```json
{
  "title": "Chrome extension, 1 year in, 21K ARR, 50k users - what to do?",
  "content": "I'm the founder of a Chrome extension that integrates ChatGPT into various websites. We launched last year, right around the time ChatGPT was released, and have seen some encouraging growth and challenges along the way. I'm reaching out for advice on how to navigate these waters.\n  \n    The Good:\n  \n      \n    \n    Organic Growth: Achieved 50k organic users.\n  \n  \n    \n    Product Hunt Success: Ranked 5th product of the day in Jan 2023, and 2nd in Feb 2023.\n  \n  \n    \n    Revenue: We're at $1.7k MRR and $21k ARR.\n  \n  \n    \n    Lifetime Value (LTV): Stands at $70.\n  \n  \n    \n    The Bad:\n  \n      \n    \n    Low Conversion Rates: Only 0.3-0.5% of users convert to paid.\n  \n  \n    \n    Moderate Growth Rate: Growing at 7% MoM.\n  \n  \n    \n    Competition: New similar extensions are emerging rapidly, some gaining millions of users in months.\n  \n  \n    \n    Dependency on ChatGPT's Popularity: Our growth seems tied to the hype around ChatGPT.\n  \n  \n    \n    The Ugly:\n  \n      \n    \n    Unclear Value Proposition: Initially, the extension was built on a whim without a clear problem statement. We're struggling to understand why users decide to pay.\n  \n  \n    \n    Dropping Conversion on Login Page: It fell from 80% to 30%. I'm curious about potential reasons for this.\n  \n  \n    \n    Engagement Challenges: Efforts to engage with our user base haven't been very successful.\n  \n  \n    \n    Ad Spend Limitations: Low conversion rates make it hard to justify the expense on paid advertising.\n  \n  \n    \n    I'm looking for insights, experiences, or advice on the following:\n  \n      \n    \n    How to better understand and define our value proposition.\n  \n  \n    \n    Possible reasons and solutions for the drop in login page conversion.\n  \n  \n    \n    Effective strategies to engage with users and get feedback.\n  \n  \n    \n    Alternative growth strategies given our current conversion rate and budget constraints.\n  \n  \n    \n    Any shared experiences, insights, or advice would be immensely appreciated.\n  \n    Thank you in advance! Looking forward to your thoughts and suggestions!",
  "comments": [
    {
      "author": "leave_ac_on",
      "content": "What problem is your product solving? Why should I pay for your product? What am I getting over the free version?\n  \n    Is it priced competitively in the market? What features does it have compared to the competition?\n  \n    Find where you are on the product life cycle. Is it time to bring in new features or are you missing marketing?",
      "replies": []
    },
    {
      "author": "TheRealBilliam",
      "content": "I’m one of the founding members of a startup thats built a google workspace add on with almost $2MM ARR.\n  \n    Re - your low conversion rate on login… take a look at the permissions you are requesting. This is easily one of the biggest deterrents to top of the funnel conversion for google extensions and add-ons. I don’t know what your primary customer persona is, but I’d imagine you see probably 50% gmail.com, 50% biz domain. Those biz domains, often have restrictions on what permissions or extensions can be installed in their biz domain.\n  \n    That being said, try experimenting with the permissions and see if you can get a lift on those top of the funnel conversions.",
      "replies": [
        {
          "author": "Leadership_Upper",
          "content": "I scaled PenParrot.com to 2.3k ARR a few months ago. Now trying to find a buyer but haven’t been super successful? Any high level general advice here at all?",
          "replies": [
            {
              "author": "TheRealBilliam",
              "content": "Most acquisitions I’ve seen in this space are around consolidation. Since the marketplaces are typically a numbers game of installs and reviews, I’ve seen apps buy each other to merge user bases to bump their installed numbers instantly.\n  \n    My point is, if you are dead set on selling your google app, I suggest maybe reaching out to other apps to see if they would consider an acquisition to boost their numbers.",
              "replies": [
                {
                  "author": "Leadership_Upper",
                  "content": "Thanks for this!",
                  "replies": []
                }
              ]
            },
            {
              "author": "Leadership_Upper",
              "content": "Thanks for this!",
              "replies": []
            }
          ]
        },
        {
          "author": "TheRealBilliam",
          "content": "Most acquisitions I’ve seen in this space are around consolidation. Since the marketplaces are typically a numbers game of installs and reviews, I’ve seen apps buy each other to merge user bases to bump their installed numbers instantly.\n  \n    My point is, if you are dead set on selling your google app, I suggest maybe reaching out to other apps to see if they would consider an acquisition to boost their numbers.",
          "replies": [
            {
              "author": "Leadership_Upper",
              "content": "Thanks for this!",
              "replies": []
            }
          ]
        },
        {
          "author": "Leadership_Upper",
          "content": "Thanks for this!",
          "replies": []
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "author": "BasketNo4817",
