I built ZenVoice in 30 hours and made almost $2,000 in 5 days

💡 Getting a startup idea After I realized I paid Stripe $1,600 to create PDF invoices, I turned off the option. Then, my inbox was full of customers asking for invoices.

A pain with a money incentive is promising. I didn't find alternatives. So a new startup idea was born: A self-serve invoicing tool for Stripe (zenvoice.io)

🧑‍💻 Building the MVP 1. Pricing is everything As a customer, that’s what you look at first, especially when you don’t understand the product. As an entrepreneur, that’s how I pay the rent. So I brainstorm pricing first.

I went with one-time payments: - $49: Unlimited invoices for 1 Stripe account - $69: Unlimited invoices for unlimited Stripe accounts

There are 2 plans because people have no clue how much a tool like this costs. Confused customers don't buy. The first plan is the anchor, so the second one makes sense.

I only pay for bandwidth (<$1/month) and emails ($0.001 per email). If a customer generates 49,000+ invoices, I’m losing money. But this will never happen for all customers.

2. That ONE feature I had tons of features in mind. But I also remembered that 90% of startups failed. So I have a rule to avoid wasting time (and eventually burning out): 1 startup = 1 feature For ZenVoice, customers of my users should be able to generate invoices. That’s it.

There’s no password reset form, invoice preview, or account deletion. But there’s a feedback button so I know what users need instead of making a blind guess.

3. Landing page is as important as the product On average, only 1 website visitors out of 100 will see your product. I spent 11 hours on the landing page (37% of the time) to make sure it converts. Here are the key elements I focused on:

- Problem agitation: Annoying notifications to remind potential customers why they’re here.

- Headline: A promise with an emotional outcome “Focus on your startup, not the invoices” - Demo video: I’m not a cold VC startup, so I demo the product and explain why I built it

- Social proof: I let a few users beta test the product in exchange for a testimonial - Startup name: ZenVoice is easy to remember because it’s short and related to the pain (in-voice)

🤑 Getting the 1st customer To get the first visitors (and customers), I launch everywhere: Product Hunt, Reddit, Hacker News, and Twitter have the most impact.

For each platform, I try to format the post for the user’s language. For instance, I use cold tech words on Hacker News, and friendly vibes with emoji on Product Hunt. I also made a launch skit to kickstart the post on Twitter.

Marc Lou@marclou · Feb 19, 2024My new startup ZenVoice.io is live 🎉 → Let your customers generate, edit, and download invoices themselves. ✅ No 0.4% Stripe fee ✅ No customer support ✅ 1-minute no-code setup One-time payment for lifetime access. Launch discount is up! 🔥

After getting 10,000 I look at just one metric: $ Per Visitor. - The worst I’ve had is $0.06 per visitor. - The best is $0.93 (shipfa.st). If ZenVoice $ Per Visitor is above $0.5, I focus. Otherwise, I let it run by itself, fix bugs, and move on to the next.