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Ask HN: When is it time to give up on a side project SaaS?

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Re: Ask HN: When is it time to give up on a side project SaaS?

#61

Post by nickfromseattle »

zeptonix wrote: post #31
Veen wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You will find plenty of marketing experts all around you, but none of them will work for a commission You won't find many developers who work on a commission either.

The developers have a lot more risks (the product never gets built, the product at its end isn't compelling, the founder moves on to something else and/or there never is any follow-through). The marketers are being asked to help take something that already has been built and make it take off. I think his point is a valid one that this isn't something you often see, which does run a bit counterintuitive to what you'd…

Developers building products that noone uses is the status quo.

There are likely hundreds of thousands, or millions of developer built apps with no users.

Just because a product was built does not meet the only thing left is marketing.

In fact, I would rather have great marketing than a great product.

A lousy product with revenue can be iterated on more quickly than a great product with no revenue.

Re: Ask HN: When is it time to give up on a side project SaaS?

#62

Post by jwr »

nickfromseattle wrote: post #60
Veen wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You will find plenty of marketing experts all around you, but none of them will work for a commission You won't find many developers who work on a commission either.

> * You will find plenty of marketing experts all around you, but none of them will work for a commission, which speaks to how much trust they really place in their "skills". Your product is unproven. How do I know you can convert and retain a qualified audience?

In my case, it's very much proven. I can show organic growth over 4 years, retention stats (excellent), etc. — it's very clear what the traction is and compared to incoming traffic, all parameters are excellent. So this is not the problem.

Re: Ask HN: When is it time to give up on a side project SaaS?

#63

Post by jwr »

Veen wrote: post #23
jwr wrote: post #22

I think it takes a very long time to grow a SaaS. Think multiple years. I started 4.5 years ago and it took nearly 4 years until I felt fully comfortable. Slow growth is to be expected. My growth curve, in fact, isn't a curve at all: it's pretty much a straight line if you plot paying customers. It looks better for MRR (monthly recurring revenue, your main metric), because I've been working on raising ARPU (average r…

> You will find plenty of marketing experts all around you, but none of them will work for a commission You won't find many developers who work on a commission either.

I don't think this is a good analogy, for many reasons.

Also, the reason why I wanted to have a marketer on a commission is not because I don't want to pay or because I don't have money. It's because I want accountability. My strong suspicion is that most of the self-proclaimed marketing gurus do not deliver.

Re: Ask HN: When is it time to give up on a side project SaaS?

#64

Post by jwr »

rsoto wrote: post #52
jwr wrote: post #22

I think it takes a very long time to grow a SaaS. Think multiple years. I started 4.5 years ago and it took nearly 4 years until I felt fully comfortable. Slow growth is to be expected. My growth curve, in fact, isn't a curve at all: it's pretty much a straight line if you plot paying customers. It looks better for MRR (monthly recurring revenue, your main metric), because I've been working on raising ARPU (average r…

> You will find plenty of marketing experts all around you, but none of them will work for a commission, which speaks to how much trust they really place in their "skills". As a marketer myself, it's not that we don't trust our skills, it's that few things happen in short term. If I'm going to work with you with commisions it's because I have trust in your product in the long run (2+ years, at least). Otherwise I cou…

This a very good point. And it's also exactly how I see a potential relationship. Beginning with a proven product (4 years history of organic growth with low churn), and with a long-term outlook.

I've yet to find a marketer that would be interested. To be honest, I'm not that surprised — I want accountability, and there are many others out there who do not, and with faster-growing businesses.

Re: Ask HN: When is it time to give up on a side project SaaS?

#65

Post by radihuq »

hellcow wrote: post #53

I started my current enterprise SAAS company 4 years ago. It took more than a year before we had our first customer (who left us!), 2.5 long years before we raised $350k on the promise of signing a big company. After 2.5 years "without a job" my whole family was pressuring me into just getting a job a tech company. "It was obviously not going to work if we hadn't succeeded by now." But I knew we had something special…

Awesome story. Where did you find this head of sales, and how'd you convince them to work at your company? I know you said the tech was special but was that really all that it took to convince them? Was there more at play (eg. Attractive company culture, industry, etc)?

Re: Ask HN: When is it time to give up on a side project SaaS?

#66

Post by Veen »

jwr wrote: post #63
Veen wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You will find plenty of marketing experts all around you, but none of them will work for a commission You won't find many developers who work on a commission either.

I don't think this is a good analogy, for many reasons. Also, the reason why I wanted to have a marketer on a commission is not because I don't want to pay or because I don't have money. It's because I want accountability. My strong suspicion is that most of the self-proclaimed marketing gurus do not deliver.

There certainly are marketing "gurus" who are nothing more than conmen. But skilled marketers also come across "founders" with nothing but a shitty MVP (or even just an idea), an inflated sense of their own ability, and grossly exaggerated expectations of the potential of their product to change the world, if only a marketer would "partner" with them to build a brand and traffic. It's a huge risk for a marketer to invest months of time in a product that could go nowhere because the founder is a flake or the engineering doesn't work out — all on commission with no stock options if everything comes together.

Re: Ask HN: When is it time to give up on a side project SaaS?

#67

Post by throwaway413 »

simplecto wrote: post #13

You might consider taking this question over to IndieHackers as well. That is a good community of people like yourself who are bootstrapped and working on their primary/side/exploratory hustles. [1] - https://indiehackers.com

Off-topic, just an FYI, you have a typo in the blog link on your profile page.

Re: Ask HN: When is it time to give up on a side project SaaS?

#68

Post by gcheong »

hellcow wrote: post #53

I started my current enterprise SAAS company 4 years ago. It took more than a year before we had our first customer (who left us!), 2.5 long years before we raised $350k on the promise of signing a big company. After 2.5 years "without a job" my whole family was pressuring me into just getting a job a tech company. "It was obviously not going to work if we hadn't succeeded by now." But I knew we had something special…

What were the signals that you had something special?

Re: Ask HN: When is it time to give up on a side project SaaS?

#69

Post by gcheong »

If you have a good idea now of your target user and the size of the market seems sufficiently big that it could grow to the size you want and if those 8 customers can't live without your product or are at least raving about it then that would be good signals to continue. If they can just flip a switch over to a competitor without losing any value then maybe not so much.

Re: Ask HN: When is it time to give up on a side project SaaS?

#70

Post by hellcow »

gcheong wrote: post #68
hellcow wrote: post #53

I started my current enterprise SAAS company 4 years ago. It took more than a year before we had our first customer (who left us!), 2.5 long years before we raised $350k on the promise of signing a big company. After 2.5 years "without a job" my whole family was pressuring me into just getting a job a tech company. "It was obviously not going to work if we hadn't succeeded by now." But I knew we had something special…

What were the signals that you had something special?

We were trying to solve a difficult engineering challenge that no one in the industry had been able to replicate.

If we could get it to work, it would reduce costs massively for businesses, so it seemed to me at the time that it wasn't a question of product market fit. Of course the market wants this. The only question was, can we build it? Will it work?

When we saw it working, we knew we were close. Didn't know that close was still 3 years away though!

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