Formula Bot · B2C · AI spreadsheet assistant
Do users' spreadsheet work for free on a call, in exchange for feedback
Founder says it turned a formula tool into a full data analysis product
Workedfeature-developmentcustomer-support
What they did
About once a week a user emailed their Excel file asking for help the formula generator couldn't give (e.g. building a report). Even for non-paying users he agreed to do the work, but only live on a phone call, and on every call they had to answer what they liked, didn't like, and what ideas they had. Combined with asking coworkers who work with data.
What happened
Shifted the product from an Excel formula generator to a broad data analytics tool, including the data analyzer where most of his time now goes.
- Stage
- growth
- Effort
- ~1 call a week
“I'm going to do it with you on a phone call, and I'll do your work for you. But every time I do it, they have to hop on a call with me and they have to ask questions about what they like and what they don't like about the product as well as some ideas that they have.”
“kind of revolutionized the product away from just being an Excel formula generator to just kind of being this all-in platform for anything that you're doing with data analytics.”
Get tactics like this every Monday
New tactics from the week's founder interviews, each linked to where it was said.
More from this episode
- Formula Bot: Post your free tool in the niche subreddit with just a title and linkTop post of the day, then of the week, in r/excel
- Formula Bot: Repost your tool to r/InternetIsBeautiful after a commenter suggests it~10,000 upvotes and thousands of users; viral for months, but $5K API bill in days
- Formula Bot: Add a Stripe donation link to a free tool that went viralRecouped a few thousand dollars of a ~$5,000 API bill
- Formula Bot: Earn from free traffic with Google ads and a one-week sponsorSponsor ad drove lots of clicks; Google ads made a few bucks, not worth it
- Formula Bot: Charge for unlimited use and raise the price from $2.99 to $9~5,000 paying users and ~$26K MRR; ~5% churn
- Formula Bot: Put the AI inside Excel and Sheets, with each user's language presetKept users against free ChatGPT early on; only ~10% of churn blamed on ChatGPT