[jeffblake]

When I first started goodnights http://www.goodnights.me & http://www.guestmanager.com I had a grand vision to take on a huge goliath, raise money, get employees, yada yada, the whole "start up dream". The product took many turns, adapting to customer demands.

After realizing event ticketing is quite the classic commodity, I asked myself, how can I differentiate my offering? I can't compete on features, service fee kickbacks, venue relationships, etc. So I built a guestlist component and targeted it directly for nightclubs. And so, after a couple failed fundings, working with crap people, I had a great product, a couple loyal customers, poor marketing. I've spent (am spending) tons of time to clean up the company (get it down to just me, no overhead, etc) - I've dropped the whole 'startup thing', now I'm building a SaaS company for myself & my customers, and see where it will take me. I prefer the freedom and debt-free lifestyle of living that it affords me, over being a CEO of some venture funded company.

But to really answer your question, I got my first (SaaS) customer by hanging out every night at nightclubs, getting a couple people to evangelize using my software through the beta's. Once it was good enough, such that I didn't have to do anything for the club to operate itself, I went to another nightclub and just sold them on it. It wasn't that hard because the product is good. The clinching feature in my case is the ability to add a guest to the iPad via SMS - promoters love that. Now I am trying to figure out how to scale up my efforts, see if any partnerships make sense, maybe move geographically (I'm in Vancouver, but American)

[n_coats]

Wow, sounds like quite the experience. Seems like your in a good place now... so quick to squash any interpretations of being a canadian, eh?! haha Thanks for sharing and good luck!