How a slack bot makes $50,000 every month?
You're going to be learning about an amazing SaaS journey, including how they got their first customers, why they built this product, and how they're continuing to grow.
In This Article:
What is karma bot?
So first off, what is this slack bot that does $50,000 a month?
It’s called Karma bot and it’s going to help create true bonding for remote teams so you can build stronger, happier teams, set goals, track performance and reward excellence.
On Slack, it’s used by some teams at some really big companies from Twitter or X, Salesforce and VMware. It’s gonna have features such as earning karma points, and then team leaders can then set customer rewards such as a laser tag certificate or an Amazon gift card, free coffee, or even a day off. They have over 760,000 users, over 7 million karma points given, and 2600 teams.
Why karma bot?
The founder of this product is also Stas Kulesh. So let’s start things off by diving into why Stas created karma Bot. And it was to be an internal tool for their team. And it just started with their ten users on one single team. And they liked the product so much that they decided it had to be on the market. So they went and launched it on product hunt and that brought them 100 users and ten teams.
From there they got an early foothold on the Slack store with no marketing, and that brought them to 120 teams. And from there remote work started to go trending. They also attended the YC startup school and that led to slack approaching them. And from there they brought on an additional 200 corporate teams. From there they integrated with tools such as tango cards to provide actual gift cards and establish bonus programs.
Indie marketing
What they did as well is began discussing Karma online through indie marketing.
Also partnered with Microsoft Teams, securing a spot on their store and bringing in 300 more teams from there. In terms of what indie marketing entailed, it was promoting things to their personal blog using Twitter or X, Indie Hackers, Product Hunt communities, Reddit and Hacker News posts. They’ve really dived into public, honest and open storytelling. The COVID era was also a significant boost for them as it grew. The remote work concept and their motto at that point was remote does not equal isolated. And although post pandemic growth has slowed down a bit, they’ve started to realize the limitations of chat platforms. And now they’re focusing on development of karma for the web.
So let’s dive into two of those key steps there.
- The first one was securing partnerships with Slack and Microsoft
- The second one was having the first mover advantage
So let’s dive into the securing partnerships.
Partnerships
For Karma bot, this was actually relatively easy as both platforms really benefited from a team focused app such as this one. And so what they did is they built native integrations, pitched a clear value proposition and then nurtured those relationships. This was a huge game changer for them as it gave them a huge user base to access. This also gave them credibility and the Microsoft partnership in particular has been really key for reaching enterprise clients.
So next, let’s dive into that first mover advantage. And for Stas, this came from constantly talking to customers and personally. They always try to engage in various tech communities and monitor industry trends. And from there they were able to dive in and experiment.
Stas also has some great lessons on selling to this particular type of enterprise client. That’s to ensure that you’re building a SaaS product. That requires focusing on decision makers with the purchasing power, not just the end users here, who would be the employees? Although employees use the product daily, CEO’s, executives and managers are the ones deciding on the adoption and payment, and understanding this allowed them to shift their targeting. Now they aim their product and marketing at team leaders and the things they’re looking for, such as culture and improvement.
Freemium
They also do things such as emphasizing business impact. Using executive language, providing social proof and offering top level support and aligning their target buyers priorities has made the business sustainable as well as profitable. Stas also has some advice on freemium as originally, originally they offered this as an option and users could access basic features for free, but they ended up removing this. This was because free users were draining support and resources without contributing revenue and it was a hard but necessary decision.
This actually ended up being very beneficial for them as they saw a 30% increase in revenue and a significant drop in support requests. The downside of this is they’re getting around five times fewer installations.
SaaS product
Stas also went and launched quite a few different SaaS products as well, and they have some really great advice around this.
The first piece is that good timing is crucial.
In addition to karma bot, they launched a spell checking tool for Figma two weeks before Figma introduced their own built in spell check.
The next one is to keep it simple.
Complex or overly niche products often struggle to gain traction, and so since 2021, of the main tasks at karma has always been to simplify as they don’t want to be too techy, too geeky or too inapplicable.
The next one is to iterate quickly.
They’ve always been prepared to pivot or adjust based on user feedback and market responses, and for them it’s been quite exciting as they’ve also been able to keep up with a dynamic AI powered tech scene of these days.
Lastly, it’s that passion isn’t enough.
While it’s important to build something you are passionate about, it’s not going to guarantee success. Market fit is essential, and many of the passion projects that Stas started failed because they got distracted by the allure of the idea, neglected what others actually needed.
Conclusion
This Slack-integrated SaaS startup’s journey to $50K monthly revenue showcases the potential in today’s digital market. All the information from this post came from an original indie hackers article.
By addressing specific needs and leveraging popular platforms, entrepreneurs can create valuable, profitable solutions. Success stems from market insight, user focus, and sustainable pricing. With dedication and adaptability, your startup could be the next big success story in the SaaS world.