      "content": "This is well articulated.\n  \n    Yes you need genuine marketing help that can help you address your marketing strategy for all the reasons listed.\n  \n    Of all the information you did share, what is your runway? I saw “budget” constraints but wondering what your burn rate is given a decent MRR.\n  \n    So here are the basics for market research and position. You don’t need to answer them here. But you seem pretty organized from the OP. Build out a sheet that can breakdown objectively the following:\n  \n      \n    \n    who is downloading and registering? Are you just randomly in the store? Or have you targeted ads, paid marketing to colonies or business users?\n  \n  \n    \n    who are your top 3-5 direct and adjacent competitors in the store? What are they doing differently? Everything fro messaging to functionality\n  \n  \n    \n    do you have a crm? This may help you to see who these users are if registering via email and using a plugin to cross reference\n  \n  \n    \n    Happy to have a chat too. DM if you’re up for it",
      "replies": [
        {
          "author": "gorimur",
          "content": "- I've never run ads. I have asked other Chrome extension founders, who told me that it is not worth the money since the conversion rates are very low.- Our top competitor in store are monica.im, Merlin, maxai.me. They are Swiss army knives with thousands of random features that do not tell the story. However, Monica has moved into the search space and acquired one of the competitors. Their main advantage is feature overload. They are also doing some gray stuff with the number of installations.- Not sure what you mean by CRM, I do have list of emails.",
          "replies": [
            {
              "author": "BasketNo4817",
              "content": "I highly recommend you read up on a CRM like Hubspot and start uploading those emails to it. Even the low cost or free version for now. You are missing out on tons of valuable data about your users.\n  \n    Basically you have no visibility into how your user thinks, what they like/dislike or any attribution it seems. To answer the questions you had in the OP so many answers lie there.",
              "replies": [
                {
                  "author": "gorimur",
                  "content": "Im sorry, I’m very familiar with CRMs and don’t understand how just creating contact records in hubspot will magically answer my questions. Can you elaborate?",
                  "replies": [
                    {
                      "author": "BasketNo4817",
                      "content": "Sure. The OP has a lot to unpack where help is needed.\n  \n    To answer your question. If you are familiar with a CRM then it’s not clear to me how it’s being used relative to understanding the emails of your users which tracks behavior and other attribution from your website (assuming you have one) among other things.\n  \n    https://blog.hubspot.com/service/customer-segmentation\n  \n    Why does engagement matter? It indicates your positioning is aligned to the customer need. Clearly the issue you are having around where to position the product.\n  \n    The CRM (customer data) along with any other analytics tools paints behavior trends of the users that have registered. Again no clear indication other than percentages of registrations or paid.\n  \n    Here are some good resources for understanding positioning. Is market research. You are not an expert and that’s ok. It is however a skilled discipline to be effective and efficient. Right now It’s about understanding the concept. If time and money are an issue, learning on the job will prove difficult but not impossible at this point to take action on in a DIY capacity.\n  \n    https://www.qualtrics.com/experience-management/brand/brand-research/\n  \n    https://ahrefs.com/blog/market-research/\n  \n    For engaging with existing users to understand why they are not signing up. It could be a design issue or there is really no clear value prop to registering. You could sign up for user testing.com and get feedback. Very good tool and service. Perhaps your competitors don’t require that until there is a good reason to register.",
                      "replies": []
                    }
                  ]
                },
                {
                  "author": "BasketNo4817",
                  "content": "Sure. The OP has a lot to unpack where help is needed.\n  \n    To answer your question. If you are familiar with a CRM then it’s not clear to me how it’s being used relative to understanding the emails of your users which tracks behavior and other attribution from your website (assuming you have one) among other things.\n  \n    https://blog.hubspot.com/service/customer-segmentation\n  \n    Why does engagement matter? It indicates your positioning is aligned to the customer need. Clearly the issue you are having around where to position the product.\n  \n    The CRM (customer data) along with any other analytics tools paints behavior trends of the users that have registered. Again no clear indication other than percentages of registrations or paid.\n  \n    Here are some good resources for understanding positioning. Is market research. You are not an expert and that’s ok. It is however a skilled discipline to be effective and efficient. Right now It’s about understanding the concept. If time and money are an issue, learning on the job will prove difficult but not impossible at this point to take action on in a DIY capacity.\n  \n    https://www.qualtrics.com/experience-management/brand/brand-research/\n  \n    https://ahrefs.com/blog/market-research/\n  \n    For engaging with existing users to understand why they are not signing up. It could be a design issue or there is really no clear value prop to registering. You could sign up for user testing.com and get feedback. Very good tool and service. Perhaps your competitors don’t require that until there is a good reason to register.",
