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Ask HN: Starting a SaaS business as non-technical founder

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Re: Ask HN: Starting a SaaS business as non-technical founder

#31

Post by dragonwriter »

beering wrote: post #22
rtx wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment comes off as xenophobic. I know it's acceptable in tech circle to talk this way, but not cool.

OK, so how do we talk about the prevalence of awful off-shore software-development firms without being "xenophobic"? If you're going to lecture us on how we talk, at least offer an alternative?

> OK, so how do we talk about the prevalence of awful off-shore software-development firms without being "xenophobic"?

We don't, when the problem under discussion is endemic to outsourcing firms and has no particular connection to their location. The fact that there are lots of outsourcing firms that are, relative to where the demand for their services is, also offshore is completely beside the point.

Raising that irrelevancy is the problem.

Re: Ask HN: Starting a SaaS business as non-technical founder

#32

Post by pier25 »

johnmcauley wrote: post #18

I’m a CTO in a 20 man startup and have been through the ringer on several different projects through my career. This is a difficult situation as positive founders that you can build a company with are hard to come by (been there) and outsourcing is a minefield. I would suggest not to engage with an offshore outsourcing company, I have had terrible experiences here (they may tell u they are under NDA so cannot share a…

> most startups are based on iteration

This, a thousand times.

Getting it right is not tracing a path on a map. Once you start traversing the terrain your perception about the thing will change. You will hit dead ends that you hadn't considered when looking at the map. You will realize you should have used another road or that you made a bad turn. You may realize the trip is not worth it after all. Etc.

Outsourcing when you're trying to figure it out is super expensive. Even more when you don't have the technical knowledge. Like John above said, it's better to find a cheap dev to produce a quick a dirty MVP, knowing this won't be the final product.

Another great metaphor I've found that helps think about this is that you don't build a car from scratch by building each part independently. You start with a kick scooter, then you make a bike, then you make a motorbike... until you finally make a car. The bigger the product, the more complex it will be, and the more interactions between all the involved parts.

Re: Ask HN: Starting a SaaS business as non-technical founder

#33

Post by sideproject »

What have you tried? I've been talking to quite a few no-code people in regards to a little tool I built called Newsy

https://www.newsy.co

Basically, it turns an un-used domain into a content aggregator (e.g. Reddit). But it does have quite a lot of features to build..

- contents via RSS and keywords - membership, subscribers, automated newsletters - traffic via sharing on twitter, tumblr etc - monetization through ads - SEO with sharing links with other users and building backlinks

The reason I mention is that many no-code people I spoke to found it an interesting way to "test out" the particular interest market and build some traffic (or at least try out) before diving in.

Re: Ask HN: Starting a SaaS business as non-technical founder

#34

Post by pier25 »

dragonwriter wrote: post #30
rimjongun wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it doesn’t, He mentions His reasoning. Nothing in His reasoning gave off the vibe that he is afraid of others because they are different. ::prays for downvote button::

> No it doesn’t, Yes, it does. If the “offshore” weren't in it, it would be just as accurate and not xenophobic.

"Offshore" is there most likely because it's so common to outsource work to cheaper countries and not because of any xenophobia.

Re: Ask HN: Starting a SaaS business as non-technical founder

#35

Post by jitendrac »

I would say, Lean to code.

Divide your SaaS project in small unit of task, explore each section unit by some video tutorial at first-good for first. try on youtube, freecodecamp or udemy. gain knowledge of subject and make small function to demonstrate the part of your saas products capability. Explore and learn, you can later hire some dev, co-founder or CTO of tech background.

For coding, I would say put your efforts in some nice language Eco-system. Python is just fine no offense, but If I were at your place I would use PHP or node. My reasoning: PHP is language of my personal preference. For node, Its basically javascript at server-side, so It requires you to learn just a single language, its features and tooling. if you are writing web app you can share codebase of many part of frontend and backend.

Re: Ask HN: Starting a SaaS business as non-technical founder

#36

Post by ozim »

arkadiyt wrote: post #5

There is an explosion of no-code tools these days - companies have gotten paying customers and become profitable without writing a single line of code. I'd try making a PoC and seeing if you can find interested customers.

I would say low code platforms are great tools for starting up. If you are successful v2 can be done in real programming language because you would get paying customers.

Most of the time I hear about it is companies that have software developers trying to cut costs by incorporating low code. That is really foolish.

Re: Ask HN: Starting a SaaS business as non-technical founder

#37

Post by codegeek »

rtx wrote: post #19
johnmcauley wrote: post #18

I’m a CTO in a 20 man startup and have been through the ringer on several different projects through my career. This is a difficult situation as positive founders that you can build a company with are hard to come by (been there) and outsourcing is a minefield. I would suggest not to engage with an offshore outsourcing company, I have had terrible experiences here (they may tell u they are under NDA so cannot share a…

Your comment comes off as xenophobic. I know it's acceptable in tech circle to talk this way, but not cool.

To be fair to GP, they did say it is ok to work with a direct engineer even if offshore vs offshore agencies that are just looking for a "project". I agree with him and I run offshore teams.

Re: Ask HN: Starting a SaaS business as non-technical founder

#39

Post by jbverschoor »

jitendrac wrote: post #35

I would say, Lean to code. Divide your SaaS project in small unit of task, explore each section unit by some video tutorial at first-good for first. try on youtube, freecodecamp or udemy. gain knowledge of subject and make small function to demonstrate the part of your saas products capability. Explore and learn, you can later hire some dev, co-founder or CTO of tech background. For coding, I would say put your effor…

If he’ll starts to learn how to code, he won’t be good at coding nor business.

Re: Ask HN: Starting a SaaS business as non-technical founder

#40

Post by fny »

ekidd wrote: post #20

I co-founded a startup that had a technically-solid product that people swore they wanted. It failed. I've also worked for a number of successful startups. And I've consulted for startups that succeeded, and ones that sank without a trace. If there's any pattern I can see with the non-technical founders, it's that some knowledge of coding is certainly nice, if only so the founders can talk to the actual coders. But c…

Don't forget that MVPs don't need to be apps.

I'm a technical guy, but the first start up I joined started selling sheets of paper to clients at a premium before we scaled to an app.

If you can get a business running with spreadsheets, you'll have a lot of leverage bringing devs to the table.

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