How to build a product that superfans would market for you

Product-led growth is real — not only for giants like Slack but for little bootstrapped startups with tiny budgets on marketing. Forget the theory and make it happen. This is how.

Liz Hermann and Lukas Hermann were not your typical startup founders. She was consulting NGOs across the world, Lukas was a tech lead for a German video production company. And then they built something that users started spreading the word around from day 1. A stroke or luck or a customer research done right?

Lukas, being deep in tech and enjoying the role of a product owner, was not even thinking about side projects. However, when the pandemic hit and everyone was sent to work remotely, Lukas started feeling bored. One day, after strict restrictions were lifted, he was visiting a friend, who was in the video production industry. When Lukas saw his friend running to the tablet in his working space, tapping some buttons then rushing to the recording studio, he got curious.

— Why all the runs? — he asked after the recording session was over.

— Well, I had to start the timer manually from the tablet — was the expected answer.

— Huh, why don’t you start it remotely?

— Because I can’t. There’s no way to do it.

Now, Lukas got even more curious. As a tech person he was certain a tech solution for this problem already existed somewhere in the world. Besides, it was such an obvious job to be done — something that every person who times sections of an avent or recording would love to use. However, a quick Google search yielded no results. As well as a deep search on professional forums.

— Then I can very well build something to help my friend, — decided Lukas. And he built the solution over the weekend. A simple app that allowed a user to set up a timer for launching other apps. His friend was ecstatic and hinted that there could be a business behind it.