                  "replies": []
                }
              ]
            },
            {
              "author": "gorimur",
              "content": "Im sorry, I’m very familiar with CRMs and don’t understand how just creating contact records in hubspot will magically answer my questions. Can you elaborate?",
              "replies": [
                {
                  "author": "BasketNo4817",
                  "content": "Sure. The OP has a lot to unpack where help is needed.\n  \n    To answer your question. If you are familiar with a CRM then it’s not clear to me how it’s being used relative to understanding the emails of your users which tracks behavior and other attribution from your website (assuming you have one) among other things.\n  \n    https://blog.hubspot.com/service/customer-segmentation\n  \n    Why does engagement matter? It indicates your positioning is aligned to the customer need. Clearly the issue you are having around where to position the product.\n  \n    The CRM (customer data) along with any other analytics tools paints behavior trends of the users that have registered. Again no clear indication other than percentages of registrations or paid.\n  \n    Here are some good resources for understanding positioning. Is market research. You are not an expert and that’s ok. It is however a skilled discipline to be effective and efficient. Right now It’s about understanding the concept. If time and money are an issue, learning on the job will prove difficult but not impossible at this point to take action on in a DIY capacity.\n  \n    https://www.qualtrics.com/experience-management/brand/brand-research/\n  \n    https://ahrefs.com/blog/market-research/\n  \n    For engaging with existing users to understand why they are not signing up. It could be a design issue or there is really no clear value prop to registering. You could sign up for user testing.com and get feedback. Very good tool and service. Perhaps your competitors don’t require that until there is a good reason to register.",
                  "replies": []
                }
              ]
            },
            {
              "author": "BasketNo4817",
              "content": "Sure. The OP has a lot to unpack where help is needed.\n  \n    To answer your question. If you are familiar with a CRM then it’s not clear to me how it’s being used relative to understanding the emails of your users which tracks behavior and other attribution from your website (assuming you have one) among other things.\n  \n    https://blog.hubspot.com/service/customer-segmentation\n  \n    Why does engagement matter? It indicates your positioning is aligned to the customer need. Clearly the issue you are having around where to position the product.\n  \n    The CRM (customer data) along with any other analytics tools paints behavior trends of the users that have registered. Again no clear indication other than percentages of registrations or paid.\n  \n    Here are some good resources for understanding positioning. Is market research. You are not an expert and that’s ok. It is however a skilled discipline to be effective and efficient. Right now It’s about understanding the concept. If time and money are an issue, learning on the job will prove difficult but not impossible at this point to take action on in a DIY capacity.\n  \n    https://www.qualtrics.com/experience-management/brand/brand-research/\n  \n    https://ahrefs.com/blog/market-research/\n  \n    For engaging with existing users to understand why they are not signing up. It could be a design issue or there is really no clear value prop to registering. You could sign up for user testing.com and get feedback. Very good tool and service. Perhaps your competitors don’t require that until there is a good reason to register.",
              "replies": []
            }
          ]
        },
        {
          "author": "BasketNo4817",
          "content": "I highly recommend you read up on a CRM like Hubspot and start uploading those emails to it. Even the low cost or free version for now. You are missing out on tons of valuable data about your users.\n  \n    Basically you have no visibility into how your user thinks, what they like/dislike or any attribution it seems. To answer the questions you had in the OP so many answers lie there.",
          "replies": [
            {
              "author": "gorimur",
              "content": "Im sorry, I’m very familiar with CRMs and don’t understand how just creating contact records in hubspot will magically answer my questions. Can you elaborate?",
              "replies": [
                {
                  "author": "BasketNo4817",
