
Slack Bot Business Tutorial: From zero to $25k per month - alexxtomsk
https://standuply.com/blog/slack-bot-business-tutorial/
======
alexxtomsk
Hi folks!

Just in 8 months, we grow our Slack bot from zero to $25,000/mo. Moreover, it
keeps growing like crazy. Based on our learnings we prepared a step-by-step
guide on how we did that. I hope it will be useful to you.

Feel free to ask me questions here.

~~~
TobbenTM
We've seen plenty of people going all in building their business on a platform
they don't control, then getting mad when the platform they depend on changes
how things work.

With that said, are you guys also targeting other platforms than Slack?

I'm sure MS Teams, Discord, etc provide the same foundations for an even
larger reach?

~~~
alexxtomsk
That is so true. We were building for Telegram before Slack and was very
disappointed business-wise about it.

Now we're fully focused on Slack and it helps us in building a great product
for the narrow use-case.

However, of course, we're looking for ways to expand our market.

I'm not sure about Discord (how many of you guys are using it?), but MS Teams,
Google Chat, and Stride are the other players that in my opinion will be able
to compare with Slack in terms of features and market size.

~~~
palisade
During an interview I had at Discord recently the lead engineer mentioned they
had exceeded 130 million users. Though, there was also a recent bump by almost
70 million people that left Skype and joined Discord in the news recently as
well. He told me that Skype is the 800 pound gorilla to beat and that they
have around 300 million users or something. They're definitely gunning for
them, and Microsoft has changed Skype so much that they've alienated much of
their user base in addition to having lots of security flaws. Discord touts
their security, two factor auth, IP address hiding, plus having all the
features of Skype in addition to the concept of slack-like chat rooms. More
than just gamers are starting to use it.

[https://variety.com/2018/gaming/news/discord-turns-
three-120...](https://variety.com/2018/gaming/news/discord-turns-
three-1202810983/)

At the moment, Discord is ad-free and other than Nitro subscriptions which let
you have animated profile images and use emoticons in any server, which he
admitted was an almost unnoticeable revenue stream at the moment, they don't
really have a way to monetize the platform. When I asked how they were
planning to generate revenue and whether my job would be secure he said they
haven't settled on any ideas yet but have a few bouncing around that he
wouldn't tell me.

He mentioned that once they reach 600 million users they consider that the
break-even point where they've succeeded as a platform and can start
considering putting possible plans into action. My guess is that advertising
will play a big part, and possibly various other techniques like
microtransactions, platform integrations, affiliates, partnership deals,
content distribution (movies, music, games), etc. It is probably the break
point at which you can afford to anger a percentage of your users in exchange
for enough revenue to establish themselves as a self-sufficient organization.

~~~
alexxtomsk
Thanks, that's insightful. I wonder how can they get as many users. There are
not enough gamers in the world to hit that number.

~~~
rnotaro
You are clearly underestimating the number of gamers in this world!

~~~
alexxtomsk
Yep, maybe. What a huge market!

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boon
What's the solution to the problem of hating the Content Marketing game?

I think the fear of having to deal with writing spam blogs/emails is one of
the bigger mental hurdles to my eagerness to build a product like this.

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
Stop thinking of it as spam and start thinking of it as customer outreach?

I mean you have to let people know about this magical thing you've built
_somehow_.

~~~
geekingfrog
Why do people _need_ to know about this magical thing? Isn't that enough if
you solve a problem? Interested people will look for solution and find your
magical thing, no need to add to the general cancerous spam of "hey, I'm sure
you're going to find that thing awesome, even if you don't need it"

~~~
hluska
If this is true, why is it so easy to name genuinely good products that failed
because of lack of visibility? How do you differentiate your product from that
of competitors? How do you get seen in the first place unless you own a very
good domain/have a massive sales force?

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tw1010
I need to start selling shovels.

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sschueller
Congratulations!

What steps are you taking to protect yourself from slack shutting you off? Not
that they would but you have all your eggs in someone else's basket?

~~~
alexxtomsk
Why would a company that relies heavily on bots shut us (or another valuable)
bot off?

~~~
blihp
They decide they want to provide the features you provide directly? See
Twitter, Google, Apple, Microsoft etc. It's a very old game at this point and
you really should be aware of your risk in being so dependent on what is
effectively a closed platform. (i.e. an API does not make a closed platform
open) They're providing APIs right now to help fuel their own growth but once
that growth levels off, or worse reverses, watch out... they may decide that
they want your business and then there will be very little you can do to
protect yourself from that.

~~~
alexxtomsk
Thanks for saying that. It makes sense for us to be aware of such scenarios.

