Lukas Herman of Stagetimer

Lukas Hermann started in the Software world early on with freelance projects. After working with a couple of companies, later on, Lukas bootstrapped his own project stagetimer.

You can find Lukas on Twitter and on his website.

In this interview, Lukas Hermann is sharing his journey bootstrapping stagetimer after leaving his job. Stagetimer is doing €4500 MRR and the future is looking bright for stagetimer.

Question: What was the motivation to start stagetimer?

I was visiting my friend's studio to set up some IT hardware. He was using an old timer app on a spare laptop and always had to run into the recording room to start the countdown timer and then run out again. I was thinking “Surely there is a nifty online app for this problem that just syncs through the cloud.” But I couldn't find one. I almost couldn't believe it! So I made a simple prototype that weekend, using my experience as a software developer. The post about it on Reddit got a good response. This is when I decided to make it available online. This app is a great way for me to learn the ins and outs of building a product and running a business.

Question: How did you validate your Idea for stagetimer?

Initially, I had no idea how to validate Stagetimer. I knew it needed users, but where do I find them? As a developer, I had no idea where video and event professionals hang out. So I looked in the next best place I could think of: subreddits.

After some searching I found r/CommercialAV. Good enough, I thought and wrote a simple post introducing the app and asked for feedback.

Contrary to most people’s Reddit experience I found the comments rather positive and helpful, even pointing out other subreddits where I should post it.

In hindsight, it was neither the perfect place nor the time, but it worked out anyhow.

I got a number of users on my prototype, back then just a free tool.

It took another 6 months until I earned my first dollar.

Why so long? Building it out enough to justify a premium plan while having a full-time job took a while. But the day I rolled out the update I got my first paying customer. I posted the update on Twitter with little more than 300 followers. The customer learned about Stagetimer from that very first Reddit post.

Question: What are some hurdles you faced while building stagetimer?

The most challenging part is due to the actual use-case of Stagetimer. It’s a timer used during live events. Meaning it has to work very reliably with very little delay. When the operator clicks the button on his computer the speaker’s device has to receive the command immediately.

Just the other day I ran an update that caused the server to be down for 5 minutes. During that time we received 4 support emails inquiring about the downtime!

So Stagetimer has to be reliable but also feel reliable.

One thing I do during development is to add a 500ms latency to every request. This made me design the UX robust enough that it feels reliable even with 500ms latency. It’s extra work, of course, but worth it.

Another thing is instant user feedback. As soon as the connection drops, be it server downtime or the user’s internet connection, a notification appears informing the user. This way people feel a sense of control even in case of errors.

Question: How’s stagetimer doing in terms of customer growth and revenue?

At the time of writing our MRR is at €4500.

But our monthly revenue is significantly higher due to event licenses, a 10-day access pass we sell without recurring payments.

We started the year with a growth forecast of 16% MoM. However, it’s going so well that our actual growth is closer to 22% MoM. This means we would have 10× just this year. Probably not going to happen though since December is going to be very calm.

Question 6: How are you attracting customers? What are your primary acquisition channels?

Google and word of mouth.

50% of users come through Google Ads or good old organic search. Another 40% comes recommended by other users.

We tried Facebook ads for a while, but the CAC was higher than Google. We also tried YouTube ads, but either our video was bad or it was just not as effective. We got tons of impressions, but no clicks. Lastly, we also tried to reach out to YouTube channels in the audiovisual space for sponsorships, but the ones who wrote back declined. I think most make enough from gigs and want to stay free to talk about the tech they enjoy. Conversely, we got plenty of YouTube endorsements from people who just tried out our tool, liked it, and wanted to review it.

Question: What did you do before starting stagetimer?

I am a software engineer and worked as a frontend developer in a small Germany based startup in the metal industry.

I financed my studies by working as a freelancer, mainly making WordPress sites.

The entrepreneurial bug never really left me. So after 2 years at my first job, the startup mentioned above, I needed to venture on my own again.

Question: What did the first version of stagetimer look like?

Primitive 😀

MVP:

Current:

What was in the MVP is still the core feature, and it’s free! Start a countdown, and show a message. That’s it.

I didn’t set aside any features. On the contrary, only through communication with our first users did we learn what kind of features they needed and in turn implemented them.

Question 10: What plans do you have for the future?

Some key features still need to be included.

I’m currently working on a downloadable offline version. Highly requested by users who face difficult internet situations like conference centers or firewalled corporate networks.

Then we need to add team billing which will give us a lot of potentials to grow our MRR.

Other than that Stagetimer has always been an experiment in entrepreneurship and lifestyle business for me. I will make sure it runs reliably and addresses most of our customer’s needs. Then I’ll use the steady revenue it provides to develop more products.

Question 11: Do you have any advice for fellow Indie Hackers?

If you haven’t started yet, what are you waiting for? In 6 months you wish you had started 6 months ago.