                  "content": "Sure. The OP has a lot to unpack where help is needed.\n  \n    To answer your question. If you are familiar with a CRM then it’s not clear to me how it’s being used relative to understanding the emails of your users which tracks behavior and other attribution from your website (assuming you have one) among other things.\n  \n    https://blog.hubspot.com/service/customer-segmentation\n  \n    Why does engagement matter? It indicates your positioning is aligned to the customer need. Clearly the issue you are having around where to position the product.\n  \n    The CRM (customer data) along with any other analytics tools paints behavior trends of the users that have registered. Again no clear indication other than percentages of registrations or paid.\n  \n    Here are some good resources for understanding positioning. Is market research. You are not an expert and that’s ok. It is however a skilled discipline to be effective and efficient. Right now It’s about understanding the concept. If time and money are an issue, learning on the job will prove difficult but not impossible at this point to take action on in a DIY capacity.\n  \n    https://www.qualtrics.com/experience-management/brand/brand-research/\n  \n    https://ahrefs.com/blog/market-research/\n  \n    For engaging with existing users to understand why they are not signing up. It could be a design issue or there is really no clear value prop to registering. You could sign up for user testing.com and get feedback. Very good tool and service. Perhaps your competitors don’t require that until there is a good reason to register.",
                  "replies": []
                }
              ]
            },
            {
              "author": "BasketNo4817",
              "content": "Sure. The OP has a lot to unpack where help is needed.\n  \n    To answer your question. If you are familiar with a CRM then it’s not clear to me how it’s being used relative to understanding the emails of your users which tracks behavior and other attribution from your website (assuming you have one) among other things.\n  \n    https://blog.hubspot.com/service/customer-segmentation\n  \n    Why does engagement matter? It indicates your positioning is aligned to the customer need. Clearly the issue you are having around where to position the product.\n  \n    The CRM (customer data) along with any other analytics tools paints behavior trends of the users that have registered. Again no clear indication other than percentages of registrations or paid.\n  \n    Here are some good resources for understanding positioning. Is market research. You are not an expert and that’s ok. It is however a skilled discipline to be effective and efficient. Right now It’s about understanding the concept. If time and money are an issue, learning on the job will prove difficult but not impossible at this point to take action on in a DIY capacity.\n  \n    https://www.qualtrics.com/experience-management/brand/brand-research/\n  \n    https://ahrefs.com/blog/market-research/\n  \n    For engaging with existing users to understand why they are not signing up. It could be a design issue or there is really no clear value prop to registering. You could sign up for user testing.com and get feedback. Very good tool and service. Perhaps your competitors don’t require that until there is a good reason to register.",
              "replies": []
            }
          ]
        },
        {
          "author": "gorimur",
          "content": "Im sorry, I’m very familiar with CRMs and don’t understand how just creating contact records in hubspot will magically answer my questions. Can you elaborate?",
          "replies": [
            {
              "author": "BasketNo4817",
              "content": "Sure. The OP has a lot to unpack where help is needed.\n  \n    To answer your question. If you are familiar with a CRM then it’s not clear to me how it’s being used relative to understanding the emails of your users which tracks behavior and other attribution from your website (assuming you have one) among other things.\n  \n    https://blog.hubspot.com/service/customer-segmentation\n  \n    Why does engagement matter? It indicates your positioning is aligned to the customer need. Clearly the issue you are having around where to position the product.\n  \n    The CRM (customer data) along with any other analytics tools paints behavior trends of the users that have registered. Again no clear indication other than percentages of registrations or paid.\n  \n    Here are some good resources for understanding positioning. Is market research. You are not an expert and that’s ok. It is however a skilled discipline to be effective and efficient. Right now It’s about understanding the concept. If time and money are an issue, learning on the job will prove difficult but not impossible at this point to take action on in a DIY capacity.\n  \n    https://www.qualtrics.com/experience-management/brand/brand-research/\n  \n    https://ahrefs.com/blog/market-research/\n  \n    For engaging with existing users to understand why they are not signing up. It could be a design issue or there is really no clear value prop to registering. You could sign up for user testing.com and get feedback. Very good tool and service. Perhaps your competitors don’t require that until there is a good reason to register.",
              "replies": []
            }
          ]
        },
        {
          "author": "BasketNo4817",
