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Ask HN: What made your business take off that you wish you'd done much earlier?

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Re: Ask HN: What made your business take off that you wish you'd done much earlier?

#71

Post by StillBored »

DecayingOrganic wrote: post #54

Marketing, sales people, and such are all great but if you don't have product-market fit yet, you're beating up a dead horse here by focusing on growth. One of the first things I do when starting a new SaaS is setting up an event tracker (think mixpanel). At this stage, you barely have any users so no need for fancy analytics stuff. I just stare at the event log until I figure stuff out. Why are they not clicking on…

Back, when I did heavyweight GUI development, I went onsite for the first few customer installs and watched the customers operate the system (usually after fixing some bug LoL). Those always gave me basic UI tweaking ideas, but the real lightbulbs would come on when I asked questions like "why didn't you just do X instead of Y" or "how would you change this to make it easier". Or various other generic questions, the answers were frequently enlightening about how to tweak training materials or the UI, but I usually got one or two killer ideas that were more significant and ended up being the kinds of things later users would rave over.

So, I can't help but think you missing the most important changes if your not actually talking to the end users about what they are thinking or why they are doing particular actions that aren't always what you expect.

Re: Ask HN: What made your business take off that you wish you'd done much earlier?

#72

Post by drsim »

dotancohen wrote: post #69
kcplate wrote: post #10

I second this one… I can’t think of a single product in this world that truly sells itself.

I believe that the Tesla Model S does. People were tripping over themselves to buy that thing with no marketing, for all its faults.

Elon Musk is the marketing

Re: Ask HN: What made your business take off that you wish you'd done much earlier?

#73

Post by mythz »

kcplate wrote: post #10

I second this one… I can’t think of a single product in this world that truly sells itself.

Tailwind? They've built strong brand awareness through the quality of their OSS tailwindcss product who's been successful without any paid advertisements or sales people that I can see.

Similarly Ruby on Rails was great brand awareness for 37 Signal's Basecamp who AFAIK doesn't believe in advertising, and has made a point to pay for a "non Ad" against companies selling ads against their Basecamp trademark

https://twitter.com/jasonfried/status/1168986962704982016

Re: Ask HN: What made your business take off that you wish you'd done much earlier?

#74

Post by kcplate »

yashap wrote: post #68
kcplate wrote: post #10

I second this one… I can’t think of a single product in this world that truly sells itself.

Sales and marketing are different - there are TONNES of super successful products/businesses that lack salespeople - or who maybe have some, but the vast majority of revenue is “self serve” (ppl buying the product without talking to a salesperson). I do agree that virtually every product needs marketing, and many need salespeople as well. But for plenty of products, salespeople don’t make sense - for example high vol…

If your company is looking for funding for that low cost, high volume SaaS your CEO, CFO, founders…make no mistake…they are damn sure selling your high volume, low price SaaS.

Re: Ask HN: What made your business take off that you wish you'd done much earlier?

#75

Post by gumby »

cmeacham98 wrote: post #43
paulstovell wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This 100%! My experience here: https://twitter.com/paulstovell/status/1389881033470869504 This talk by Paul Kenny is a really good talk here about the value of the sales function even if you don't want the revenue : Paul Kenny: Selling Sales to Techies (2010): https://vimeo.com/96703844

How do you make sure you get the good type of sales culture that is customer-centric, rather than the bad type of "trick customers into buying things they don't need"? Are there specific policies/incentives/etc that should be used? Or is it really just 'hire the right people'?

Hiring good people is the main key, and a good VP of sales is crucial.

Depending on your product you can control it with comp as well. For example, for an enterprise product, especially one that renews annually and/or has milestone payments, comp the sales person as the cash comes in (and pay out for the renewals same as you would for the initial deal). Unhappy customers don’t pay. I have also paid out commission on time (when customer should have paid, when the delay was due to engineering, and not manageable by salesperson. Sometimes engineering delays are due to sales people though :-(.

Have engineering work out the milestones and deliverables with the customer. Have the CEO sign contracts, nobody else. Count as sales only deals that have both customer P.O. and signed contract (so common to have only one and have the sales person argue that the deal should be booked anyway. Amazing how they could get both in on the last day of the quarter though).

Etc. When I was about 20 my dad told me he’d fired half the sales people he’d ever hired. I shook my head and thought, “what an idiot”. A couple of decades later I looked back and it was about the same for me. I mean table stakes for a sales person is selling themselves. And getting canned isn’t always a bad mark against a sales person. So it’s hard to judge up front, but if they don’t sell “right away”* shove them out the door. It’s not like an engineer for whom you want to invest extra time to help them get into the groove; that’s part of the sales person’s way of life and the good ones are proud of it.

