Guess who just got ROASTED Awesome experience with @asmartbear and @esbenfj We talked about the challenges of growing Senja from $1,000,000 ARR Lots to reflect on, and execute But for now I am just feeling grateful for their time And the opportunity to keep learning, and become a better founder

We had 716 paying customers churn since April Here's exactly why they left The main reason is they are no longer actively collecting testimonials. For many businesses, testimonial collection is campaign based. We've added functions that automate ongoing collection, but that behaviour is much more common with reviews. Adding the function to constantly collect only helps the small segment who would've done that anyway. In other words it doesn't actually change the customer behaviour. We've also added Churnkey [pause account], focused on activation, and increased educational content like webinars and emails. This is why I call churn "systemic" as I believe it's a reflection of the ICP and offer, not the @SenjaHQ product itself. Interesting aside: we are not seeing people leave because they vibe-coded their own solution. Churn is one of the issues I am looking forward to discussing when I record my pod with @asmartbear.

Another flat revenue month at Senja We've been stuck at $1,000,000 ARR for several months now Here’s what’s going on: Our sign ups and churn have met. Each day about 8 customers cancel and 8 users upgrade. I spent the last year dealing with the fall out of my cofounder leaving. I now work with an awesome marketer @startupwithana, engineer @ngrushkovsky and 'everything else' person. Growing sign ups is really hard right now. Our strategy is partnerships - affiliate and sponsorships to educate about Senja and drive sales in return for a kickback. This work isn’t driving sign ups, yet. But it’s early. Right now I’m looking for signals that relationship building is working. Ana has worked 24/7 to secure calls with some incredible people. That’s the first step. Early on, most my marketing work lasted an hour, then a week. Now, this one bet is going to take months to run. We’re also exploring going upmarket. We’re using fake doors to pitch new product ideas to paying customers, asking them to book a call to learn more and get early access. This is very early. We’re making product changes to ensure @senjahq works end to end, from testimonial invite and collection to sharing as social posts, widgets, reels and case studies. I’m still loving my communities, @Microconf and @DynamiteCircle. For me they have both been life changing. Every founder should have a tribe to support, advise, and hold to account. Churn is still high at about 5.5% which appears to be systemic rather than fixable. This is a big lever that won’t move. Fundamentally, testimonials are not a big market. It’s not reviews, it’s not feedback, it’s a little, awesome niche and we may have tapped it out. I’m an engineer now. I spend my time fixing papercuts to improve lifecycle performance. These are reviewed by Nikolai who is now mainly working on our bigger bets and more complex engineering challenges. Craft is still important to me. I’m still talking to customers, reworking and refining screens and flows, and agonising over small details. But I also iterate on the product every day. I have been struggling with my health. I’m nomadic and have been lucky to visit 10 countries already this year. If I want to hit other goals including PBs in the gym I will probably need to travel less. I hired for hard work and energy, and I’ve got it. I have to tell my team to work less, not more. I feel lucky to have it that way. I think building trust is getting harder which is making the concept of collecting and sharing proof more marketable… but educating and changing buyer behaviour is hard to do when LTV is high, and impossible when low. I’m both excited for the business and team, and extremely uncertain about the future

Is it just me or did @stripe get enshittified? They have fees on EVERYTHING Currency exchange, foreign bank accounts, faster payouts, and radar