Yesterday we launched testimonial verification

Today, @Elliottzeli sent me this 😂😂

This is humiliating

A customer churns but their testimonial is still on your website

Or you're proudly using it in your sales deck, marketing emails or paid ads

Leads reach out to the churned customer, or ask you about them, and the trust you're building is destroyed

Here's ustomers at @SenjaHQ

When a customer who left you a testimonial churns, we send you an email alert

You can then remove the testimonial from your proof widgets and Walls of Love

And remove reputational risk

Here's what it looks like:

We built @SenjaHQ to $850,000 ARR without ever meeting

From sliding into his DMs, to almost 4 years working together

But last week we FINALLY met in Bangkok

@euboid it was fantastic to meet you and hang out IRL

Let's do it again soon 💜

Everyone is faking it

Fake UGC video
Fake products
Fake testimonials
Fake reviews
Fake team pages
Fake about us pages
Fake lead magnets
Fake marketing promises

The bar for trust is higher than ever before

Buyers are unable to tell what's real and what isn't

Which means act

You can't just make a claim any more, you need to prove it, and it in a way that can be audited

At Senja, we're now pairing testimonials with the relevant Stripe payment, so we can add "verified" labels

This allows our customers to click verified and see the paper trail that proves the testimonial is from a real customer

It also allows us to quickly remove testimonials and case studies from churned customers from our marketing, so we don't get caught out

This is just one way we're trying to build more trust with leads to drive more sales

Guess who just got ROASTED

Awesome experience with @asmartbear and @esbenfj

We talked about the challenges of growing Senja from $1,000,000 ARR

Lots to reflect on, and execute

But for now I am just feeling grateful for their time

And the opportunity to keep learning, and

Empathy

Understanding how your customers think, and what they want and need

To me this is one of the most powerful remaining moats in SaaS

If anyone can ship fast, shipping the right things and educating customers on them, becomes much more important

It’s not always as fun be coding marathon. Which is exactly why you need to do it.

That’s why I’m re-reading Deploy Empathy by my awesome friend @mjwhansen.

It has practical advice and specific playbooks for running effective customer interviews.

This isn’t the same as chatting to customers.

Instead it's growing a deep understanding of their problems, the words they use to describe them, and what they're really trying to get done.

If you're building something, read it.

Senja's new engineer is GOATED

→ Works through the night
→ Reviews my open PRs
→ Fixes and merges
→ Films a video of the changes
→ Records a voice over w/ some sass
→ Sends to the team in Slack

And he's 100% AI

Here he is in action

We have a 76 day streak of sending video thank yous to new customers, partners and leads

We film a custom video and attach a gift (or a GIF)

We also use it to unlock new features and send discount codes

Yes it's still software but we're doing little things to try and stand out and have fun

We're working on it

The structure is implemented now

The only thing is that this focuses on the SaaS founder persona, not the creator educator

Creator educators don't have a third-party platform for reviews, which is one of the reasons they like Senja

In the educator space it's more normal tor than send people somewhere

That said, we do serve a lot of SaaS co's and we can do a better job

We have it, we need to do a better job promoting it

It's still relatively new, but to give you an idea...

We had 716 paying customers churn since April

Here's exactly why they left

The main reason is they are no longer actively collecting testimonials.

For many businesses, testimonial collection is campaign based.

We've added functions that automate ongoing collection, but that common with reviews.

Adding the function to constantly collect only helps the small segment who would've done that anyway.

In other words it doesn't actually change the customer behaviour.

We've also added Churnkey [pause account], focused on activation, and increased educational content like webinars and emails.

This is why I call churn "systemic" as I believe it's a reflection of the ICP and offer, not the @SenjaHQ product itself.

Interesting aside: we are not seeing people leave because they vibe-coded their own solution.

Churn is one of the issues I am looking forward to discussing when I record my pod with @asmartbear.