Pay the good sales people well. At your annual sales shindig have the CEO show up for a day, or half a day, to give a pep talk, enthuse about the VP of sales and the top sellers (who made it by following the rules) and then bow out. Maybe have the CFO talk about how many commission checks they had to cut. And have them mention that the top sellers make more than the CEO.

Another tip: have every member of the exec team, yes even CFO, VP of Manufacturing or whomever, go on a customer sales call every quarter. Sometimes a first visit, sometimes a sales person “check in” call or or whatever. It will make the execs understand how the customer views your product, not what marketing and the sales folk think the product is.

* right away depends on your sales cycle. Could be the end of the second month (but you’re already breathing down their next after two weeks), or first quarter, or six months (ugh). And if you sell semiconductor manufacturing gear with a sales cycle of 48 months, good luck.

Re: Ask HN: What made your business take off that you wish you'd done much earlier?

#76

Post by k8sToGo »

awb wrote: post #25

Ran a web agency from ‘08-‘13, grew it to 20 FTEs fully remote then sold it. A few accelerants: 1) Hired talented engineers in low cost of living areas in the US. 2) Started replacing myself by hiring multiple managers, which helped when I sold the business as it was no longer just about me. 3) Converted long-term clients to pre-paid retainer billing with helped create predictable workloads and revenue streams.

I was wondering, how do you sell a company? It's not like there is an eBay or craigslist for companies, right?

Re: Ask HN: What made your business take off that you wish you'd done much earlier?

#77

Post by DecayingOrganic »

StillBored wrote: post #71
DecayingOrganic wrote: post #54

Marketing, sales people, and such are all great but if you don't have product-market fit yet, you're beating up a dead horse here by focusing on growth. One of the first things I do when starting a new SaaS is setting up an event tracker (think mixpanel). At this stage, you barely have any users so no need for fancy analytics stuff. I just stare at the event log until I figure stuff out. Why are they not clicking on…

Back, when I did heavyweight GUI development, I went onsite for the first few customer installs and watched the customers operate the system (usually after fixing some bug LoL). Those always gave me basic UI tweaking ideas, but the real lightbulbs would come on when I asked questions like "why didn't you just do X instead of Y" or "how would you change this to make it easier". Or various other generic questions, the…

You’re absolutely right, I do need to spend more time with users and really listen to them. It’s just my ego doesn’t want to be hurt so it feels safer just looking at the event log lol

Re: Ask HN: What made your business take off that you wish you'd done much earlier?

#78

Post by kcplate »

mythz wrote: post #67
urthor wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't advertise to consumers. They have an enormous B2B sales team. Sales reps are for B2B, not B2C. Generally speaking, business to business customers expect a certain amount of investment from your company into integrating with them when they offer you a contract. Sales is part of this.

"Sells itself" means the product able to stand on its own and raise awareness without paying for advertising to do it. You of course need people to sign contracts & complete the purchase, that's irrelevant to how well the product is able to raise awareness without advertising, i.e. people interested in buying Tesla's didn't hear about it through any of their advertising.

I imagine Shannyn Sneed must sit around all day doing nothing then.

Re: Ask HN: What made your business take off that you wish you'd done much earlier?

#79

Post by smt88 »

k8sToGo wrote: post #76
awb wrote: post #25

Ran a web agency from ‘08-‘13, grew it to 20 FTEs fully remote then sold it. A few accelerants: 1) Hired talented engineers in low cost of living areas in the US. 2) Started replacing myself by hiring multiple managers, which helped when I sold the business as it was no longer just about me. 3) Converted long-term clients to pre-paid retainer billing with helped create predictable workloads and revenue streams.

I was wondering, how do you sell a company? It's not like there is an eBay or craigslist for companies, right?

There are several, including Flippa: https://flippa.com

Re: Ask HN: What made your business take off that you wish you'd done much earlier?

#80

Post by throwawaylinux »

urthor wrote: post #60
throwaway1777 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First one doesn’t work anymore with remote being so common they demand the same wages as everywhere else.

It works. These days the secret is you have to hire the good South Americans. Exploit the fact corporate America hasn't caught on to routing contracts through Upwork et al. Then don't get greedy, keep the TCE delta below 20%, so they stay more than 9 months. You can take your pick of the finest FOSS contributors Guinea and Paraguay have to offer. -------------------------------------------------------- Startup engine…

> If you need more than two engineers + 2 assistants, you should have hired smarter engineers.

Oh, I half thought you were serious until this point. I still don't get the joke though.

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