Hi, I'm Wolfram, a full stack Ruby on Rails developer from Germany. I spent the last decade+ building web applications. Some for others, as an employee, and some alone, self-employed.
I'v started PressKitHero https://presskithero.com as a side project in 2016, and grown it to ramen profibility since.
It's a very simple SAAS app for companies to manage their press kit. I have no plans of growing it into a "full" pr suite, like my competitors, I'm happy to stay in my niche and just build the best press kit builder there is.
Based on the app description and homepage I always thought Krita can't replace Photoshop for the few things I need to do for basic webdesign stuff. But reading the comments here made me reconsider. Has anyone used Krita for web stuff (icons, headers, banners, editing screenshots, etc?
Since the developers are reading this thread: I saw that you have a simple press page [0], if you want something more detailed, I can hook you up with a free PressKitHero[1] account.
Krita is not targeted as a photoshop replacement. It was at one time, but 15+ years ago they realized that many people are willing to pay for photoshop and thus Adobe has a large amount of money to throw at developers (at least some of them good) and so they are unlikely to catch up. They then shifted focus to be the best programing for drawing instead, a niche that Photoshop can cover but it isn't what their customers want and so it isn't well served. Photoshop is mostly used by photographers who need to touch up a photo, this is art but a very different style of art from someone who starts with a blank page and draws a picture.
As an intermediate-to-advanced PS user, I found that it didn't fill the void too (but this was more than a year ago). It seems more geared toward traditional media emulation.
If you're looking for something designed to work like and solve the same problems as PS and Illustrator, Affinity Photo and Design by Serif are probably what you're looking for. They are around $50 each.
I have no idea about presskithero... But we can't just use a closed platform for our stuff. As for the first question: we, obviously, use Krita for icons, headers, banners and screenshots, but that's just because we're making Krita. It's not what Krita is made for :-)
And don't even think of trying to make mockups for whole websites in Krita!
I can second the recommendation for paddle. I use it for https://presskithero.com, which has customers around the world, and we are a german company, so we have to handle very complicated european vat rules...which paddle does for us!!
I also clicked on signup, but then didn't. Here is why: I wanted to sign up to test the product, but after clicking on signup I get a Typeform modal. Typeform as a signup form makes me suspicious that the product doesn't really exists, and the startup is doing some sort of landing page -> signup validation.
You also ask that I enter my credit card and you want to charge me 10$ upfront, without having established any sort of trust, or having shown the product to me. I would never do that. I don't even do that for established trust worthy companies. I wan't to see and test the product before I buy.
update: don't let the data discourage you, though. it's actually not bad. 400/600 clicked signed up? that's fantastic!
only 40 people went through with the sign up? I would say thats just user churn because of bad onboarding.
the first thing I would do is let people sign up with just email and password, and actually let them use your product, for a free trial period.
the second thing I would focus on is getting your users to the "magical moment" of your app. Thats a term I first read in context of someone from the growth team at facebook talking about user churn and growth. for facebook, the magic moment for example, was "seeing your friends".[0]
For your app, I think, the magical moment could be the first time a user sucessfully onboards a new client through your app, and sees how easy it is to collect all the requirements etc. If they go through that, and its really much easier with your app, they can't help but start their next client project with your app as well, and upgrade to a paid plan. But to get to that moment, you probably need at least a couple of days. I would not charge users before that moment.
I have a stupid question regarding vocabulary, because I've seen this 'inherent' definition of 'churn' used around here more recently.
To me, when I do co-hort analyses, failure to onboard is a conversion failure. In any case - 'Customer Success' territory. 'Churn' is when the custom fails to re-up (for whatever reason).
This is great advice when I envision when to ask and how much I should charge for a saas business I’ve been struggling to get going. I hadn’t seen this before despite being a near daily reader in HN.
Personally I have never seen credit card information being asked in a typeform but that could just be me.
To start with maybe you could show a video of the product? A demo of some kind. If your product really is good maybe you could offer 7 days or 30 days free?
The site feels a bit unfinished too, if I click on the elite 100 at the top it seems to bring me to the index page again.
It looks nice though, good luck and I hope the feedback here helps.
Thank you. The feedback definitely helps. We are working on a demo video as we speak. Since the elite 100 was not successful we removed the whole thing from the page. I've explained in the previous comment what the program was like.
Thanks, Makes sense. Before we were asking $348 ;-) but then our program was that we'd giveaway shares for the first 100 people. The whole thought process behind that was,
We are a small team of hustlers wanting to build the best experience for freelancers to work with their clients. Soon in our journey, we realized building a startup is a lot of work, and it’s hard to focus on multiple areas. This is why we’ve launched the Elite 100 program and opening our platform to only 100 users for the first 6 months. We’ll not focus on growth, but only to serve the 100 users in the best way.
It was also deep-rooted in my conviction that the disparity between the rich and everyone else is larger than ever in the United States and the rest of the world. I believe a company working with masses should also give everyone a share of the benefits gained, this aligns with my personal mission as well, I’ve been working with communities for many years (and even in my personal capacity https://www.facebook.com/COD3BOY/posts/10155519455529473) and I believe the real success happens when we have a lot of people coming together on a mission and everyone is benefitted. By giving away 100,000 shares of our company we stand by that, and says when we are successful everyone who were with us will be benefited too.
Honestly, just don't bother with the share grants. There are massive legal landmines as securities are highly regulated. There's no benefit to you nor to the random people you want to give shares to. Plus the incentive is all wrong. You want your customers to choose your product on its own basis, not because you're giving out chachkis.
> By giving away 100,000 shares of our company we stand by that, and says when we are successful everyone who were with us will be benefited too.
That's not what it says to me. What it says is that you are naive and your shares are worthless. If your company ever makes it you'll just dilute those shares to nothing.
I'm not a lawyer, but the share thing sounds illegal. I don't think you should be doing that, otherwise you will probably get in trouble with the SEC. Companies usually only sell (or give away) shares to the public when they have an IPO.
If that's how you feel, making your company a cooperative or a platform cooperative is probably a safer bet, albeit possibly more work. Giving away shares, while it appears easy, is illegal and has other disadvantages.
It was also deep-rooted in my conviction that the disparity between the rich and everyone else is larger than ever in the United States and the rest of the world.
It's a nice sentiment, but the most proven way of dealing with this is to get actual cash into their pockets without adding to the income disparity, which in this case would be giving e.g. LinkedIn or Robert Half or whoever (exploitative rent-seekers) a big slice of any money they make through a particular gateway (you).
Personal anecdote: When I was backpacking in Australia 10 years ago I felt I had a clear advantage over other backpackers because germans somehow have this image of being super productive and hard working. I more than once got a job just because I was from Germany.
That might be because they believe asians put up with more crap than germans/europeans.
I once heard a dane say to us (swedes) that they would love it if we came over to work because danes have too many demands when you ask them to do something while a swede will just do it.
I agree with #1, look for competition. It is astonishing to me how many customer service saas companies seem to pop up every now and then, but many of them seem to succeed, despite there being already hundreds.
That’s smart - businesses don’t expect as much for free, whereas consumer app pricing is cutthroat. Do you face more issues with gatekeepers in B2B stores?
