Micro-SaaS: Quick Validation + Best Distribution medium

Quick validation of your idea: Build a chrome extension; it’s the quickest way
(treat your product as a micro-SaaS, even if you have a “huge feature set” in mind).

Best distribution medium: Chrome webstore + Platforms for lifetime deals. 

Now that I have answered the reason why you opened this email, let me explain why I’ve come to this conclusion.

The biggest mistake that we made with LiGo was launching it as a web platform.

If you’ve been keenly reading our journey for the past few months, you know we actually created TWO products, yet we’ve only marketed ONE of them.

So, what happened with the other one?

• It was uploaded as a chrome extension (not production ready) - hence not marketed much.

• Had major UI/UX issues.

• No landing page.

• Marketing = 1x tweet by me, 1x mention in the newsletter + 1x YouTube short.

We didn’t have the “human resources muscle” to have two apps worked on in parallel, so it was “parked" for later.

The “hardly any” marketing efforts brought about 40 installs. 

Take a wild guess how many installs it currently has.
Placing the ad in between while you finalize your guess.

Lung cancer is the deadliest cancer worldwide.

Cizzle Biotech’s 95% accurate early detection blood test identifies lung cancer at the most treatable stage. Support our patented solution to improve survival rates.

Join the Raise

^{Read the Offering information carefully before investing. It contains details of the issuer’s business, risks, charges, expenses, and other information, which should be considered before investing. Obtain a Form C and Offering Memorandum at invest.cizzlebio.com}

Okay, so it’s 300+. Meaning: 250+ organic installs…

So, where did these organic users come from?

Chrome web store’s own distribution/organic impressions.

We did NOTHING for it. Absolutely nothing.

For the last two weeks, it’s been bringing in about 40 new users per week, on its own.
And that value has been “consistently growing” week on week.

Providing more context and numbers after this advertisement:

Own a stake in Alaska’s oil reserves.

• Estimated 300 million barrels of recoverable reserves

• Royalty-based model reducing operational risks

• Projected 25+ years of reliable, high-margin royalty income

Learn More

Lets contextualize this

Why go with a Chrome extension/Micro-SaaS for validation?

• Simple. You can’t create a “complicated” chrome extension.
  You will be forced to only keep the “10x / core” feature(s) only.

• Less marketing efforts required. Just get the “snowball rolling” initially, and then if the product is good .. it will create its own momentum triggered by Chrome’s own webstore distribution.

• Less coding required.

• Do you really need more reasons?

What’s the downside of going with a Chrome extension?

• Conversion to paid can be tricky! Be careful with that. You MUST have a “freemium” tier.

• Based on my research, majority of the users expect Chrome extensions to be “free”.

Did our chrome extension get any paid users?

• Yea.. kinda surprised tbh.
  We got 2 paid users, even though we had kept very generous free tier usage limits. The goal was to .. get people to just “keep using the extension” till we get time to come back to it and make it’s UI/UX nice, make it production-ready, and THEN drop the free tier limits to start pushing the “power users” to the premium tier.

What kind of issues did your extension had though?

• I’ll give just one example which .. would be enough:

  • When you download the extension, if you forget to give microphone permissions - it just always gives you a “list: 0 something blah blah” technical error that even I, as a software engineer, couldn’t figure wtf it means.
    We had about 65% users simply “uninstall” the extension because they faced exactly this issue 😂 
    (verified via logs that they couldn’t even “use” the extension)
    

    

• There’s more.. but yeah, in short: right now it’s too sh*t for someone to want to figure out how to “use it for the first time”, let alone be ready to pay for it.

• We’ll be properly launching it in ~ Jan, 2025 - will share how it goes.

In short, it confirms to us: this is worth spending 2 to 4 weeks of coding sprint and spend days in marketing it with full

Why LiGo should have been launched initially as a Chrome Extension

In the same time frame, LiGo got 317 users, only 6 more than the extension.

Rassam and I had to put A LOT of effort to make that happen.

Whereas, the extension got that many “on its own”.

Underlying lesson is: UTILIZE the existing distribution channels’ own audience/strength.

Extension: Google’s webstore has it’s “own” audience and ways to get eyeballs for your product.

Web app: YOU have to either do SEO & Blogs, or post in communities/SM. YOU have to get the eyeballs TO your landing page.

Life time deals

We both know your attention span won’t allow any further reading in this sitting 😄 

I’ll continue it on the Sunday’s edition.

Quick teaser: If you hate VCs as much as I do, but are “short on cash” - it can help you:

1. get some quick cash inflow to fund your dev & paid marketing efforts,

2. get you initia SEO push + initial customers that you can then speak to for further development/ roadmap prioritization, etc.

We didn’t go down that route, because it didn’t make sense for us. IF it makes sense for your situation, open the email I’ll send on Sunday.

Until then,

There’s a reason 400,000 professionals read this daily.

Join The AI Report, trusted by 400,000+ professionals at Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI. Get daily insights, tools, and strategies to master practical AI skills that drive results.

Sign up now for free and work smarter, not harder.