Over the course of more than a year, a friend and I have built https://fyyn.io.
It's a multi-purpose video platform — for example, it's very handy if you want to quickly share a short video with your co-workers: you can record your screen and/or camera right in your browser or using a Browser Extension, which gives you a shareable link so you don't need to fiddle around with a video file.
It also has more sophisticated features, like translating a video into another language — not only from language A audio to language B subtitles, but from language A audio to language B audio.
LingoSync was the feature that really piqued some measurable interest, as we managed to collect more than 1,500 email addresses through its dedicated landing page.
We also have between 10 and 20 signups to Fyyn.io every day — but we have basically zero sales.
Users play around with the features, including LingoSync, but do not buy any additional translation minutes once the initial 5 minutes that you get for free are used up.
We offer users to buy additional translation minutes, with prices between $0.50 and $0.80 per minute, depending on how many minutes you buy.
We are also having a hard time getting in touch with signed up users and finding out what keeps them from buying.
The bottom line is: I think what we have here is the typical situation of a team that knows how to build working software, but doesn't have the chops to turn it into a business.
Which is why I would like to ask: Is anybody here interested in teaming up to complement our product-building skills with his or her marketing and sales skills? We are more than open to share the company with someone who can turn our story around.
Valid point that I will definitely look into, thanks for pointing it out.
However, it didn't stop more than 1,000 users to sign up (including e-mail verification) — however, over the course of more than two months, only 1 of those signed up users has ever bought additional translation minutes.
No question the whole pre-signup space can be improved — but as of now, it would only bring more users into the product who will then not buy.
No pricing on website. Capterra says 249E per month and not avail in my country (Canada). Looks like a great product, hobbled by lack of affordable pricing and hidden price on website.
It's true that we don't have the pricing on the main site, and I agree that this should be added.
However, that issue might affect signups — but signups don't seem to be the dealbreaker, as we have, as of this writing, a total of 1,059 fully signed up users (fully signed up == they went to the double opt-in process and verified their mail address).
These users are confronted with pricing as soon as they are required to pay — that is, as soon as they've translated more than 5 minutes of video, and thus need to buy additional translation minutes.
Well, I think you are putting off many serious users by not having pricing, so you may be left with the "tire kickers".
And are you giving infinite videos for free if they don't need translation? I would suspect most users wouldn't need the translation, so you might be giving too much for free. It should probably be limited to something like 10 mins for free (Loom gives 5 mins free, but if you give a bit more, that is a competitive advantage).
Then, I would suggest offering payment per video (or, have credits, where 1 credit is 15 mins or something) as well as the subscription, and allow people to upgrade to the sub later.
I'd have transparent pricing, and some sort of free tier where user gets maybe 2 minute max size videos, 2x per month and maybe can only translate to one other language. Then have a $10 tier for x total minutes of video per month, $35, and $60 tier.
Not your intended audience (have never built a business before), but here's wher I would spend some quality time on in terms of finding product-market fit: Market so unbelievably aggressively to the youtuber creator community.
Mr. Beast, for instance, had realized that so much of the world cannot access his content due to a language barrier, so he has started foreign language channels with dubbed version of his videos, which, unsurprisingly, also get millions and millions of views.
If your product is as robust as it seems like it is, with no effort, you could open the world to every content creator out there. That seems like a significant value add. Sure, you'll have to work out pricing and pin down product specific, but if there's one class of individuals I'd be aggressively trying to sell this to, it'd be folks like that. Heck, even the people with those no-face, listicle or voice-only content channels might be a great fit. Simple, easy videos that should ideally work well with your platform... and you can instantly help grow their audience!
Also, I have a relative who has grown a SASS from nothing to hundreds of millions in ARR. I can assure you that you all are no less competent than him from a business perspective. At many points in his trajectory his story would exactly mirror yours (complete, full, polished product, crickets of paying users), until they found the right market for whom their solution was a game-changer. So, believe in yourselves, too, and dont think that it hasn't happened simply because you don't have the skill: it just may be you haven't quite pounded the pavement for long enough yet. Good luck!
Why did you originally build this product? Was it something you personally needed or were you helping someone else solve their problem?
Market to the people that have those same problems.
Regarding monetization, it's difficult to build features that people will pay for if you don't know why and how they're using your product.
It doesn't seem like the translation feature (however cool it may be - props for building it) is something that people have a need for...same with the other features such as teams/groups. What if your current users are primarily solo social media content creators?
Some final thoughts:
- Where are your 10-20 signups coming from and how did they find you? Ads/social media/organic search?
- Collect information during sign-up such as: personal or business? industry? etc.
