How Sidi is growing his form builder

Meet Sidi Jeddou.

Sidi is a 21 years old guy from Mauritania, Africa.

He used to be a freelancer, and and has previously built Float UI - A UI library based on Tailwind CSS.

Now he is bootstrapping the form builder RapidForms.

RapidForms is Sidis’ full time occupation, and it’s part of Marsx, the startup he works at. He works on the product solo, but is getting feedback from Marsx to improve it.

The story told by Sidi Jeddou

I started building RapidForms December 25th, 2023 after getting tired of other form builders out there. I launched the first version February 9th, 2024.

Before launching I got 4 customers from pre-sales, and It took me 1-2 months to get the first 100 users for RapidForms. Currently I have over 20 happy customers and 1k users, and around 300 weekly visitors.

The main struggle I had when I started was how can I convince people to try my form builder out of many other form builders in the market. So I thought I should have a story behind it, and I actually had some points that I didn’t like about other form builders. That made me start my own product with focus on data privacy, customization, and price.

Data privacy
I don’t trust others when it comes to my data - and others data. Too many horrible stories on how companies uses our data either to sell it or to analyze it for some sketchy purposes

Customization
I always wanted to build forms that would match my website design the easy way. Unfortunately, I typically end up coding everything myself and style my forms with CSS or Tailwind CSS.

Price
I have checked the market for many form builders. They all seem to have monthly subscriptions with expensive plans that starts at about $29 per month - with limited forms and submissions.

My marketing wins

Marketing is a pain for many founders - especially bootstrapped founders. I tried many things that helped me a lot in the early days of building RapidForms though.

I have had pretty solid success posting on reddit. I have written many posts related to RapidForms and included my website url. I always did my best not to make it sound like a marketing post to avoid getting banned. The reddit community can be very toxic and sensitive.

A few of my reddit posts below:

• I lost huge potential paid users with this little mistake (14K views)

• Why do all SaaS form builders adopt a monthly subscription model? (10K views)

I did the same on the developer commmunity DEV:

• Why you should stop using google forms in 2024? (600 views)

• An alternative to form builders you pay for monthly (540 views)

I also got some traction launching my SaaS on Product Hunt and DevHunt. I was also actively sharing my progress and what I build on my personal X account - example below.

I did notice an increase in users after launching on Product Hunt and DevHunt. When announcing the Product Hunt launch from my X account I got 3 new paying customers.

My marketing fails

Two specific tools in the marketing toolbox didn’t really work out for me so far.

Cold outreach
I collected some emails, accounts on X, and LinkedIn, and sent them messages about RapidForms, and what problems it solves (see example below). But got no response. Btw, I will never do this again.

SEO
I've been updating my website’s pages, revising the copy, adding new sections, and linking everything together, but I haven't noticed any significant changes yet.

I know SEO takes time, and results don’t happen overnight, but I just wanted to share this part of the journey 🙂

Contact information for Sidi Jeddou.

• X

• LinkedIn