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Comment by mnw21cam | Hacker News Reader

Out of interest, how many people here have been in a startup company where it has been really hard to gain new customers, but once they realise what you are doing for them they love you forever?

This was my position ten years ago. The company folded because it was just so expensive to get new customers and the bubble burst so we couldn't get any further investment.

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We've had this issue with our startup since our competitors are either a Goliath in the space or well-funded startups. Yet we probably get at least a few emails each week from users who just love what we do. We've also had a fair share of users email us asking us how they can give us money, because they don't want us to disappear. So, I guess, we're doing something right.

Do you have some sort of referral system in place? If people like you enough to email you, I bet they'd email their friends too if you give them a hint and way to do so.

Yup. People even earn silly badges for referring their friends and, actually, we do get a high conversion rate from user invites. There's just not enough eyeballs hitting the site outside of users that search for us directly.

Well, you need to work out how to convert "we're doing something right" into actually being popular and making buckets of money. There are countless companies that folded even though they were "doing something right". It's hard.

Gah... don't I know it. We're prepping for a major release that should give us a nice push. Could be the first step on the road to capital, albeit, another trying test in and of itself.

I think in your case CLTV < Customer aquisition. Maybe you should have looked at charging more or looking at cross selling.

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