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Ask HN: As a new SaaS business, how do you find your first 10 paying clients?

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Re: Ask HN: As a new SaaS business, how do you find your first 10 paying clients?

#11
I run an enterprise SaaS and I will say that the process of selling software that has never existed is extremely challenging. We essentially are a software tool that manages the process of selling distressed inventory. It is very easy to get meetings, really hard to close deals.

The main pushback we see is the following: 1) It is hard to get budget carved out for new enterprise software without explicitly showing saved time, saved money or more money. The best bet is to find a "champion" will will work with you to build out case studies and sell internally. The issue for that person though is they are going out on a limb and that is a double edged sword.

2) We were selling software to someone that essentially did the same job as our software. It created a lot of feet dragging and undermining. It wasn't in a malicious way but its hard to go in and disrupt the "old school" way of doing it.

With all that being said, the more customers you get, the easier it gets. The early ones can work with you to build out case studies that let you narrow down the key benefits and that can be used to sell new customers.

My friends that successfully sell software for a living often sell software that everyone already owns a version of and they know exactly who to speak to. I think those are the two hardest parts and once you can get past that, again, its just about saving time, saving money or making more money.

Re: Ask HN: As a new SaaS business, how do you find your first 10 paying clients?

#12
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes indeed. This seems the only solution that emerged from everything I tried and I wondered if I'm doing something wrong. These 10 clients, are also the ones that are going to allow me to raise capital from a VC. It's quite brutal to be honest.

> These 10 clients, are also the ones that are going to allow me to raise capital from a VC. Be careful -- that is a common(?) way for VCs to also say no -- "come back when you have 10 clients" which next time becomes "come back when you have 50 clients" and it goes on forever. Not saying that is the case here, but, don't put all your eggs in one basket that you will be ready to raise when you have 10 clients.

Yes, you are absolutely right.

In the same time, you cannot go wrong with selling to 10 clients if this is something withing the reach. In the same time this can be very strenuous when you run on small budget and the runway is within sight.

Re: Ask HN: As a new SaaS business, how do you find your first 10 paying clients?

#13
post #11

I run an enterprise SaaS and I will say that the process of selling software that has never existed is extremely challenging. We essentially are a software tool that manages the process of selling distressed inventory. It is very easy to get meetings, really hard to close deals. The main pushback we see is the following: 1) It is hard to get budget carved out for new enterprise software without explicitly showing sav…

This seems indeed the key to most sales, almost regardless of what the product does (to some extent). Talking to the right people internally, showing how they can make more money and save time.

Getting there thought might take quite a while :)

Re: Ask HN: As a new SaaS business, how do you find your first 10 paying clients?

#14
Can you integrate with anything that is already frequently used (ala Salesforce or Zendesk)? Do you have a unique application for a specific industry that you can document? I saw someone said run Google or Facebook ads - hard to argue with that. But to get your first 10 paying customers you probably need to go the organic route. I would leverage an SEO strategy where you barnacle on highly adopted platforms - think Quora, Medium, or even Facebook Groups or LinkedIn Groups.

Re: Ask HN: As a new SaaS business, how do you find your first 10 paying clients?

#15
Regarding your (understandable) compliance woes:

I’m getting around some difficult compliance issues by allowing on-premises installs. You might be thinking “well that’s not SaaS”, but at least some big-name SaaS providers (e.g. GitHub Enterprise) offer that.

Re: Ask HN: As a new SaaS business, how do you find your first 10 paying clients?

#16
Ideally you want to start with companies who are desperate enough to use you because the problem is so painful for them.

Try to think if there is a subset of companies that expierice the problem your startup solves in a more dire way than others.

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