The big milestones of a startup
I’ve started Sampa in February of 2005. Like on people’s life, startup’s life is also marked by a few big milestones. The first employee, the first investor, the first customer, the beta launch, etc.
Today, I’m very excited to announce a tremendous milestone for Sampa…
Our first paying customer!
That’s right, we didn’t force him to do anything. He voluntarily upgraded his Sampa site from a free plan to a premium plan. That’s about 36 hours after we shipped billing.
“It took you 36-hours to get your first customer! What’s the matter with Sampa?”
Well, that’s a great question. We decided for a very different strategy on when to allow customers to upgrade. We didn’t want the “paid” part to affect our current conversion rate. Every time you give options or ask one more thing you are turning away a percentage of users. So, we don’t talk, don’t show, don’t give you the option to upgrade when you sign up.
At the current moment you’ll need to dig a bit to find the Premium accounts. But, we will present customers with an option to sign up at the moments we think they are most willing to do so.
The “Premium” part of “Freemium” is something that we are just learning about and there will be many mistakes, many hits, and many new (and exciting) business strategies that we’ll learn.
