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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?

#71

Post by hellcow »

radihuq wrote: post #65
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)?

We met through our pre-seed investor--our first check. It was a combination of track record of founders and tech that seemed too good to be true, but he could see it working.

Same reason a later seed investor put money in. "If it works, why wouldn't any company buy it?" As we learned (and are still learning) great tech and an obvious market need are only tiny pieces of the puzzle to figure out.

None of us had any experience in the industry, and the company was 3 people at the time our head of sales came on board--not much of a culture to speak of.

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

#72

Post by zeuch »

I ran multiple side projects in the past years, including SaaS. In my opinion you should stop when you're not happy with it anymore and also not excited enough to continue building it until you're happy with it again.

But don't give up easily! Don't expect you should grow as fast as the popular startups you've mentioned. You can allow yourself to grow slow and steady and still be extremely successful. Growing fast is what investors want, not necessarily what your customers want. Focus on working for your customers, not your investors (or potential investors).

If you're delivering value for those 8 customers, get closer to them, get into their shoes and then find more customers just like them (maybe they can even help you with that).

Then automate your operations as much as possible, and focus on getting your SaaS really stable for them. Then, slowly, deliver the most critical and important features for those customers, always focusing in high standards for quality and security.

Be a strong business, even if a small one. Run your business in a profit first approach. You might grow slow, but you grow healthy and strong this way, and if you persist, you may eventually find yourself grow really fast later.

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

#73

Post by redis_mlc »

mkl wrote: post #30
redis_mlc wrote: post #12

I hate to break it to you, but most startups take 7 - 10 years to reach their stride. Your choice is to either slog this one, or use the experience and pivot. BaseCamp - used Ruby on Rails consulting to promote and finance it Digital Ocean - rode pre-AWS hosting craze MailChimp - founders worked full-time until enough revenue, rode moderately-early email marketing craze Are you riding a craze, and/or funded from side…

DigitalOcean was founded 5 years after AWS launched. Were you thinking of someone else?

Thanks for pointing that out. I thought DO was a vanilla VPS like the rest of the bunch, but it's not.

Hats off to DO (2011) for rolling their own cloud after AWS (2006), and gaining mindshare!

Anyway, to the GP: what DO has done when head-to-head with a giant like AWS is pretty rare.

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

#74

Post by anoncareer0212 »

arcturus17 wrote: post #7
mvind wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry - I don't understand what you mean, can you expand?

I think they mean if after a year of operations OP has only sold eight $9 subscriptions, the business might not be considered validated.

yes, apologies for lack of clarity

basically if you have 8 users and you need 1,000 users/month to quit your day job, stop

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

#75

Post by radihuq »

hellcow wrote: post #71
radihuq wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)?

We met through our pre-seed investor--our first check. It was a combination of track record of founders and tech that seemed too good to be true, but he could see it working. Same reason a later seed investor put money in. "If it works, why wouldn't any company buy it?" As we learned (and are still learning) great tech and an obvious market need are only tiny pieces of the puzzle to figure out. None of us had any exp…

Very interesting, thanks for sharing.

Just checked out your site - landing page looks very aesthetically pleasing and I think the product does have a ton of potential. I can see how others thought this was too good to be true 4 years ago.

Goodluck with everything!

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

#78

Post by iopuy »

mherrmann wrote: post #15

I've been running various online businesses, including SaaS, for eight years. There is no general answer to your question. Are those 8 customers paying you hundreds of dollars each per month, or tens of dollars? What's the reason you haven't gotten more? Have you lost motivation to work in this space / on that project? I was in a similar situation to you a few years ago. I had started a clone of patio11's appointment…

Interesting product in fman. May I ask what percent of the <20k came from one off sales (18 euros) vs paying for the ongoing updates? Trying to figure out how a license a product of mine. THanks

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

#79

Post by quickthrower2 »

syed123 wrote: post #77

Never 1: Change market 2: Change product 3: Change team 4: Change yourself by upgrading your knowledge/experience 4: Market changes on its own 5: Customers needs changes 6: Environment changes All of the hunger has to come within

Looks interesting but I’m finding that hard to parse, could you reformat?

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

#80

Post by winrid »

All I can do is share experience.

I worked on watch.ly for about five months. Cool product, no customers. Didn't do any significant marketing.

FastComments - couple months in had a handful of customers. I think almost six months in now. There were Sundays where I would wake up and just do marketing stuff all day, crash from the coffee, and then work the next day.

What you're trying to do is not easy. After you have something that even mildly works you should start spending most of your time trying to talk to potential customers.

As a famous salesman once said - "Major time is for major things".

Think and visualize your end goals here, then plot a path to them. You might realize you are way off.

Good luck!

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