- Might even be worth manually going through your 1,500 emails and manually researching users. I'm sure you can at least identify a handful of users via LinkedIn, etc.
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[ 0.23 ms ] story [ 48.3 ms ] threadIt's a multi-purpose video platform — for example, it's very handy if you want to quickly share a short video with your co-workers: you can record your screen and/or camera right in your browser or using a Browser Extension, which gives you a shareable link so you don't need to fiddle around with a video file.
It also has more sophisticated features, like translating a video into another language — not only from language A audio to language B subtitles, but from language A audio to language B audio.
We call this feature LingoSync, and it has its own landingpage at https://lingosync.ai/en.
If you just want to see the audio translation feature in action, this video demonstrates it in 60 seconds: https://lingosync.ai/demovideo/product/fyyn.io-how-it-works.....
An overview of all our features is at https://app.fyyn.io/en/features.
LingoSync was the feature that really piqued some measurable interest, as we managed to collect more than 1,500 email addresses through its dedicated landing page.
We also have between 10 and 20 signups to Fyyn.io every day — but we have basically zero sales.
Users play around with the features, including LingoSync, but do not buy any additional translation minutes once the initial 5 minutes that you get for free are used up.
We offer users to buy additional translation minutes, with prices between $0.50 and $0.80 per minute, depending on how many minutes you buy.
We are also having a hard time getting in touch with signed up users and finding out what keeps them from buying.
The bottom line is: I think what we have here is the typical situation of a team that knows how to build working software, but doesn't have the chops to turn it into a business.
Which is why I would like to ask: Is anybody here interested in teaming up to complement our product-building skills with his or her marketing and sales skills? We are more than open to share the company with someone who can turn our story around.
I can be reached via manuel@kiessling.net.
The copy is all in English, the video is in German.
Also changing the language is very clunky, the video shrinks and then resizes.
Also, maybe don't use flags for language?
However, it didn't stop more than 1,000 users to sign up (including e-mail verification) — however, over the course of more than two months, only 1 of those signed up users has ever bought additional translation minutes.
No question the whole pre-signup space can be improved — but as of now, it would only bring more users into the product who will then not buy.
However, that issue might affect signups — but signups don't seem to be the dealbreaker, as we have, as of this writing, a total of 1,059 fully signed up users (fully signed up == they went to the double opt-in process and verified their mail address).
These users are confronted with pricing as soon as they are required to pay — that is, as soon as they've translated more than 5 minutes of video, and thus need to buy additional translation minutes.
Which precisely 1 (one!) user has done so far...
And are you giving infinite videos for free if they don't need translation? I would suspect most users wouldn't need the translation, so you might be giving too much for free. It should probably be limited to something like 10 mins for free (Loom gives 5 mins free, but if you give a bit more, that is a competitive advantage).
Then, I would suggest offering payment per video (or, have credits, where 1 credit is 15 mins or something) as well as the subscription, and allow people to upgrade to the sub later.
Maybe also have a self hosted version.
Mr. Beast, for instance, had realized that so much of the world cannot access his content due to a language barrier, so he has started foreign language channels with dubbed version of his videos, which, unsurprisingly, also get millions and millions of views.
If your product is as robust as it seems like it is, with no effort, you could open the world to every content creator out there. That seems like a significant value add. Sure, you'll have to work out pricing and pin down product specific, but if there's one class of individuals I'd be aggressively trying to sell this to, it'd be folks like that. Heck, even the people with those no-face, listicle or voice-only content channels might be a great fit. Simple, easy videos that should ideally work well with your platform... and you can instantly help grow their audience!
Also, I have a relative who has grown a SASS from nothing to hundreds of millions in ARR. I can assure you that you all are no less competent than him from a business perspective. At many points in his trajectory his story would exactly mirror yours (complete, full, polished product, crickets of paying users), until they found the right market for whom their solution was a game-changer. So, believe in yourselves, too, and dont think that it hasn't happened simply because you don't have the skill: it just may be you haven't quite pounded the pavement for long enough yet. Good luck!
Market to the people that have those same problems.
Regarding monetization, it's difficult to build features that people will pay for if you don't know why and how they're using your product.
It doesn't seem like the translation feature (however cool it may be - props for building it) is something that people have a need for...same with the other features such as teams/groups. What if your current users are primarily solo social media content creators?
Some final thoughts: - Where are your 10-20 signups coming from and how did they find you? Ads/social media/organic search? - Collect information during sign-up such as: personal or business? industry? etc. - Might even be worth manually going through your 1,500 emails and manually researching users. I'm sure you can at least identify a handful of users via LinkedIn, etc.