How Julien Nahum, Founder of NotionForms.io makes $200k ARR

Julien Nahum, Founder of NotionForms.io has made $10K MRR, bootstrapping a SaaS productivity tool, Notion Forms, a form builder using Notion.

Here’s what you will get to know through his journey from $0 to $10K in a year:

• Get valuable insights about **WHY** and HOW he bootstrapped his solopreneur business.
• Tools he used to build the business from scratch.
• **Marketplaces** where he promoted the business to generate sustainable revenue for the long term.

To be precise, here’s what we will look into to understand his business:

1. How he became a bootstrapper.
2. Discovery of ideas for the business.
3. Validation of the product idea.
4. Initial acquisition of users.
5. Selling the product.
6. Addition of features & Prioritization.
7. Tools used for the business.
8. Monetization of the product.
9. What content was kept under the paid plan?
10. Pricing Strategy.
11. Preparation of the launch with additional features.
12. Getting customers on board.
13. Discount offered (if any)
14. Growth of the product.
15. Investment in the business.
16. Success factors for NotionForms.
17. Competition for Notion Forms.
18. Valuation of the business.
19. Team Size of the business.

Why was he inclined to bootstrap the business?

→ Found a supportive community of solopreneurs building businesses in public which motivated him to bootstrap and start his own business.

Learning for ME: “Finding the right support system in any business endeavor is essential, no matter the size”

How he discovered the idea for the product?

→ Discovered an area of opportunity for the creation of forms in Notion due to past experience of 5 years as an intern in a startup using Air Table.

→ This reminds me of the famous Quote from Steve Jobs, “You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward”

Learning for ME: “Any experience that comes in life can never be discounted”

How did he validate the Product Idea?

→ He went against the general norm of building a landing page and selling the product even before the launch of the product.

→ He states, to build a product comfortably under a month (at max) & get feedback to validate the idea before launch (it's really easy).

Learning for ME: “Look for feedback for your product early on in the least time possible before diving deep into it”

How did he acquire the initial users for the business?

4 ways:

Reddit

A Reddit post created a long time back to get users has become a regular acquisition funnel for customers as it is indexed in Google Search Results quite well.

Facebook

Joined various dedicated FB groups and got over 111 likes and a few dozen of early users from one of the largest groups.

Product Hunt

Generated over 27 upvotes within 2 days of the launch of the first version. Got much-needed motivation as someone mentioned talked about the product.

Twitter

Interacted with other co-creators and directly asked for partnerships with popular makers. Stayed persistent for a long time and tried providing value to the audience as a way to reach out to others.

Learning HE shares:

• Identify who your users would be & where you can find out about them.
• The existence of an active and dedicated community makes it easy to create products for a niche audience.

Did he get an opportunity to sell NotionForms?

He had valued the business 3 times:

1. He had an offer of $6K at TinyAcquisition, founded by **Stephen Campbell** with only 100 users under a week’s time period.
2. During this time, he didn’t have any revenue and had 100 FREE users on board.
3. Decided not to sell the business following the “regret minimization framework” from Jeff Bezos.
4. Rejected the second offer for $65K (roughly 2.5 times * ARR at the time). Eventually, the business grew to $65K ARR.
5. Rejected the third offer for $350K at an ARR of $85 - $90K. Declined again as the multiple didn’t match his growth attained in the business.

How did he add the features & prioritized them for NotionForms.io?

He followed 3 steps:

• If the requested feature was too far from the vision, he said “NO” to it as covering 100% of features won’t be possible.
• Worked on the rule of how he felt about the request for the feature:
• Higher request for any feature was the priority of the feature.
• If the feature had benefits to multiple users, higher was the priority.
• If any feature was not requested for long, then he didn’t give any priority to that and discarded it.
• Worked on easy features on the days he didn’t feel motivated and saved the non-urgent quick-wins for the dark days.

Strategy for monetization of the product

→ Didn’t keep per-form submission-based pricing. No usage-based limits would be available in the free plan.

→ All the basic features would be kept in the FREE PLAN, any advanced features would cost money.

