41–50 of 76 posts
https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses/convertkit ... follow the link to his blog about the "Web app challenge" and he blogs about the entire process as it happened
Wildly successful too ... $600k MRR in just a few years https://convertkit.baremetrics.com/
If it were the case that this was normally a group of freelancers making a killing, charging high consulting rates, it would be different. But almost in all cases they are using 'freelance developers' because they cannot afford to pay market rates in the US and can't afford benefits. Even in those other countries, there is a global economy. Those developers might be doing OK, but they are not getting wealthy.
If you try to do it as if the developers are separate and not a core part of the team, that can't work either. Either you acknowledge how critical they are to your business or you just take advantage of them and hope they don't find something better and your business doesn't fall apart.
It is freakishly hard to build a successful SAAS if you have funding and a solid team. Doing it alone as a solo non-programmer has got to feel like trying to drink the ocean. I've never been able to figure out how non-programmers can sift through mounds of freelancers to find a good developer. And, even if they find good developers, I have no idea how they manage to motivate and retain them. I'd love to read some sto…
It depends entirely on the SAAS. A non-programmer friend of mine paid peanuts to an off-shore programmer to build an über simple slack-clone with Firebase + Angular + Phonegap. He has two paying customers so far. Will this scale? Probably not but if he reaches 20 customers he'll have the money for the rockstars. This friend is a sales ninja, the tech is not an obstacle for him.
I'm a developer and have helped bootstrap a couple of SaaS. The problem is that in most partnerships like this, the other person can usually only offer ideas or something very minimal with regards to the success of the business. I usually end up just doing everything myself. Unless you offer something besides just the idea (money, contacts, industry experience). The partnership will not work. I've had to quit a few s…
Similar experience here. If the other person in the proposed partnership cannot demonstrate equivalent-value skills and equivalent previous success in critical-to-the-business areas where I'm weak (or uninterested) like sales, marketing, biz-dev, enterprise sales, acquiring VC - then my answer is almost certainly going to be "Sure, $8k/month is my usual rate - discounts of 20% for 3 month or longer block bookings. Wh…
This is logical from a developer standpoint, but has it ever worked. Has any one ever paid 50% upfront.
It's not possible unless you have enough money to pay a good developer salary. I've been a part of one once, and the only reason I dealt with the clueless founders was because they paid me better than a regular coding job. So yeah, it's possible, if you're rich or can get funding before you've got a product. I've also been approached by countless guys asking me to work on their startup for free or something like 10%…
Do you advice the developer to accept the offer for 60% equity ?.
I'm in the process of bootstrapping a SaaS. I'll say it's absolutely possible, or more precisely, it has equal chance as the programmer going it alone has. The simple reason being that the product is only a tiny piece of the puzzle. I find the opposite question equally as valid. Why is it assumed that a programmer can bootstrap a successful SaaS alone? To build an application, you need someone who can identify an opp…
I'm in the process of bootstrapping a SaaS. I'll say it's absolutely possible, or more precisely, it has equal chance as the programmer going it alone has. The simple reason being that the product is only a tiny piece of the puzzle. I find the opposite question equally as valid. Why is it assumed that a programmer can bootstrap a successful SaaS alone? To build an application, you need someone who can identify an opp…
Absolutely. I contracted for a person who built a small but very profitable SaaS app using contractors. There are some caveats though. The person has a smattering of technical knowledge which prevented him from being completely taken advantage of by contractors. And he was an effective manager (a rarity to be sure). And he knew exactly what he wanted and stayed on top of details of how it was implemented. Although no…
Citation required. Please post links to the products.