I decided to try their hand at Product Hunt (abbreviated PH). Recently a lot has been written about this area, but let me explain for those who don't know.
PH is a place where some people (hunter) publish new products, and other people (community members) to vote for them. Each day the list is updated and there is a vote, the results of which, at the end of the day is formed by TOP projects. To enter the TOP 5 — very difficult and very cool. For a place under the sun have to compete with Google, Apple and hundreds of companies with really cool products.
After some preparation, we published our widget on PH. As it was a different story and worthy of a separate article, but after 18 hours of fighting, we still got into the coveted TOP 5! I certainly didn't cry with happiness, but it was a great result. In the screenshot below we are the second from the top.
the
Then it was 100,500 publications on Twitter, several publications on third-party portals and blogs in Italy, Portugal, etc. But you probably are waiting for the numbers, and I have (checks on October 28).
the
The numbers speak for themselves. Of course, not all third-party projects successful, but if you don't spend a lot of resources and to experiment, such projects can more than pay off.
Hope it was useful and interesting. I will be glad to questions in the comments.
Success!
Article based on information from habrahabr.ru
the
Prehistory
A few words tell us about yourself and our new product to better understand the context. In 2010, I with my friend on his 600 thousand roubles has launched a SaaS service for creating communities of customers, about 5-6 years ago wrote on Habre. In this project, we have attracted more than $1 million investment and tried to bring it to the international market. In late 2014 I was the initiator and the angel of another HelpDesk system for small and medium-sized businesses. This project was closed a year later, when I changed already the 4th account SEO and losing a few hundred thousand.
And so, in the end of 2015 with a new team, we launched WhatsHelp — platform for sales and customer support via instant messengers WhatsApp, Viber, etc. This project is launching initially on the global market and now the majority of users from Italy, Spain, Taiwan, Brazil, etc. for this project we decided to try starting our Side project: widget to chat with customers via instant messenger on the website.
Why we made this product? In my opinion starting a side-project can be useful in three cases:
-
the
- Validate the product hypotheses. When you think that some option may be useful in the main product, but not confident enough to embed it in the project. the
- As a source of leads for the main product. This approach works well when you offer customers something for free in exchange, for example, of their contacts. To get something, they fill out a form. the
- To "feel the market". You know what instant messengers and how to use wedding planners in Taiwan? I don't know to launch the widget ).
Now, we originally wanted to use this product to understand the market (section 3) and to test the idea of lead generation (p. 2). I want to say that everything turned out even better than we expected.
the
First experiment
Following the Golden rule of any startup — make shit and sticks, but this week, we launched the first version of the widget with support for only Facebook Messenger. It was decided to place this experimental product on third party domain (http://msgus.io), in order not to waste time on integration into the primary service and in case of failure just close the project.
At the time I didn't know where to start promotion on the global market and does not think of anything smarter, just posted a link on Hacker News in the Show HN. They usually post new projects for feedback. After collecting about 12 upvotes and a few of the comments we have received explosive growth... in Taiwan.
The first few days of the hieroglyphs twinkling in the eyes, but after the hundredth viewed the site with the installed widget. on second thought I even began to understand something. I don't know how this is useful, but now with confidence I can distinguish the characters of traditional Chinese, for example, Japanese =).
As it turned out, a link on Hacker News said the editor of the most popular techno-blog in Taiwan and published an article about the widget. Next was the census articles on other sites and forums. So we have received over the last month more than 200 installations of the widget on websites.
Thanks to this simple steps we have learned a lot about the market of Taiwan, Thailand and the Philippines, talked with local entrepreneurs and found that this product has to be developed further.
the
Developing the idea
After the launch of Amargosa (there we call this project), we realized that not FB Messenger'th one is full of the world, and businesses often use several instant messengers simultaneously. Thus was born the idea to rework the widget and add support for all popular platforms: WhatsApp, Viber, Telegram, VK, Snapchat, Line, etc.
It is done! And after a couple of months we have born our side-project WhatsHelp Chat Widget. We long thought, whether to develop a new widget on a separate domain or make it part of the core product. As item 1 (test product hypothesis) and 3 (exploration of market battle) kicked in, it was easy and fast to try to generate leads. The easiest thing to do, placing a new widget directly on the website of the main product. So, the constructor of the widget on our website (http://whatshelp.ru/widget):
the
Run
For the time past since the launch of the first version of the widget has been read dozens of articles on launching the projects on the global market and this time I decided to try their hand at Product Hunt (abbreviated PH). Recently a lot has been written about this area, but let me explain for those who don't know.
PH is a place where some people (hunter) publish new products, and other people (community members) to vote for them. Each day the list is updated and there is a vote, the results of which, at the end of the day is formed by TOP projects. To enter the TOP 5 — very difficult and very cool. For a place under the sun have to compete with Google, Apple and hundreds of companies with really cool products.
After some preparation, we published our widget on PH. As it was a different story and worthy of a separate article, but after 18 hours of fighting, we still got into the coveted TOP 5! I certainly didn't cry with happiness, but it was a great result. In the screenshot below we are the second from the top.
the
Result
Then it was 100,500 publications on Twitter, several publications on third-party portals and blogs in Italy, Portugal, etc. But you probably are waiting for the numbers, and I have (checks on October 28).
the
-
the
- Total number of units of a widget 1079 the
- the Number of registrations in the main product — 300+
The numbers speak for themselves. Of course, not all third-party projects successful, but if you don't spend a lot of resources and to experiment, such projects can more than pay off.
Hope it was useful and interesting. I will be glad to questions in the comments.
Success!
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