Ask HN: One-person SaaS apps that are profitable? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: One-person SaaS apps that are profitable?

#291

Post by yjftsjthsd-h » Sat, Apr 20, 2019, 4:01 PM UTC

chii wrote: post #175

lynnetye wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

^^^ This. Key Values is not valuable because of its code. In fact, it's a simple static site that I could rebuild in a couple of days if I wanted to. I meet a lot of technical founders who love coding and avoid doing everything else. They run the risk of building a lot of fancy features that no one wants or needs.

> technical founders who love coding and avoid doing everything else. the truth is that these tech co-founders are really looking for a playground to have fun with code/tech, the same way a kid wants to play lego. Building a business is not fun at all. There are tonnes of mundane stuff, and these are fairly important. A technical co-founder is quite likely to have quit their previou job because they want to create an…

I once saw a line that went something like, "to a systems programmer, all users and applications serve merely to provide a test load". There are plenty of people who just want to build stuff, and oh by the way it would be handy if we had some users to test the technology:)

Re: Ask HN: One-person SaaS apps that are profitable?

#292

Post by aacook » Sat, Apr 20, 2019, 4:18 PM UTC

kohanz wrote: post #283

aacook wrote: post #137

Go for it! I'm working on NanaGram ( https://nanagram.co ) solo and bootstrapped. Although I'm not making a full-time income yet, it's generating a profit. It's mostly automated. NanaGram is the 3rd greatest generator of happiness and fulfillment in my life (after my wife and my dog). I get a constant stream of good vibes from customers, most recently voicemails from grandmothers! ( https://nanagram.co/blog/feedback-…

Love your site! My story is very similar with my project VidHug ( https://vidhug.com ). Helping people spread joy & love is definitely a great motivator!

Beautiful. Best of luck. :)

Re: Ask HN: One-person SaaS apps that are profitable?

#293

Post by coderholic » Sat, Apr 20, 2019, 4:35 PM UTC

GordonS wrote: post #273

brianwillis wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You got my GPS coordinates almost exactly correct. That's incredibly worrying. I mean, it's impressive from a technical standpoint; but still, worrying.

It puts me hundreds of miles out, in the wrong country. I find these IP lookup tools vary greatly - some will match certain IP blocks better than others.

Yeah, accuracy definitely varies by ISP, and region. If you'd be willing to share your IP or ISP with me (ben@ipinfo.io) I'd love to look into it and see what we might have been able to do / be able to do in the future to get a more precise location for you.

Re: Ask HN: One-person SaaS apps that are profitable?

#294

Post by azhawkes » Sat, Apr 20, 2019, 5:12 PM UTC

rlonn wrote: post #246

azhawkes wrote: post #154

I'm the solo founder of Loadster ( https://loadster.app ) which has been profitable for a while and is now making me pretty close to a comfortable living. I really enjoy the freedom and variety that comes with running a SaaS, and while the grass is always greener on the other side, I think I'm pretty much ruined for a regular job at this point. So beware! One piece of unsolicited advice: if I were to start all over a…

Great work w Loadster. Didn't know it was a solo effort! I founded another load testing service - loadimpact.com, which is doing very well but certainly not a solo effort and has taken on investors along the way. I'm now trying to build something solo again, and would echo the advice to go for something less technical. Plus do B2B if financial success is important. I have three projects atm, trying to figure out whic…

Hey thanks Ragnar it's good to hear from you! Those both look great. Pushdata seems like an excellent idea – having done some stuff with InfluxDB I can definitely see the appeal of fully managed timeseries data without the worry of scaling it yourself. I guess Amazon and other big competitors will want this space too, but they won't be able to touch the simplicity of something like this. Best of luck!

Re: Ask HN: One-person SaaS apps that are profitable?

#295

Post by voipspear » Sat, Apr 20, 2019, 5:16 PM UTC

GordonS wrote: post #280

voipspear wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We’re not monitoring phone calls. We’re monitoring the network conditions. This means we can provide an estimate of call quality even when there’s no calls on the network.

I'm struggling to understand why this would be useful, so I guess I'm not the target market - can you say something about who this is useful for, why they want to see this info, and what they can do with it?

It's frustrating for people who experience voice quality issues because the problems are usually intermittent. This means that, by the time they contact their service providers, the problem is not occurring and they just get a lame 'have you tried rebooting your modem/router' response.

VoIP Spear monitors 24x7x365 so customers can provide historical data to their service providers to show the issue occurred.

Also, service providers use VoIP Spear because they want help troubleshooting. They are also frustrated that the issue is no longer occurring by the time the customer calls for support.

Re: Ask HN: One-person SaaS apps that are profitable?

#296

Post by anthonylee » Sat, Apr 20, 2019, 5:53 PM UTC

aerovistae wrote: post #141

anthonylee wrote: post #67

https://letterfromyou.com/ Letter from You is a service that allows business owners to connect with their clients through beautifully handwritten letters. It's my first side project and currently talking to some larger recurring companies.

That is a really clever, original idea for a business, I mean it. Damn.

Thanks. =)

Re: Ask HN: One-person SaaS apps that are profitable?

#297

Post by anthonylee » Sat, Apr 20, 2019, 5:55 PM UTC

55555 wrote: post #152

aerovistae wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a really clever, original idea for a business, I mean it. Damn.

It's actually not at all original. Maybe he independently came up with the idea, but there are tons of these.

You are right, there are few services out there. I think what we makes us different is that we make the letter top quality.

Re: Ask HN: One-person SaaS apps that are profitable?

#298

Post by tpkj » Sat, Apr 20, 2019, 6:01 PM UTC

throw03172019 wrote: post #168

tpkj wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you able to share any info regarding the type of customer (B2B or B2C), the number of customers, and the method of customer acquisition? Depending on the nature of the product offering, healthcare can be seriously difficult market to enter.

It is B2B but their is usually only 1-5 decision makers in one practice (privately owned plastic surgery practice) but they move quite slow. We got a lot of traction going to a few conferences and signed them up at the meeting. We have not done any online marketing.

Ok, thanks; not as many barriers to entry I suppose compared with larger health institutions.

Re: Ask HN: One-person SaaS apps that are profitable?

#299

Post by GordonS » Sat, Apr 20, 2019, 6:27 PM UTC

voipspear wrote: post #295

GordonS wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm struggling to understand why this would be useful, so I guess I'm not the target market - can you say something about who this is useful for, why they want to see this info, and what they can do with it?

It's frustrating for people who experience voice quality issues because the problems are usually intermittent. This means that, by the time they contact their service providers, the problem is not occurring and they just get a lame 'have you tried rebooting your modem/router' response. VoIP Spear monitors 24x7x365 so customers can provide historical data to their service providers to show the issue occurred. Also, se…

So this is targeted at SMEs that don't have an in-house sysadmin/ops monitoring capability?

Re: Ask HN: One-person SaaS apps that are profitable?

#300

Post by GordonS » Sat, Apr 20, 2019, 6:28 PM UTC

coderholic wrote: post #293

GordonS wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It puts me hundreds of miles out, in the wrong country. I find these IP lookup tools vary greatly - some will match certain IP blocks better than others.

Yeah, accuracy definitely varies by ISP, and region. If you'd be willing to share your IP or ISP with me (ben@ipinfo.io) I'd love to look into it and see what we might have been able to do / be able to do in the future to get a more precise location for you.

No offense, but I'd rather it wasn't too accurate ;)