I'm Sharath 👋🏼 I sold a startup while hustling at a full-time job. AMA.

byFeatured•3yr ago

Hello there! I'm Sharath, founder, community builder, and content creator. Currently, I work at Threado as Head of Community, but in my free time, I build products, host a podcast, advise founders and help makers launch on Product Hunt! In the past, I built 15+ side projects using no-code tools and got the opportunity to work with prolific people like Naval Ravikant. I accidentally built a startup called Shoutout in my maker journey which grew to $30K ARR and eventually, I sold for 6 figures. All this happened when I was hustling at full-time jobs. As a startup operator, I got the opportunity to work for the most prominent brands in tech like Product Hunt, and On Deck where I nurtured community. Right now I’m tinkering with a couple of side-projects: - Blubi, a permanent home for your social content where you can use AI to remix it. - Next Step, a tight-knit community for first-time founders figuring out the next steps. I'm here to answer questions about SaaS, building in public, audience building, community, bootstrapping, no-code, and anything startups! AMA 👇

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My question is about building a community for our SaaS users. (questions at the end fyi) We recently started gaining more users to our SaaS product Tamly, it is a LinkedIn automation tool for sales and business development teams. Although it is super simple once the users get a grip and complete a whole funnel even once (e.g. middle aged, less tech savvy sales people love it), connecting the user's LinkedIn and Tamly accounts for the first time could feel a bit complicated. So, we have a lot of new users come in, sign up, and leave soon after without executing their first funnel successfully. I want to create a community and enable instant communication between our users and myself. Our 'product champions' for example, never hesitate to give me a call any time and I actively help them with their campaigns and stuff. I want our new users to feel the same way and communicate with us. Now for the questions: 1) Is it weird for us to reach out to users on WhatsApp for a more sincere and instant communication? Consider the users provided their mobile number optionally, and so far we didn't have any adverse reactions. 2) I simply need to pinpoint the stage that users find ambiguous/challenging, to provide the right support at the right moment (and have them subscribe hopefully ;p). Would you have any other suggestions than user outreach? 3) I know utilizing Slack for such efforts is effective and am planning to do so. Which other channels would you recommend for community building?

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2yr ago

Thanks for hosting AMA. How did you find first 100 users? I don't have an audience or personal brand in any social media. And my potential customers are not super tech savvy to do digital ads or social media campaign. Currently planning to create a DB manually by googling and do email or SMS campaign. Your thoughts on this or alternatives?

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2yr ago