It's that they're not actively collecting

Closing business is actually the least common reason

People feel they have "enough" testimonials and stop

Another flat revenue month at Senja

We've been stuck at $1,000,000 ARR for several months now

Here’s what’s going on:

Our sign ups and churn have met. Each day about 8 customers cancel and 8 users upgrade.

I spent the last year dealing with the fall out of my cofounder h an awesome marketer @startupwithana, engineer
@ngrushkovsky and 'everything else' person.

Growing sign ups is really hard right now. Our strategy is partnerships - affiliate and sponsorships to educate about Senja and drive sales in return for a kickback.

This work isn’t driving sign ups, yet. But it’s early. Right now I’m looking for signals that relationship building is working. Ana has worked 24/7 to secure calls with some incredible people. That’s the first step.

Early on, most my marketing work lasted an hour, then a week. Now, this one bet is going to take months to run.

We’re also exploring going upmarket. We’re using fake doors to pitch new product ideas to paying customers, asking them to book a call to learn more and get early access. This is very early.

We’re making product changes to ensure @senjahq works end to end, from testimonial invite and collection to sharing as social posts, widgets, reels and case studies.

I’m still loving my communities, @Microconf and @DynamiteCircle. For me they have both been life changing. Every founder should have a tribe to support, advise, and hold to account.

Churn is still high at about 5.5% which appears to be systemic rather than fixable. This is a big lever that won’t move.

Fundamentally, testimonials are not a big market. It’s not reviews, it’s not feedback, it’s a little, awesome niche and we may have tapped it out.

I’m an engineer now. I spend my time fixing papercuts to improve lifecycle performance. These are reviewed by Nikolai who is now mainly working on our bigger bets and more complex engineering challenges.

Craft is still important to me. I’m still talking to customers, reworking and refining screens and flows, and agonising over small details. But I also iterate on the product every day.

I have been struggling with my health. I’m nomadic and have been lucky to visit 10 countries already this year. If I want to hit other goals including PBs in the gym I will probably need to travel less.

I hired for hard work and energy, and I’ve got it. I have to tell my team to work less, not more. I feel lucky to have it that way.

I think building trust is getting harder which is making the concept of collecting and sharing proof more marketable… but educating and changing buyer behaviour is hard to do when LTV is high, and impossible when low.

I’m both excited for the business and team, and extremely uncertain about the future

I'm an engineer now

We're running an experiment at @SenjaHQ

I vibe code what I want, open a PR, and @ngrushkovsky reviews and merges

He can then focus on the more complex technical challenges of serving 3,000 customers

And I can add a collapsible navigation

@nico_jeannen says you’re sleeping on @TryAdkit

Here in spirit @euboid

I’m tripling our marketing spend

From $5k a month to $15k a month

I want @startupwithana to start taking bigger bets

This money will be used to book paid sponsorships

Sponsoring educators with large audiences to create content about proof and Senja

Our priority will be ebinars, YouTube videos and email sequences

If you can't answer this question you're ngmi

Why do your customers LOVE you?

What do you do better than your competitors?

This is the foundation of your marketing

Sharing and proving your secret sauce

In your landing pages, your paid ads, your comparison pages, your cold ts, and even your page titles

So how do you do it?

First, ask them

Second, and more easily, review the feedback they have already shared with you

We're making that ridiculously easy for @SenjaHQ customers

They can now see their testimonial themes

See what their customers love about their product, policies and team

It looks like this, and it's live now...

I haven't slept well in 6 years

And I've spent the last year dealing with the fallout of my cofounder leaving

But I'm finally in a place where I can take a proper break, spend time in nature and work on my health

I am going to visit Madeira to hang out with some mates, relax, I am off to @MicroConf Iceland to chat SaaS and hang out with @nico_jeannen and @AlexandruGlv

I'm leaving Senja in the capable hands of @startupwithana @ngrushkovsky and Rani

It's been a slog, but I am super excited that we're working well together as a small team

Here's the email I sent them

I can't stop laughing 😂

We actually did it!

