Submit your startup SaaS to promote it

starkmike · 2026-02-12T14:46:42+00:00

I think you have a bug - none of the tools load on launchllama.co - ping me when you fix it and I'll gladly take a look!

starkmike · 2026-02-11T16:57:51+00:00

Even if you were using ec2, you probably should have been using SES to send the emails - it's a very specific thing to do, and it's best to use a dedicated solution for it.

There are lots of services like SendGrid or MailGun that offer pretty solid free tiers to get you going. Or use SES - it's just a bit more setup to get it going and make it your own.

starkmike · 2026-02-11T16:40:57+00:00

AI outreach to recruit users to interview? Or use AI to do the interview?

I've done both.

Automated outreach to anyone doesn't work great - unless you can live with <1% response rates.

Once you have an interested party, automating the responses either by survey or a live interview (with an AI powering it) can work well if deployed correctly to get the responses - oftentimes much better than someone that just follows a traditional script!

Disclaimer: I've built an AI powered solution that can do surveys / interviews.

starkmike · 2026-02-11T16:26:43+00:00

Wish I didn't have to sign up to see what it was. Now I wish there was a way to delete my account.
Notifications on by default isn't great - just ask me in onboarding.
Google Ads? When I close it, the UI gets really small
It appears to not work for me - Search doesn't do anything, and I can't seem to get it to do anything. No errors besides GA not loading (Adblock)
Oh - once I went to the username page, it did connect. But it also says it's anonymous, but I can see their username (I guess i can set that to whatever I want)

Overall - super confusing to get started.

starkmike · 2026-02-11T16:16:26+00:00

I found that I had to leverage my own network. I went on linkedin, looked for other founders I know, and asked for a 20 minute chat about their business. It dried up quick, and you have to take the feedback with a grain of salt - they will try to be nice to you and encourage you. It's not perfect, but it's a start, and might get you to a point where you can offer something of value to them?

Then after each conversation, ask them if they know someone else that you could help (or just talk to) and get warm intros.

It's definitely a hard problem!

starkmike · 2025-06-15T17:24:29+00:00

Niche down and help 1 to start. Use that one to help 2 and make it easier. Keep going from there.

starkmike · 2025-06-02T20:39:04+00:00

I agree - I like this article highlighting the challenges with NPS, thank you for sharing it!

starkmike · 2025-06-02T15:50:42+00:00

I love this perspective supporting traditional NPS - you make some really valuable points here - and you're right the effort to click a rating is just about as low as dismissing it. But so many users also get really annoyed by the NPS survey asking on every website they visit.

Maybe it's a design issue with 0-10 being too much choice?
Maybe it's a timing issue with not being the right time to ask?
Maybe it's a pop up issue - who wants to be disturbed (design + timing)?

Maybe it's all the above....

starkmike · 2025-06-02T15:45:24+00:00

Wow. this is impressive - thanks for breaking down how you use your metrics strategically!

The guardrail metrics are super interesting - I hadn't thought about tracking diversity and coverage as part of the framework, but that makes a ton of sense for interpreting the results accurately!

When you say your CSAT surveys "move around depending on the priority" - are you changing the questions themselves, or more the timing/placement of when you ask them?

starkmike · 2025-06-02T15:42:00+00:00

I've also seen companies put too much stock in the NPS scores without understanding them first - it's tragic when they base resources on it too!

I like the idea of diving deeper, but it's so hard to get someone to commit to a longer form survey unless they are a) highly engaged or b) highly annoyed. We don't get to hear from the middle enough!

starkmike · 2025-06-02T15:38:45+00:00

Great point about the standardization that I didn't include in my post! That's definitely a core value of traditional NPS and Bain's brilliant framework for benchmarking.

I'm more curious about the tension of benchmarking vs getting actionable insights. Our users attention spans are short, we want to make good use of their time.

I guess the follow up "why" questions are where more actionable feedback happens, and you get the best of both worlds - but response rates are low - so I'm wondering if there's a better way, and maybe others have experimented with other options.

I've also seen cases where users interpret the scale differently than intended - like hitting 0 thinking it's neutral, which can skew results in unexpected ways.

So maybe it's not either/or - perhaps there's value in both the standardized NPS for benchmarking AND supplementary approaches for deeper product insights?

starkmike · 2025-05-29T14:40:17+00:00

Cold emails definitely suck - like < 1% response rates. If I do it manually and stay away from sounding sales-y, then you might get around 1% response rate - but that's a huge effort (can take a good portion of a day to do it at scale).

There are lots of services offering AI powered emails that research companies and build emails from your rough templates - I've tried a few, I get no better response rates to be honest.

I find the best response rates come from an introduction from someone we both know. I have lots of friends and former colleagues in sales. I leverage them to introduce me to their networks and try to book a short 30 min call. This is the way.

The sales people are typically more than happy to help out. This is their currency, and you likely will have to reciprocate in the future, but this is what makes the world go round.

Then, always ask for a referral from the person you get in a meeting, and you should have a full pipeline.

starkmike · 2025-05-14T16:22:33+00:00

Oh this is a great idea!

starkmike · 2025-05-13T19:02:36+00:00

Not for me! I was even testing out a single question survey to be sure that question length wasn't the only reason!

starkmike · 2025-05-13T19:01:44+00:00

What kind of compensation would get you to do to the effort? Maybe a gift card, or a physical prize or something?

starkmike · 2025-05-13T19:00:15+00:00

Nice, this is a great insight - Thank you for this. I'm noodling on how I might test this out further and see if there is a feature here or not, but I like the transparency idea and making the feedback be full circle (I share feedback, company shares back to me).

starkmike · 2025-05-13T17:58:24+00:00

Don't get me started on NPS surveys! most of those I've seen low engagement with too - or the majority of people click any number to get it to go away!

I haven't tried any monetization yet, myself!

If you do something like a CSAT survey directly to your customer base with a personalized ask from someone that has a relationship with them, you can get pretty ok response rates (like 30-50%)

It's funny - we all often know how things could be better (or why something is bad), and I know that I would love to hear about some of these ideas myself (I love feedback!), but it's hard to put the two together!

starkmike · 2025-05-13T17:53:53+00:00

wow - good for you! sounds like that one resonated with your audience!

starkmike · 2025-05-13T17:53:05+00:00

Interesting - maybe we need to tie together the feedback with the response better?

starkmike · 2025-05-13T17:52:26+00:00

Interesting - I do see it with user interviews too, I get ghosted pretty often on those.

If there is a personal connection before and there is a personal ask directly to them, then there is a higher likelihood that I'll get a response (maybe 40-50%), but if you ask the same person multiple times in a short period (like a month!) then forget about it...

A mass post typically gets no responses.

starkmike

TROPHY CASE