How Karan made Poper a MRR $2,5K business

Meet Karan Bhakuni.

Karan is a 26-year-old entrepreneur from the town of Almora in India.

In 2021 he packed his bags and headed to the bustling city of Bengaluru, drawn by the promise of a vibrant startup ecosystem. It was in this dynamic city that he embarked on his journey to build Poper.

The story told by Karan Bhakuni

Before starting Poper, I was working on Grigora, a platform designed to help people create stunning websites. I did this while juggling a 9-to-5 job.

While working on Grigora, I noticed a recurring problem and received feedback from users who wanted to capture leads on their websites: websites weren't engaging with their visitors effectively. This observation sparked the idea for Poper.

What is Poper?

Poper is more than just a popup builder. It's an AI-powered in-site engagement platform that helps websites create personalized, context-aware popups, and widgets that actually convert visitors into customers.

It's like having a personal assistant for your website, always ready to engage with visitors at the right time with the right message.

Check out the Poper demo below.

My friend Pratik Kinage and I started building Poper in January 2024. Within three days, we had a minimum viable product (MVP) and began sharing our progress publicly on X (see example below). We had the first version up and running soon after.

In the past, like many builders, I made the mistake of releasing a product too early. I learned my lesson and decided to wait until we had a significant number of users on our waitlist before launching publicly.

We used LinkedIn Sales Navigator and subreddits to target potential customers, such as e-commerce store owners and SaaS companies, and successfully built a waitlist of over 630 users.

Launching Poper

When we finally launched Poper in April 2024, we were thrilled to see the initial response. However, we were disappointed to find that only 8-9% of the users who initially expressed interest actually converted to paying customers. This taught us a valuable lesson about the importance of conversion rate optimization.

Marketing Poper

Marketing Poper hasn't been without its challenges. We've experimented with various strategies, including paid advertising. While we invested around $1000 in ads, they didn't yield the desired results. It's a valuable lesson, and we're continuing to explore the most effective approaches for our target audience.

We ran our ads primarily on Google, LinkedIn, and Meta. Most of our spend was directed towards these platforms to reach our target audience effectively.

Please see a few examples of our creatives below.

We're also exploring cold emailing as a potential channel to expand our reach and generate leads.

For cold emailing, we initially used Fiverr and Apollo to build our prospect lists. Now, we’re shifting towards manual outreach with a focus on personalized emails rather than mass emailing through a tool. I think this approach allows us to better connect with potential customers and tailor our messaging.

One of the highlights of our marketing journey was launching Poper on AppSumo Select. Their large user base provided valuable feedback and helped us refine our product. However, we also learned that AppSumo's audience has specific expectations, and it's important to focus on your core product rather than trying to please everyone. Poper is also a 5-star product on AppSumo!

Additionally we’re using the Tolt App to manage our affiliate program, and it’s been working well, especially with our AppSumo customers. We offer a 35% recurring commission, which has been an attractive incentive for affiliates.

Current status

It took us approximately three months from launch to acquire our first 100 paying customers, excluding AppSumo LTD customers. Our approach was simple: we focused on converting our free users to paid plans by offering them attractive discounts. Word-of-mouth and affiliates also played a significant role in our growth.

Today, Poper has over 950 registered users, and we're excited to see where this journey takes us. Out of the 950 registered users, around 250 are paid users. Our business model is based on a recurring SaaS subscription, and you can find more details about our pricing here.

Our MRR is currently around $2.5k-$3K.

Looking back

Looking back, I'm incredibly grateful for the journey so far. Building Poper has been a rollercoaster of emotions, but it's also been incredibly rewarding. I've learned so much about entrepreneurship, product development, and community building.

As I continue to grow Poper, I'm excited to see where it will take me. One thing is for sure: the journey has just begun.

Find Karan on X and LinkedIn. You could also visit his personal site or his other project Grigora.