We hit 50 days of thanking our customers

We sent every new paying customer, partner, affiliate, webinar attendee, and friend a thank you email

Each one had a custom video attached

In fact @startupwithana alone sent over 1,000 thank yous

When was the last omer or showed them some love?

Before → After

AB test is currently live

Which do you think will drive more sign ups?

Also, please speak to an accountant because your effective tax rate on £125k should be 37% not 45%.

You are due a rebate.

I've wasted 1000s of hours

I've spent so much time thinking about users outside our ICP

People who signed up and used us, but Senja isn't really built for

Reviewing sign ups, churn and activation for people that will probably never love us, or stay

We're stopping that today
porting now only surfaces our ICP

We're only reviewing how onboarding, activation and churn looks for them

We're going to find more people who love what we do and get more of them to success

So we're basically returning to our product-led foundations

Over 700 paying customers churned this year

The main reason?

They're no longer collecting testimonials

Most marketers collect testimonials once or twice a year as campaigns

We can encourage ongoing collection, but that's trying to create new buyer behaviour

What would you viour, or start targeting new buyers?

I just renamed a Senja feature after 4 years

Manage → Find

Manage sounds like admin. One more job on your list.

You don't manage testimonials for fun.

You do it to find the right one for your sales decks, presentations and ads.

Find is an opportunity.

Find the perfect eal. Close more of them.

Here's the before and after.

What do you think?

It's harder to build trust than ever before

There's too many fakers

Fake claims
Fake revenue screen shots
Fake challenges
Fake products

Make sure your claims are verifiable

Our new landing page includes testimonials that are verified

Roll over and see when and where the ed

Click through to the original post

So you can build trust and sell more

What do you think?

v2 with Claude Code

I already got it to read a blog someone recommended and implement the recommendations

Hate this @SenjaHQ dropdown

Anyone got any examples of sexy looking marketing website dropdowns?

Yesterday I crashed out

I waited 10 mins for the Claude Code to to update a menu in Framer

In typical founder fashion, that led to 9 hours recreating the @SenjaHQ marketing website in @astrodotbuild

It's not finished yet, but it's getting there

And the speed is insane

I was ges, inject Senja testimonials and widgets, and pull in recent updates and assets from Slack, Linear and Notion

Of course it's connected to @github too, so it can write accurate and up-to-date copy about the features

The website is also meaningfully faster to load

Most importantly, it will be faster to update ongoing

Before and after

How do apps like @Deliveroo get away with it?

When I placed the order the estimated delivery time was 10 mins

After placing it, it jumps to 40mins

It's 28 mins just to *deliver* the 2 miles after pickup

So it's going to be cold and it's going to be late

I don't understand use fake estimated times

I can go back to the same restaurant now and it STILL says 10 -20 mins from *order*

I know it's the ultimate first world problem, but their whole system is built on lying about delivery times

The SPEED

I've already migrated about 40 pages and I've been testing some new ideas as I go

never going to bed so relocated to @UseCorgi's London cafe

This is going faster than I expected:

Goodbye my weekend

YOLO

You need to know why your customers love you

It's a multiplier

Knowing why your customers love you makes you a better copywriter

Which leads to marketing copy that makes people stop and pay attention

Higher-converting ads, landing pages, forms, emails, and social posts

If customers love you, read and analyse their reviews, testimonials and feedback

Look for common themes, common words, and common phrases

@KateBour calls this "review mining" and it's a massive under-tapped technique to write better copy

Start compiling your reviews today

Or if you use Senja, just use our new feature "Your customers talk about"

We're going back to basics.

@ngrushkovsky has spent the last few months getting familiar with @SenjaHQ's code base, removing product debt, fixing bugs and setting up systems.

We even have some new features in the pipeline: Thank Yous and Reels.

But now our focus returns to uct decisions.

Using @posthog to identify where we're not successfully activating, retaining or upgrading users - and fixing it.

Meanwhile @startupwithana is focused on growing sign ups for Senja.

Our sign ups have been flat for almost a year.

This makes sense as I stopped marketing.

