Give us a bit of your background. Who are you, and what was your situation before building Fastdok and Securify?
Hey there, it鈥檚 Ayoub Moustaid (b. 1993, Morocco).
A serial digital entrepreneur passionate about SaaS, microSaaS & iOS Mobile Apps business, with 11+ years of experience in the digital & software engineering field.
Former senior software engineer and IT consultant at multiple private and public companies.
I built a dozen of products 馃殌 .. sold a few ones 馃挵 .. and failed/learned from many 馃摉
Let's start with Fastdok. What is it, and how did you get the idea to build it?
Every day, you, me, and other people spend a lot of time searching on google or asking our friends for a template to create, a project pricing document, a privacy policy, a business canvas, an invoice, or any other document. Even when we find that template, we need to adapt it, modify it, fill it with our custom texts, and structure it.
That time, complexity, and pain of searching, downloading, modifying, structuring, and adapting a document template to fit the standard and to be ready to use for business needs, pushed us to think about building a tool that may reduce this pain and help professionals on the business documents creation process.
Fastdok is a SaaS tool that offers an all-in-one document generator with a process that makes it much easier and faster to get ready documents in a few minutes. You need just to pick your document template, and answer a few focused questions, no more than that!
Take us through the process of validating, building, and launching Fastdok.
We built the first MVP version then launched on Product hunt and got a lot of traction, and good feedback, we were on the top 4 of the day & awarded as best productivity tool of the year by the community. In addition we did some LTD deals to get accurate feedback from paying users.
How was Fastdok performing, and what led you to decide to sell it?
Fastdok was a popular yet unprofitable product with regular organic signups and numerous mentions. However, we had a low conversion rate from free to paying users. The reason? Users asked/needed custom templates, which required a complete product pivot, which was a complicated and impractical idea. Therefore, selling Fastdok and building a new product with the requested features seemed like a better option.
Now, let鈥檚 talk about Securify. What is it, and what led you to build it?
Securify is a Shopify micro-SaaS app designed to prevent unwanted access and unauthorized visitors from reaching Shopify stores by blocking countries, IP addresses, VPNs, and proxies.
The idea originated as an experiment with the Shopify app store. Through regular market/store research, we identified that there is maybe a potential for such app in the security category. So we moved directly to action and started working on the app.
Take us through the process of validating and building Securify.
One of the advantages of working on a marketplace or app store, you have that first bunch of traffic that helps you discuss with early customers and get early market insights; that鈥檚 how it started.
How did you launch Securify and get your first customers?
Mainly we focused more on organic traffic based on ASO (App Store Optimization), with some listings on multiple directories and a ProductHunt launch, of course.
How was Securify performing, and what led you to decide to sell it?
Securify was stuck for a long time at the mark of $500 MRR with a few hundred users. I felt like I had exhausted my marketing tactics/strategies, and that it鈥檚 time to conclude the journey for Securify and move on to the next product.
Regarding both Fastdok and Securify, how did you approach competitor research and differentiation when developing them?
For Fastdok, the main value proposition was to provide ready-to-use documents in multiple sectors within a few minutes or even seconds.
For Securify, we focused more on reducing costs, which led to lowering prices compared to competitors. The main focus was also on simplicity by offering an easy and very simple-to-use product.
Have you used any other marketing strategies to acquire new users or retain existing ones?
I tested few strategies, some has worked some not. Like influencer marketing in TikTok for Securify, and Lifetime deals for Fastdok which helped on that early stage also, and invested in SEO for the Medium/long term for Fastdok which resulted in getting the first search position over Canva and other giants in keywords like document generation, document creation and others.
What key lessons or insights have you gained from these two businesses?
Mainly avoiding perfection, going to market asap, and building with/for customer.
Ship fast, early and frequently.
What advice would you give to aspiring founders who have tried a few micro SaaS businesses but haven鈥檛 found success yet?
Just keep shipping. It鈥檚 a journey where you compound learning, experiences, and knowledge from one product to another. There is a product that will work and that will compound all your work on the previous ones. It鈥檚 just a question of time, consistency, and belief.
You have other projects running as well. Can you briefly tell us what they are about?
Currently working on the iOS apps ecosystem, trying to build useful products on that ecosystem.
Where can people learn more about you and your work?
Mainly on X (formerly Twitter) at @mstdayoub and website: moustaid.me
