Elephas · B2C · AI assistant for Mac
Post a short feature demo video on Reddit: why you built it, then ask for feedback
$0 to $3K MRR in 6 months; feedback shaped the main feature
Workedcommunityvalidationfeature-development
What they did
Each post centers on a video demo of one feature, wrapped in a problem-solution or story frame: 'me or my friend was facing this problem, so I built this feature to solve it. See, this is how it works. If you want to try, you can try it for 30 days for free. I'm just looking for feedback...'. Show, don't tell; explain the reasoning like talking to adults, no blatant self-promotion. Used to test the new Super Brain feature, whose feedback and feature requests made it the primary feature. Expect hate and bans; keep backup accounts and develop thick skin.
What happened
$0 to $3K MRR within 6 months; typical posts 30-50 upvotes, viral ones 300-400; Super Brain became the main feature. Later mods started removing posts and returns diminished
- Stage
- Launch (launch / first customers)
- Effort
- Many posts over ~6 months
“So, uh so something like, me or my friend was facing this problem, so I built this feature to solve it. See, this is how it works. Uh if you want to try, you can try it for 30 days for free. I'm just looking for feedback”
“And this got us a lot of uh positive feedback and a lot of feature requests, which eventually became our main primary uh feature, which is like the Super Brain feature”
“After a while, mods started uh, you know, cracking down on them and removing them, but good thing is that we do still get some traffic from from these posts, but a lot of the engagement is is now gone”
Related topics
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More from this episode
- Elephas: List 15+ niche subreddits and post in one per day, tracking each linkPart of the Reddit phase that reached $3K MRR; tracking showed which posts converted
- Elephas: Turn answers to customer questions into simple how-to articles on your siteOne article ranked #1 on Google for 6-8 months; revealed SEO as a channel
- Elephas: Write a '18 best ChatGPT Mac apps' roundup for the exact niche you sit inRanked #1 with high-intent buyers; AI chatbots now cite it too
- Elephas: Buy Ahrefs for a month, list 30-50 easy keywords, publish 2-3 posts a weekTook revenue from $3K to ~$12K/month; ~$70K from Google in 2023
- Elephas: Sell a one-time lifetime plan next to monthly and yearly, raising prices over time
- Elephas: Sell the app on your own site, in Setapp and on both App StoresOwn site ~$110K a year vs Mac App Store ~$12.5K
- Elephas: Get alerts when people mention your app online, and reply thereDaily feedback and feature requests from users; no growth numbers