Problem

Launching a B2B Saas product that provides better asynchronous work for remote teams

At the beginning of Covid and lockdowns, it was a total crisis for companies who is confused about how to work without coming to offices without any experience. Although there were some solutions pretending to handle the remote work environment, they were not really designed specifically for remote teams but they were trying to transform it.

We as a Werk team saw this opportunity and decided to build a product for remote teams because we knew that it wasn't going to end when covid ends, it would be a one-way ticket for companies.

The first version of the product were including task management, chats and calendar features that remote teams can work with it. The first PoC’s were starting on enterprise level companies. But there are some serious problems we were facing. It was very hard to replace current tools because all of them were part of bigger systems like Microsoft Teams, Jira, Outlook and etc. Plus enterprise companies demanded a lot of tailor-made extra features which take lots of time. We know that we hitted the right problem-solution but we were worrying about product-market fit. If you are competing with biggest softwares and trying to convince enterprise level companies, you are in trouble.

Solution

Focus on early-stage startups and its needs

When nothing were going right on enterprise PoC’s, we decided to change our product market fit and focused more on early stage startups because they were more flexible and experimental for new way of works and tool replacement was not really big deal for them. Also, the main point which was “Get rid of using dozens of tools during the day, replace with one” was more suitable for startups.

While focusing on them, We definitely knew that necessities of startups were totally different than enterprises. So that, we also wanted to focus on asynchronous work style while building the product for them.

Implementation

Re-designs, distribution and waiting list

Preparation

We started implementation by re-designing our interfaces, experience and feature sets. because it was also important how it looks and how it feels when using Werk for startups.

To decrease the workload on our developers, we tried to use no-code tools as much as we can so we built our landing page with Webflow, integrated “waiting list” module and changed our voice of tone as more aggresive for competition.

For asynchronous work, we have launched hyperdocs and async voice module which enables users to record their voice and screens then put it into a kind of thread so they dont have to be in a meeting as live. At the end of the day, we were aiming to cover project management, documentation and communication with one tool and these were all suitable for asynchronous work. There was a big advantage for us, we as a team were the users of our own tool so we had a chance to experiment with solutions on our own organization.

Contents

When you are launching your product, suitable contents and documents are very crucial. You can not just put sign up button and wait for users to come and use. So we have prepared dozens of contents according to our user journey and GTM funnels. Those are;

• Preparing a product video that deliver the value-proposition and shows the product

• Create various contents about asynchronous work, remote work, how to manage distributed teams etc.

• Create email flows for “explorers”

• How to guides for better product usage and best practises
  
  

Distribution

Product was excellent, contents were on fire (at least for us) but they would be useless without distribution.

First, we started to engage with our network and invite them to join our waiting list by our effective contents. It was either using social platforms or personal outreach. Thanks to our co-founders because they had wide networks they knew how to get attention.

Another crucial step was using Reddit. We had got amazing benefits from Reddit users. Reddit is one of the platforms that people engage the most. And the audience we were trying to reach was spending a lot of time at Reddit.

In addition, we started to be listed on different startup platforms such as Producthunt upcomings, Betalist and popular aggregator platforms. It brought great results but the best thing was we found our right audience, right problem and suitable solution.

Results

Welcoming Early Adopters, Lots of Feedback, Fixed Bugs

This whole process took approximately 2 months. At the end of, we made our product as public and welcoming 1000+ users from 350 different companies.

Just to highlight again, If you are struggling on one of the most competitive field on technology, you should not expect a surprises or magic. It is all about consistency and excellent benchmark.

We had dozens of feedback coming from our early adopters, faced and fixed lots of bugs and early adopters started to bring their colleagues.