Instead I was focused on getting an awesome, lean team in place after @euboid left.

(as well as the existential issues in the creator educator space, our key ICP).

We're now focused on the hidden multipliers that can 3x our sign ups, not 100s of small wins.

@asmartbear's new book and podcast have been incredible for guiding and prioritising our marketing plans.

Too much of our marketing has been spray and pray.

I've been obsessed with how we can drive more sign ups this week, rather than this quarter or this year.

That season of the business is over.

Now I have to make strategic decisions and leave the smart people I've hired to execute them.

It's time for me to get a hobby!

Stripe just invented a new pricing tier then shamed me for being a freeloader 😬

Should I turn this off in Stripe?

She did it!!!

@startupwithana spoke to 330 Senja customers, leads and partners in 7 weeks

She even drove 500km to have a coffee with a customer

Should I move Senja into a new category?

For a few months I've been consider moving Senja into a new SaaS category.

One that has a bigger market, where a v2 of our product can drive new sales and address our revenue plateau.

We've always struggled with having to educate a solution aware.

This feels like doing 100x marketing for a 2x problem for a high churn (prosumer) ICP.

I love what I've built but I there are a few options I am considering.

(and random thoughts for each)

Continue with testimonials
Stick with testimonials, keep removing papercuts in the product, focus on marketing.

Assume I am underestimating market size(?) Or acknowledge it's a small market, but dominate it, especially for our ICP.

Move into Shopify reviews
Reviews market is 100x bigger than testimonials, and tools like @judgeme are growing insanely fast. Shopify encourages customers to install review apps.

Reviews are always-on for every order, not triggered by a good experience, which drives more Powered By.

Great ecosystem of experts and influencers to distribute.

We would be a tiny fish in a big ocean.

Move into Made For You [Canva for customer stories]
We have a Studio in Senja where people can make assets like Walls of Love, widgets and reels.

Can we make this more powerful? Automations, AI-generated assets, and one-click social scheduling?

Make Senja the home for customer-centred marketers. Move away from being a tool and into being an actual marketing channel.

Being more customer-centred in the age of AI is a story I think I can tell and sell.

Move into Feedback
To be clear: feedback not forms.

1000x market but seems pretty commoditised with lots of players.

Where does feedback live inside Senja? Does Senja stop being a home for only positive feedback?

Some customers already use Senja for feedback and we have a simple rating mechanic on forms.

Leads to requests for reporting and monitoring?

I saw @damonchen move into NPS and brand monitoring but it doesn't really inspire me.

Move into Customer Success Software / CRM
The classic: moving up-market.

Testimonials and case studies are one part of customer success.

What if Senja was THE tool for customer success teams.

There are many tools in this space but they are heavy, ugly, enterprise solutions.

We've already been doogfooding a Thank Yous concept in Senja - send video thank yous, attach gifts, discounts, and access to new features.

This is a first move in this direction and feels like a good space to be in "in the age of AI, focus on being human and driving customer success"

Harder to sell to but lower churn(?), and ICP is SaaS which aligns with my #buildinpublic.

Question I am asking myself
- Which of these ideas could live inside the existing Senja product and be unlocked with expansion?
- Which of these ideas am I uniquely positioned to distribute?
- Which direction has existing buyers in market aka search volume with high-intent traffic?
- Which direction is more defensible in the age of AI?
- Which direction aligns with my values and what does my gut say?
- What do our existing (3,000) customers want?
- What is deepen with existing customers versus pivot to new ones?

What would you do?

@framer How do I close this?

We're on a 20-day thank you streak

We've sent at least one thank you a day for at the last 20 days

When was the last time you thanked a customer, partner or lead?