Lesson for ME: Keep it simple and include all the necessities in the FREE PLAN. Put pricing for all the features that cost money.

How did he decide upon the pricing and the discount scheme of the product

→ Pricing was simply based on dividing the average price of products of other competitors selling the product.

→ During the launch of the product, he added a “PRO” tag to a feature that was about to be paid.

→ A week prior to the launch, he sent an email for a “40%” lifetime discount coupon for improving the conversion.

Getting the feedback from the first initial customer

A French photographer loved the “quality of the support” provided by the product and paid for the PRO plan, even if it was not needed.

Lesson for ME: If your product holds value, people will support you (monetarily) no matter what.

What was the discount scheme provided for the product?

Offered a FREE 3-day trial with the use of a credit card to start the tool.

• For the use of the First Form, a 40% discount on 1st month of subscription is applicable.
• 40% off for NGOs, students, and academics.
• No discount was offered for startups.

How did he attain growth in the sales of the tool?

Achieved growth from 2 different sources, i.e. “Backlink strategy” and “User-produced content”.

• Each FREE form had a link to the Notion Form, which respondents would share and later on create their own forms with (if reqd). This cycle repeated over and over again creating the VIRAL LOOP.
• Each form created a strong domain authority due to the backlink placed on each of the forms.
• User-produced content also played a key role in building a further customer base for Notion.

Lesson for ME: Creating a viral loop strategy can help users market the product on their own without any active involvement of the creator.

The lesson he SHARES*: While reaching out to other content creators, be direct and straight to the point about what you want to offer to users.*

Key Learnings:

Great customer support is key to the business, as “Happy Customer = Better Salesman”.

Strong backlinks and viral loops helped to get traffic from “SEO” and “Word of Mouth”.

How was the customer support?

He used 3 platforms to build customer support:

• Facebook Group - Dedicated FB group was used to explain all new features with images and illustrations.
• Twitter - “Notion Forms” Twitter account was used for tweeting about new product features.
• Live Chat and Helpdesk - Implemented the “Live Chat” system which helped resolved the issues instantly.

A helpdesk was developed which was a reference point for any issues related to the product and it also gave a better word of mouth.

Lesson for ME: Invest time in implementing a Live Chat system and also a Helpdesk to ensure a good customer support system for a product.

Did he find competition for Notion Forms?

Yes, an exact replica of the features and similarities was found for his product. Thus a copycat was in business copying all the features and similarities of Notion Forms.

The replica version got users on board as well from Product Hunt. But, Notion Forms won in the end due to its vision and intent of the business.

Lesson HE shares: Idea x Execution = Business (Advice from level.sio). No matter how strong your idea is, there are others already thinking the same, all that matters is how well you execute the idea.

Success Mantras for NotionForms?

Investing time in Personalized feedback (email automation) depending upon user behavior that has a personal human touch builds a strong connection with users.

Other lessons I learned from the success story of Notion Forms?

• Don’t shy away from “discussions” with potential buyers, it's always good to put valuation to your business and track your business.
• Money offered firsthand may seem impressive, but if it doesn’t match the growth potential expectation don’t take it.
• Early validation of the product helped build a minimum MVP.
• Timely investment into great customer support always brings success in the long term.

What’s the size of the team of the business?

There are 2 members (including Julien Nahum), the other team member is a full-time developer.

Tools and Marketplaces used for the business

1. TinyAcquisition - Marketplace to buy and sell small projects like Notion Forms.
2. Canny.io - Collect user feedback and used to share new product updates directly into the product.
3. zcal.co - Tool to be used for a personal meeting with users to receive qualitative feedback [Welcome + Feedback email]

What did I love about the Landing Page of Notion Forms?

• What I loved the most other than the success story is the Landing page for NotionForms.io.
• It's a clean and crisp page that doesn’t have any unnecessary elements presented in the light background which is a perfect example of how a landing page should be.
• Follow along the journey of Julien Nahum, Founder of NotionForms.io, and leave your feedback on what you loved about the business…??

#business, #saasgrowth, #saasstartup, #entrepreneur