Petr Janosik, Founder at Smartlook joins Hammad Akbar in this episode of Launch Legends
How Smartlook idea came up
Petr started 12 years ago when he established his first company focused on building websites for the clients. While running his first company, he also learned digital marketing as clients also started demanding performance marketing. Petr learned everything about software product, product design and SEO while running his first company.
After a few years, he decided to create his own product because he got bored with running a digital marketing agency. In 2013, Petr created his first SaaS product which was a live chat tool for small websites but he made many mistakes while developing the product. So, he started developing another product in 2016 with the name Smartlook. Smartlook analyzes user behaviour on the website and mobile apps.
100K users in 10 months
Petr initially gave the customers a product for free. He focused on building a sound product and that’s why in the early days his entire focus was on building a good product rather than focusing on paid channels. Another reason for providing a product for free was to see if people are interested in the product.
Strategy to get 100K users
Petr used Quora, G2 and Capterra for lead generation. He also spoke with influencers and bloggers to promote his product. Petr also launched a referral program along with Facebook Ads campaign for lead generation. He spent $30K per day on a Facebook ads campaign which helped him to get 100K users but later Facebook changed its algorithm and his Facebook ads campaign strategy stopped working.
Product pricing
Peter started getting nervous after some time because he was not generating any money from the product so he decided to place a buy button on his website to know whether people are willing to pay for the product. He also asked his active users based in different countries how much they are willing to pay for the product. The purpose was to see how people from different countries react to the different product pricing.
Initially, the product pricing was set at $10 and then gradually they removed the free package for the customers. The customer started to opt for a paid plan and after 12 months Smartlook MRR reached $76K. Now, Smartlook has around 2000 customers and $170K MRR along with 300K free users.