Senja's revenue has been stuck at $1,000,000 ARR

Sign ups are flat and the old marketing playbooks aren't working

Which is why I hired @startupwithana to be my professional yapper

Instead of turning to AI to systematise our marketing, I am going the other way

Looking for ways o things that don't scale

Which is why we launched the Yappometer

It helps us track every conversation we have with a customer, partner, affiliate or expert

Whether that's a 1:1 call, an in-person coffee, or a chat at an event

All tracked and reported inside @SenjaHQ

Finally omw back to London

Succession and @SenjaHQ keeping me busy

It's really fun

We added reactions and streaks to encourage more thanking, gifting and unlocking

We're also adding features that support group thanking with discount codes etc

You need to stop launching new features

Instead you should give beta access to upcoming features to your biggest fans

Then collect feedback from them to improve the feature and make it more useful

Once improved, you can launch it with all customers

In Senja we've built the ers with an invite to try new features

You compose an email, film a video, and "attach a feature"

This saves me time - I don't need to ask @ngrushkovsky to grant feature access per customer account

And creates a fun ritual for the customer

What do you think?

@linear Any ideas?

We sent 173 Thank You videos this month

And hit a 16-day thanking streak

We've thanked

→ Customers
→ Webinar attendees
→ Affiliates
→ Team members
→ Partners
→ Experts

The Buffer API is a lot of fun @joelgascoigne

We're exploring scheduling your customers' stories directly inside @SenjaHQ

Very rough but loving this so far @ngrushkovsky

#buildinpublic

This is your annual reminder to optimize your Calendly

No I am referring to this

I did try your tool but got blocked immediately and your in-app support was AI and no help

I then replied to your automated cancellation email (which for some reason I received 3 times) and didn't hear back (and did not expect to)

The email you shared was from '25 when you diddidn't follow up, but does not relate to my tweet

We've generated over $220,000 from affiliates

But we need a new affiliate software to take it to $1,000,000

Who should we try?

Flew to Tulsa to hang out with a friend (and Senja customer)

Walked him through a new feature over cocktails

Then lost an arm wrestle to an 18 year old who'd never met someone with an accent before

AI video is actually insane

I told @startupwithana she needs to use Senja EVERY SINGLE DAY

Because you're meant to dogfood your own product

And our marketing plan is to use Senja to grow Senja

But right now, Ana is focused on speaking to folks

1:1 on calls with customers, partners, affiliates and other hy we just shipped the ✨Yappometer✨

Ana can track and review her progress to the goal... inside Senja

I am not sure we'll ever launch this publicly

But it's friggin' awesome

#buildininpublic

@joelgascoigne did you ever share any insights on how streaks drives activation?

Is Avios a scam?

Exact same hotel, dates and room type

But when using the avios link @bookingcom reduce the discount and the room rate increases

So you're just paying for the points?

Maybe this was obvious to everyone else?

I thought avios point collection was an added benefit?

We're going the other way

Less automation, less slop, more human

Here's our most recent product announcement from @startupwithana

We're going the other way

Less automation, less AI, more human

Here's our most recent product announcement from @startupwithana

Our new marketer drove 500km to have coffee with a customer

This is how you do it!!!!

Human marketing that doesn't scale

@startupwithana drove to meet a @SenjaHQ customer and took them for a coffee

They went from cancelling to this...

#buildinpublic

We sent our whole email list an erotic short story

I went from 'only do things that scale' to...

flying out to hang with Senja customers in person

My ex cofounder is still DOMINATING our product roadmap

Anything he suggests gets listed on @linear [and tagged Wilson]

Partly to prove to him I've still got it🕺

And partly because he has some of the best product thinking out there

Thanks @euboid

Saturday is such an elite day to work

Cowork is empty, no new emails to firefight

Just deep flow and doomscrolling X for bootstrapper drama

This is how collected 100s of customer videos

We setup a Zap to invite customers to leave a testimonial 2 hours after they upgraded

Now, we've built a native @stripe integration

Connect Stripe, set the rules, and we'll automate testimonial invites while you sleep

For now, your best bet would be a Zap but we have a LOT more native integrations coming soon

Beautiful sky in Austin tonight

Want to collect 100s of testimonials?

