How makes $134k/Month with his SaaS

Full name: Masud Hossain

Business: Queue

Started: Mid 2020

Website: https://usequeue.com 

Social Media channels: Twitter

Role: Founder / CEO

Number of employees: 5

Monthly revenue: 🔒 UNLOCK EXACT REVENUE NUMBERS

Deal: 🔒 UNLOCK

Who are you, and what’s the SaaS you’re working on?

I’m Mas, founder of Queue. We’re an all-in-one platform that lets you launch a productized service business. You can embed checkout, client portal, and project management tools to your website with full white-labeling so your clients get a seamless experience.

How did you come up with the idea?

About two and a half years ago, I hired a friend to coach me in Overwatch. I'd record my gameplays and send them to him via Google Drive for feedback. He'd go through the videos and leave comments on an Excel sheet with timestamps.

Reading the comments and jumping to specific timestamps became a hassle pretty fast. So, I decided to spend a week creating a video player that allowed for timestamped comments with drawings. We loved using it, so we shared it with friends on various Discord servers, and before we knew it, hundreds of people were using it, too.

Seeing esports coaches adopting our platform for their business was incredibly satisfying. But then, something unexpected happened. Video editors started using it not for reviewing gameplay videos but for collecting feedback from their clients. That's when things started taking off.

Our revenue doubled in just a few weeks, and we received requests to expand into reviewing images, PDFs, and even live websites. We listened to our users and delivered what they needed.

I always knew I wanted to build another startup, one that would empower people to start their businesses. This vision was there from day one when we started with review tools for esports coaches and agencies. However, we didn't start with all the bells and whistles like client portals and payments. We began with a simple review tool because we understood that building too much too soon could confuse our users, and we might end up with a platform that was too confusing.

How did you validate the product?

I built the product for myself. I figured, if no one else uses it, at least I’ll use it! The real validation came when my friend and I put the site on Discord servers and Reddit. We had hundreds of people sign up very quickly, and it was 100% free at the start. It was loved so much that people were sending us messages asking how we planned to keep it alive since they saw no ads. And offered us money to keep the site alive. This was the validation we needed to keep pursuing. People were willing to pay.

How did you launch the product?

Our first launch was on Discord. We found some servers that were focused on esports, video editing, and webflow designs. We put our site there after getting approval from the moderators, and off it went. This gave us our first 100 users and helped us get the crucial feedback we needed to improve the product. 

We also launched on ProductHunt that helped us get another batch of users. It gave us hundreds of visits and 50+ accounts within 48 hours. We plan on doing more ProductHunt launches.

What were 3 ways you got the first customers to your product?

• Discord

We joined popular Discord servers where people in our niche hung out. We googled for servers for Webflow designers, Figma, Productized Services, Graphic design, freelancers, etc. We then built a relationship with the server moderators to make sure it was okay for us to share information about Queue when a question arose. Below is an example of what I did whenever someone asked a question on how to use a platform inferior to ours. I then answered any questions they might have, and DM’d them about more info with a link to my calendly in case they wanted a demo.

• Reddit

During the very early days when we were targeting eSport coaches, we posted on specific gaming subreddits like League of Legends and Overwatch. This gave us a bunch of views, but it was tough to monetize gamers with a monthly subscription at our price point. 

• And… (🔒 UNLOCK THE 3RD STRATEGY)

• Plus (BONUS)… (🔒 UNLOCK THE 4TH STRATEGY)

What is the SaaS doing right now in terms of numbers?

Right now, we’re doing about $134K/MRR, and we’ve grown…. 🔒 UNLOCK THE FULL BREAKDOWN

What’s the best growth hack or tactic to get new customers to your SaaS right now?

I don’t think we have a lot of growth HACKS. We grind it out. We find discord servers and scour for people asking questions on how to do something that our product does, and we reply to them about Queue. Simple as that. 

For sales, we noticed that sending a Loom screen recording tripled our response rate. We learned the #1 thing prospects want to know FIRST is if you’re copying/pasting. After that, they want to know if they can use your product. 

What is your biggest lesson learned thus far?

The #1 biggest mistake we’ve made is not doing marketing early on. We focused primarily on outbound sales, which gave us our revenue, but it makes it hard to scale at a faster pace when our inbound leads are low because of no content marketing. What we should’ve done is focused 80% on sales and 20% on marketing, so at least we have something. Instead, we did 100% sales and 0% marketing. Big mistake. 

The other lesson I got is how to talk to investors. YCombinator helped me tremendously in knowing how to speak to them, how to generate excitement, and how to utilize your existing investors to get new ones. Here’s a key tip. Mention your existing investors to them. This usually gets them excited knowing people they respect are in. And always end the conversation with, “So, what’s the thing that would keep your team from moving forward if you had to pick one?” This is a gold question because they always have something in the back of their head, and as soon as they tell you, address it, so they leave without any hesitation. 

What are the 5 tools you use the most?

• Queue: We use our own tool with some subscription services we hired (designer and mobile app developer). 

• Notion: We store our internal documents and blogs here. 

• React: We use it for our front end. 

• Ruby on Rails: We’re big fans of Rails and will continue to use it forever. 

• Loom: Sending screen recordings with issues or for sales emails has never been easier.

What’s 1 book you’d recommend to fellow founders?

• Founding Sales: Every founder should read this to learn how to sell. It details how to prospect sell and gives many examples of how to do it. It’s focused on startup founders learning how to do sales for early-stage startups.

• Story Brand: I learned what our mission was after reading this. What do we want to do with our brand, and how do we message that to our users? 

What’s your advice for (aspiring) founders in SaaS?

If you’re building a product and you don’t have 10 people you know that will try it, don’t bother building it. Instead, go find 10 people and then build it. 

Forget investors. Go hit profitability and then go fundraise. The VCs will respect you way more, knowing you don’t even need them. Which will make them want to give you money.

Apply to YCombinator. You have nothing to lose. You don’t need a specific amount of revenue. Just have a clear idea, problem, and solution. 

Focus on marketing and generating an audience early on. Every time you build something, tell everyone. You are the cheerleader for your startup.