          "content": "Sure. The OP has a lot to unpack where help is needed.\n  \n    To answer your question. If you are familiar with a CRM then it’s not clear to me how it’s being used relative to understanding the emails of your users which tracks behavior and other attribution from your website (assuming you have one) among other things.\n  \n    https://blog.hubspot.com/service/customer-segmentation\n  \n    Why does engagement matter? It indicates your positioning is aligned to the customer need. Clearly the issue you are having around where to position the product.\n  \n    The CRM (customer data) along with any other analytics tools paints behavior trends of the users that have registered. Again no clear indication other than percentages of registrations or paid.\n  \n    Here are some good resources for understanding positioning. Is market research. You are not an expert and that’s ok. It is however a skilled discipline to be effective and efficient. Right now It’s about understanding the concept. If time and money are an issue, learning on the job will prove difficult but not impossible at this point to take action on in a DIY capacity.\n  \n    https://www.qualtrics.com/experience-management/brand/brand-research/\n  \n    https://ahrefs.com/blog/market-research/\n  \n    For engaging with existing users to understand why they are not signing up. It could be a design issue or there is really no clear value prop to registering. You could sign up for user testing.com and get feedback. Very good tool and service. Perhaps your competitors don’t require that until there is a good reason to register.",
          "replies": []
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "author": "KittenCrusades",
      "content": "Deeply understanding your value prop(s) is crucial.\n  \n    I would find a way to interact with your current paid users and incentivise response.\n  \n    If you have highly active users they might have some impassioned use cases and be happy to converse.\n  \n    This will help you learn where to lean in to and maybe inspire vision on a roadmap.",
      "replies": [
        {
          "author": "gorimur",
          "content": "That's the thing, we have users using us and installing, we have over 100 paying customers but none want to talk to us. We have tried reaching out directly over LinkedIn (only one came back out of 100) and sent emails requesting meetings. Nothing.\n  \n    I clearly understand that we should know what the problem we are solving, but quite hard to figure out :)",
          "replies": [
            {
              "author": "abraham1inco1n",
              "content": "Do you have like user monitoring set up like heap/hotjar/mixpanel?\n  \n    Seeing what sites they visit the most and what their content looks like (if your terms of service allow) would be a way to get feedback without speaking to a human. You can also try to give away free months or giftcards in exchange for feedback... just some thoughts.",
              "replies": []
            },
            {
              "author": "[deleted]",
              "content": "Incentivize them. If the price is right, they will talk. When you reach out, mention the compensation right away and direct straight to booking an interview slot via calendly. You might have to pay $50-$150 per interview. After getting to 15-20 interviews you will see patterns. You mentioned you have their LinkedIn so you know based on their role what kind of compensation they would require. If you cannot reach them, try to reach people in similar roles/industries/ other similar characteristics and interview them about your solution.",
              "replies": []
            }
          ]
        },
        {
          "author": "abraham1inco1n",
          "content": "Do you have like user monitoring set up like heap/hotjar/mixpanel?\n  \n    Seeing what sites they visit the most and what their content looks like (if your terms of service allow) would be a way to get feedback without speaking to a human. You can also try to give away free months or giftcards in exchange for feedback... just some thoughts.",
          "replies": []
        },
        {
          "author": "[deleted]",
          "content": "Incentivize them. If the price is right, they will talk. When you reach out, mention the compensation right away and direct straight to booking an interview slot via calendly. You might have to pay $50-$150 per interview. After getting to 15-20 interviews you will see patterns. You mentioned you have their LinkedIn so you know based on their role what kind of compensation they would require. If you cannot reach them, try to reach people in similar roles/industries/ other similar characteristics and interview them about your solution.",
          "replies": []
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "author": "EmergencyBeach9672",
      "content": "Is there common information about your paying customers you can use to create a persona? That might be helpful to figure out the type of customers who pay for your product.\n  \n    In regard to drop offs in conversions, we tried experimenting with exit intent pop-ups. We saw mixed results, but it’s worth trying if you haven’t already.",
      "replies": [
        {
          "author": "gorimur",
          "content": "I only have their emails, I used Apollo to enrich information and it seems like the majority of paid customers are:\n  \n    - Venture capital firms- SEO/Marketers",
          "replies": [
            {
              "author": "[deleted]",
              "content": "This is great insight! If you cannot reach actual customers, you can run surveys and interviews to similar segments. Reddit doesn’t have answers, the customers/prospects do.",
              "replies": []
            }
          ]
        },
        {
          "author": "[deleted]",
          "content": "This is great insight! If you cannot reach actual customers, you can run surveys and interviews to similar segments. Reddit doesn’t have answers, the customers/prospects do.",
          "replies": []
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "author": "[deleted]",
      "content": "This has zero future. Sell for whatever you can",
      "replies": []
    }
  ]
}
```

what can be learnt from this data?