~~~
blihp
No problem. BTW, I didn't want to discourage you: it's great that you've got a
successful service and it's often a smart move to start on a well known
platform. (many of today's successful companies started that way... see
Microsoft and IBM ;-) Just be sure to diversify away from the platform lock-in
ASAP (i.e. build a bot business rather than a Slack-bot business) so when/if
the rules change you're not doing a followup post titled 'Slack destroyed our
bot business' down the road.

------
VectorLock
Sometimes I wonder how much of these "we started making $X/mo and heres how"
are true and how much are really just more content marketing spam?

~~~
alexxtomsk
Want me to do a screen sharing of our Baremetrics dashboard? Reach out to me
at alex at standuply.com to book a call.

~~~
LyndsySimon
I'm amazed at the hostility here these days :( It's very accommodating of you
to offer to share additional metrics.

To be honest, my interest isn't intense enough to warrant my time for a screen
share, much less yours. I will keep an eye on your blog, though.

ETA: I can't seem to find an RSS feed for your blog :(

ETA2: It's at
[https://standuply.com/blog/feed/](https://standuply.com/blog/feed/), but
don't see a link to it anywhere.

~~~
freehunter
It is truly hard to comprehend that one of the most common things successful
startup founders recommend is that your startup should have a blog and talk
about the company and the product and the engineering, but when that gets
shared suddenly it's spam and everyone is crying for blood.

Remember when this used to be a friendly startup forum full of people who
liked hearing about interesting technology and how it was made?

~~~
alexxtomsk
Yeah, but let's just listen to those positive commenters and disregard haters.
I think if you talk about your story educating others, it brings value to the
ecosystem.

I respect companies like GrooveHQ that share their experience and don't conder
it as a marketing or spam.

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bdcravens
We use a similar product (Geekbot). It reassuring to see companies like this
succeed. A fear is always adopting a great tool into your workflow only to get
that "our incredible journey" email.

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esseti
Glad that you made it, I just checked and I actually joined on November 2016,
but I'm not using it anymore. Keep up and good luck.

~~~
alexxtomsk
Thanks, it was almost MVP at those days. Very people from 2016 stayed with us
till now.

------
matte_black
Are you guys Slack users yourselves? Could someone really understand how to
build a slack bot business without using Slack themselves?

~~~
alexxtomsk
Of course, we do use Slack. Also, we're very into Agile with deep management
background. Here's how we came up with the idea insight.

------
jirenandcell
Congratulations on your success thus far! How long did it take you guys to
create the MVP?

~~~
alexxtomsk
Thanks. I wrote a dedicated post on that: [https://standuply.com/blog/saas-
mvp/](https://standuply.com/blog/saas-mvp/)

It took us a bit less than a year to build the MVP and experiment with the
concept.

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sireat
Very impressive!

For someone outside normal corporate culture who is actually paying for Slack
bots?

Middle level managers who have to administer daily meetings?

It is amazing that being outside the corporate loop you were able to hit such
a pain point.

~~~
bdcravens
We use a similar product, and it works great for async "standups". Solve a
problem well (I peek at our standup channel - I don't have to screw around
with logins or config screens or dashboards), solve it simply (don't try to be
Basecamp), and keep it cheap enough - there's a ton of opportunity there.

------
siddarthd2919
I use Standuply. Makes my life easier and the team loves it :)

~~~
alexxtomsk
thanks for your warm feedback :)

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swyx
congrats on your success! Can we see your baremetrics panel?

I think for non technical founders you skipped a very important part of the
story - how did you find your initial devs and how did you figure out how to
work with them? how much should people set aside for this kind of thing? that
really matters.

~~~
alexxtomsk
We haven't decided yet to be among Open Startups, but if you have a particular
question, reach out to me at alex at standuply.com

As for developers, we have some background working in tech. So it wasn't a
problem.

~~~
swyx
no worries. i saw that you used baremetrics so i felt a bit voyeuristic and
asked.

well, you're very lucky to have that background. some advice for others on how
you worked with the initial developers would be very helpful!

------
BadassFractal
Interesting! How does Standuply compare to StatusHero, which seems to do about
the same thing?

~~~
alexxtomsk
Standuply focuses on Slack where it brings all the data and questions. There
is no need for you/your team to remember using one more external tool.

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topaztee
how do you differentiate to geekbot?

------
craterdude
not a tutorial.

