Adam is the founder of ScreenStudio, a SaaS for making beautiful screen recordings.
Hey Adam, Tell us more about what you are working on
Simply speaking – Screen Studio allows you to create beautiful screen recordings in minutes. Videos it outputs look as if they were created by a professional animator, yet most of the work is done automatically. The fundamental principle is to deliver as beautiful a video as possible while keeping the app as simple as possible.
The main use cases are product updates, product demos, courses and tutorials, team updates, landing page videos, presentations, and team collaboration.
What makes Screen Studio different is the way it records your screen. It records your screen with the mouse cursor hidden while recording precise data about your cursor movement at the same time. This allows us to make cursor movement smooth, automatically zoom if you click somewhere and add a whole lot of different effects such as motion blur, automatically.
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Tell us More about your background, and how you came up with the idea of ScreenStudio
I created my first website when I was 12 years old. Somehow I always loved coding and designing things.
I did once work in a large, enterprise company and decided I never wanted to do it again. The amount of processes and wasted resources scared me.
Since then I only worked at a start-up, always wanting to create something on my own.
For quite a long time I did work full-time, while spending after-hours coding personal projects, but it did lead to serious problems and issues (including burnout).
At some point I decided to either fully (both in terms of time and mental focus) work creating something for someone else to learn, enjoy, and earn money; or to save money and fully focus on creating my own products. I did have a few attempts and it did really click with Screen Studio. What is not visible here, however – are years of failed products and projects. Successful things always gain more attention.
How did you get your first customers for ScreenStudio?
That’s a bit of a fun one. I was posting my daily progress on then Twitter and did build a habit around it. I did like it, even tho I had small followers count and usually got 0-2 likes on those updates.
Screen Studio was ~70% ready for MVP release. I was testing payments flow and to make things simple, I did already add buttons to the actual website. I did add a prominent banner on the top “This is not ready yet!” to avoid confusing people, who would for some reason buy it not being able to download it.
I did post yet another video with yet another update and it did really gain traction, getting ~50k views and taking my followers count from ~170 to ~2000 in one day! Also, I did get the first 3 purchases from people who simply wanted to support the project.
I could not sleep and I’m not sure I was ever more excited in my life. I was then in another country with my friends, David and Maciej (who are now also part of the Screen Studio team) without my laptop and couldn’t really do anything for a day or two.
When I returned home, I remember starting to work in the morning and then stretching my back around 4 pm realizing I literally did not move my body excluding my hands the whole time.
I really wanted to release MVP as quickly as possible now.
I was joking that Screen Studio released itself.
Looking back at the whole journey, including gaining more traction later on, I believe honesty and transparency is what allows you to connect with people. It is hard to connect with someone talking about their achievements. It is way easier to connect with someone sharing their struggles, stories, and progress because this is what every one of us experiences.
What Marketing Channels are working for you now?
In essence, Twitter was the main and major traffic source for a long time. What worked especially well was the flow: someone posts a video, someone asks “How did you create it” in the comments section, and gets a link to our Twitter profile or website. It was quite unexpected, but a very successful marketing channel.
Besides that, it was growing organically. We did spend some money on paid marketing channels, but it was more an experiment and did not bring meaningful results.
In terms of Google search – majority of people type “screen studio” there, so it is not really organic, but some people say it is a good sign as it means people are recommending it to friends and co-workers.
How is your business doing now?
Screen Studio is out there for 1,5 years now.
I think there are a few indicators showing it is doing well and using it is an enjoyable thing for the users. We have very good retention. I don’t want to share exact numbers, but A LOT of users still use it at least once a month one year after purchasing it.
Also, what is most important to me – people seems to simply like it, be happy with the results and talking about the value it added to their workflows. It often makes them recommend it to other people. In my opinion, there is nothing else as satisfying and confirming that we’re doing something good.
What has been your biggest achievement in business thus far?
Again, I think it is seeing value added for people using it. It is finding something people really need. If the product doesn’t work, you look for metrics. If it does work – you simply know it.
What were the worst mistakes you’ve made since launching?
I think nothing really major happened. But it is also tricky. We did not (and still do not) have solid analytics, I did forget one line of code that did cost us $7000 (and generated 2 petabytes of traffic), we did sign a bit too relaxed freelancing contract which resulted in some painful consequences.
I’d say those are “day-to-day” mistakes. In the end, I think if the product has market fit, mistakes are not that painful, which is very comfortable.
What Tech Stack are you currently using?
Most of the app is written in TypeScript. We use Electron. The core of the recording engine is written in Swift.
I am quite nerdy when it comes to creating good dev tooling and utilities that make day-to-day work easier. We have tons of in-house components and modules. We do not use pre-built UI libraries, etc. I usually prefer to write components on my own for simplicity and full control over them.
What advice would you give to new entrepreneurs?
This one is a bit hard for me. It is easy to enter “advice mode” when having some success – things seem “easy” then.
I’d try to list things that worked for me:
If you have the ambition to create your own thing, but you also have to work full time to earn money – don’t mix those two. You will be frustrated about working for someone else and will have low energy to work on your thing. Switching worked for me – I was either fully present in some team or I was saving money and then switching to full-time my own thing work
Another one – don’t be afraid to show that you struggle. It is way easier to connect with it. Many people would try to support you in some way then, even if it’ll be just some good word. Next to sharing your new shiny features, share your struggles, your confusions, and fears.
What resources do you recommend for entrepreneurs?
Paul Graham’s blog is dope. Checking out VC batches might be inspiring. I like checking out Dribbble weekly to follow UI trends. #buildinpublic hashtag on Twitter might be good to get inspired and find great people to follow.
Lastly, Where can we learn more about you?
You can follow me on Twitter at @pie6k or my blog at pietrasiak.com
