In nine months, Mattijs Naus and a small team developed Pagestead, a white-labeled, self-hosted website builder. They sold software licenses to businesses around the globe, as well as subscriptions granting access to ongoing support and software updates.
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Mattijs Naus and a small team created Pagestead, a self-hosted, completely white-labeled website builder, in only nine months. They launched in the spring of 2017 and were quickly able to generate a substantial MRR. Pagestead now earns $7,000 per month and has over 140 clients. However, during the process of development and expansion, they made some significant errors.
Building a Successful Self-Hosted Website Creator
My name is Mattijs Naus (usually referred to as “Matt”), and I’ve been a resident of Thailand for the past 13 years. I manage a software company with a completely remote team, and our primary product is known as Pagestead. Pagestead is an entirely white-labeled, self-hosted website creator. We sell software licenses to companies around the world (typically for a one-time fee). In addition, we offer subscriptions that provide ongoing support and software updates. As the company’s founder, I play multiple roles, including front-end development, support, marketing, business and consumer development, etc.
I majored in both business and computer science before falling out of college and relocating to Thailand. During my first few years in Thailand, I performed web development and other IT duties for a travel agency. I had a great deal of freedom to initiate initiatives and conduct experiments at this employment. This allowed me to enhance my computing skills and develop an appetite for launching initiatives and side enterprises.
After departing this position, I’ve begun numerous initiatives and businesses, eventually selling one. The majority of these endeavors did not result in anything remarkable, but I simply relished creating things. Due to the fact that not all of these initiatives generated income, I frequently performed consulting and freelance work on the side.
I suppose you could say that the majority of the initiatives I’ve initiated have “failed.” However, I dislike this term because they do not feel like failures. All of them were fantastic learning opportunities and a lot of joy to construct. A product entitled “Failswitch” is one of my more recent “failures.” It was a tool that would ensure your website was never offline. I believe I was unable to define a distinct audience for this beyond “people with a website” (which is far too broad) as the reason for its failure. This ingrained the notion that for a small, bootstrapped business to flourish, having a clearly defined market and a channel to reach them in the early stages is crucial. After constructing a large number of products without any consumers, I discovered that validation prior to construction is crucial. It’s difficult, particularly for us coders, not to immediately begin writing code when we have a business or project idea, but doing so almost always results in a product with no consumers or customers.
During these years, I was also actively selling WordPress themes and HTML templates on ThemeForest. This prompted me to create my first website builder script. It was primarily targeted at HTML template vendors, allowing them to bundle the script with their products and thereby enabling customers to easily modify HTML templates (there are still numerous HTML templates on ThemeForest that use our script).
Quickly, I noticed that web development agencies, marketing firms, hosting companies, and internet marketers were purchasing the simple site builder script. This type of product (with numerous additional features that our product lacked at the time) began to be in demand. I began developing additional site builder scripts with enhanced features and selling them on CodeCanyon. This enterprise was profitable for a number of years, generating around $5,000 per month. However, I eventually grew weary of selling through a marketplace website such as CodeCanyon. We were no longer able to contact our consumers, and we began to observe CodeCanyon’s parent company, Envato, moving in an undesirable direction.
Therefore, we (at this point, I had assembled a small team) decided to develop and sell the next version of our site construction tool, now known as Pagestead, outside of the Envato ecosystem. This proved to be a wise decision, as we now have complete control and earn more money than when we sold on the Envato sites.
How was Pagestead created?
It took us roughly nine months to establish Pagestead prior to our 2017 spring launch. However, this first iteration utilized a substantial amount of code from a previous version, so it wasn’t entirely new. In addition, we were not working on it full-time during those months (we all had other occupations). We were a team of three while developing the initial version: myself, one back-end developer, and another front-end developer.
The initial iteration of Pagestead was, to put it candidly, fairly lame. In terms of features, we launched with the absolute bare minimum. We are fortunate to have a large network of email subscribers, existing customers, and other helpful individuals who assisted us in determining which initial features we required. We are in business today because our early consumers believed in us and pre-ordered or purchased in our early days!
There were and continue to be numerous doubts regarding the viability of our enterprise. A few days ago, I asked my wife if she believed there was a specific number of customers, revenue, or profit that would affirm our business’s viability and eradicate all doubt. Unfortunately, we were unable to determine this enchanted number:) Before the launch, we had a pre-order page where individuals could order at a 20% discount. Back then, we believed that $10,000 was the mystical number. If we were able to accomplish $10,000 in pre-orders, we would conclude that this was sufficient evidence that the concept was viable and that enough people were willing to pay for this software. When we reached that number, I was still skeptical. We wound up doing just over $30,000 in pre-orders. The doubts were presumably somewhat diminished, but they were not eliminated entirely. It’s not just the question of whether or not we’re constructing a viable enterprise. It’s doubts regarding how to scale and how to create new features.
Whether to recruit that new employee, customer service, etc. However, you develop coping mechanisms. I accept the uncertainty, push it aside, and continue on, using the facts at me to the best of my ability to make decisions.
When we were constructing Pagestead, FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) was one of the major challenges we encountered. I was continually concerned when we were working on the initial release that we weren’t moving quickly enough, that once we launched, we wouldn’t be able to draw in enough paying users, that we wouldn’t be able to earn enough money to sustain everyone, etc. It’s that unpleasant, persistent voice in your head. We undoubtedly overcome many minor challenges over the last year, but none of them seem to be noteworthy.