Ask at the RIGHT time

We're adding automatic testimonial collection at Senja

Connect @stripe and automate an invite series after your customer pays you

We used this system to collect 100s of testimonials and now we're making it available blic

There is no unsubscribe link!

The fact that @postmarkapp let you get away with this is wild to me.

Back in Austin!

Probably my favourite US city.

Only been here 24 hours and already been to three founder meetups.

The perfect energy to lock in and scale Senja.

@postmarkapp I have marked these emails from polsia spam 20+ times and I am still receiving them

Is there anything you can do to stop me receiving them?

This is not a good look for you guys

Just shipped 🚀🚀

Our customers can now see the status of invites they've sent

Sent, opened, clicked, testimonial collected

They can also pause any invite sequence

Next up? Automate testimonial collection.

Connect @stripe and automate a testimonial request when someone to be back to shipping #buildinpublic

I'm bored of marketing

So I'm asking our customers to do it instead

I'm paying them to record videos using our SaaS

And then using them in our marketing and sales #buildinpublic

I created a Senja form for them to upload a walkthrough of their favourite feature and pay $150
I'm working to make @SenjaHQ's marketing more human and more story-led, to help us stand out in the age of AI

@yongfook bannerbear on stage at the @DynamiteCircle conference in Mexico City

@Railway I've turned these off about 10 times and still get them?

We did it!!!

35,000 testimonial forms migrated

Back to shipping the best proof product

Still the 🐐

One day @euboid

Confession

For years Senja had two versions of testimonial forms: Classic and 2.0

Every user had to pick. Every support convo started with "which one are you on?" Every flow got built twice.

Today we're merging them. All 34,000.

This is the biggest technical and UX debt in it lays the foundation for significant improvements to forms, invites, feedback and automations.

It also makes educating customers much easier.

Please pray for us 🙏

#buildinpublic

We just made shipping a great product 100x easier

@ngrushkovsky just shipped a plan / role switcher

I can quickly impersonate any account on any tier with any role

Ideal for quickly reviewing paywalls and feature access

#buildinpublic

Our revenue at Senja has plateaued

We're up 40% in the last 365 days

But month on month growth is basically 0

As our customer number increased, our churn and upgrades have met (about 10 a day)

Now what?

#buildinpublic

$10,000 sponsorship BOOKED ✅

My biggest ever marketing bet for @SenjaHQ

My first sober conference!

@MicroConf Portland was fantastic, and I enjoyed it without booze

Last year in New Orleans I missed the second day of programming after a few too many cocktails and far too many shots

This year I challenged myself to stay focused on my health goals - g every day before the conference

It was challenging and there were lots of temptations, but I am leaving today feeling proud of myself

I also had some FANTASTIC conversations with folks like @asmartbear @harisenbon79 @oakuzmenkov @punchlinecopy @mynameis_davis and many many others

I also got to hang out with my coach @TheCraigHewitt IRL

If you're a bootstrapper, @MicroConf should be top of your list

It's a place where smart, interesting, ambitious founders come together to connect, share, and lift each other up

Everyone is equally valid and celebrated, whether at $1 or $1,000,000 MRR

Every time I leave feeling connected, seen, and ready to hit my goals

Thanks @robwalling for creating something so special

Rob just announced Microconf US 2027 is going to be in Austin!

Amazing city, going to be a vintage year @robwalling

@euboid @pbteja1998 it’s @asmartbear sharing your tweets at @Microconf

Made it to Portland ready for @microconf US 26!

🤏 We're this close to launching our AI bug fixing pipeline

It gracefully connects @linear @jamdotdev @claudeai @sentry and @greptile

@framer Are they an admin or an editor?

Senja's MCP is coming soon!!!

Use your customers' language and stories to compose emails, landing pages and social posts

Directly inject testimonials and testimonial widgets when creating assets

Manage your account: approve, unapprove, delete, tag, remove tag

Find the most ngle time

Fundamentally, use it to centre your customer stories in your marketing. No more unproven and abstract claims - share real stories.

Cannot wait to release this #buildinpublic