I’ll be completely honest here and admit that creating the first iteration of Pagestead was not at all fun. There were several times throughout this hectic and stressful stage that I considered giving up on the project and going on to something else. I suppose the thing that kept me going was the knowledge that it would all be worthwhile on some level. A significant motivator was also having consumers who were willing to pay for a product that was still in development.
In order to determine the rates for Pagestead, experience, customer interactions (and an understanding of the type of consumer we would be selling to) and intuition were essentially the only factors that mattered. We still don’t have our price down pat, in my opinion, and we’ll probably make some adjustments soon. We’ll make modifications based on the information available at the moment, try them out, and gauge how our consumers will react.
Big public launches are not something I really enjoy, thus we never did this with Pagestead. As an alternative, we discreetly launched to our email list. That was it, in essence. Just a quick note to let everyone know we’ve started. I adore the concept of stair-stepping the launch procedure and carrying out several little launches. We thus do a modest launch through email, Twitter, Facebook, etc. everytime we make an update. However, we’re waiting till we’re closer to product market fit and have made some other enhancements. We’ve had a lot of individuals ask if they might “hunt” us on PH.
Balancing Growth and Product Development
To be quite honest, not a whole lot. From visitors originating from other goods in our portfolio, we’re still producing a solid quantity of leads. Additionally, we have engaged in certain SEO and content marketing activities that are now, finally beginning to provide some benefits after several months. Although we have conducted a few minor paid acquisition tests, we are delaying making significant marketing efforts in Pagestead until we have achieved, or are very close to achieving, product-market fit.
With the present growth pace, we feel fairly at ease. In order to set up essential company components, such as customer service, in advance of potential rapid development.
Since before the launch, traction has been present. Since we were extremely successful in building a mailing list and taking pre-orders before launching, we have started adding new customers almost immediately.
Technical Challenges of Building a Software Company
FUD has been, and continues to be, a significant concern on occasion. You virtually always find yourself in unfamiliar territory, so you frequently have to figure out what to do next or how to resolve a particular situation on your own. Yes, there are resources you can use, but even when it’s well-intended, advice is always dependent on the giver’s unique experience and circumstances and may not always be helpful to you.
Our current struggles include handling and scaling customer assistance. I and my primary developer were handling the majority of the support queries until lately. This definitely has a negative impact on our development efforts and delays next releases. We are rushing to remove both of us from support since we need to get our product to market as soon as possible.
Apart from that, we deal with the usual challenges faced by software companies. Choosing which features to develop first, working on documentation, outlining internal procedures, putting automated quality assurance in place, etc. Fortunately, most of these challenges are technological in nature, and programmers are experts at resolving technical problems.
I also face personal challenges like loneliness. Building a bootstrapped firm as a solo-founder is an intrinsically lonely endeavor, despite how simple it is to interact with people and collect like-minded individuals around you. Only you are aware of all you have on your plate. You and you alone are responsible for making the choices.
Overcoming the Disadvantages of a Young Product in a Crowded Industry
The fact that I am a coder/product person at heart is the cause of some of the personal difficulties I am experiencing. I used to feel the happiest and contented when I was cooped up in my office doing fascinating things. Speaking with clients, being accessible to my team, conducting interviews, and other such tasks did not come readily to me. To advance the company, I had to work at these issues and still do.
The same holds true when considering the team as a whole. We are all programmers or technical individuals with little background in business. This implies that occasionally, we must all step outside of our comfort zones.
Regarding the industry in which Pagestead competes, the site building industry as a whole is rather cutthroat; there are many, well-known firms with whom we must contend.
The fact that Pagestead is very new, with a young product, and that we provide a self-hosted solution rather than a conventional SaaS product are some of the drawbacks Pagestead has in comparison to rivals.
Navigating the Ups and Downs of Building a New Product
In retrospect, there are many things we should not have spent time and money on. We squandered time and resources creating a collection of 600 templates that we were never able to finish (for a number of different reasons). We have made a few minor “mistakes” in the form of spending time and resources on features that we ultimately decided not to release. Sometimes because we discovered midway through the feature that it would wind up being too expensive or that the demand was not as great as first believed.
Other errors included releasing features too soon when they weren’t sufficiently stable and tested. We probably began concentrating on automated QA a little too late as well.
We weren’t prepared for the support demand to be this high, so that was one item that caught us off guard.
You may say that I made a mistake here; I should have probably done a better job building our email list ever since we debuted. It could have been advantageous to send out regular drip campaigns with instructions, guides, and other helpful information.
From Books to Podcasts
I would definitely begin devoting more effort to documentation and implement automated quality assurance sooner. Additionally, I would devote more attention to customer service and email marketing.
I gained a lot of knowledge through podcasts like “Startups for the rest of us” with Mike and Rob, as well as from websites like Mixergy and online groups like Indie Hackers and HackerNews.
I read a lot of novels as well. Although it would be hard to name every book that has proven helpful throughout time, here are a few:
Getting Real: Rework, Remote, by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson
Eric Ries’ book The Lean Startup
Scott Berkun’s “The Year Without Pants”
Jessica Livingston, founders at work
Chris Guillebeau’s “The $100 Startup”
Dan Norris’ The 7 Day Startup
Gabriel Weinberg, “Tack”
Timothy Ferris’ Tribe of Mentors
Rob Walling’s maxim “Start Small, Stay Small”
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