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Ask HN: Books giving practical advice on starting a solo SaaS business?

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Re: Ask HN: Books giving practical advice on starting a solo SaaS business?

#91

Post by redis_mlc »

opportune wrote: post #89
redis_mlc wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Am I the only one here that finds it odd 1) In the US, for a pre-employee startup, you actually don't need to do anything at all to start a company initially. Especially if you're a solo founder (sole proprietor.) Just register your domain, develop your prototype and start marketing and selling. Your bank will let you deposit one or 2 checks into your personal account regardless if it's to your company name. 2) If…

I could be completely wrong here, but isn't it a pretty big risk to start doing actual business (i.e. selling your stuff for money, using your personal bank account to cash your business' checks) before you incorporate? Because at that point, if there is a legal dispute can't you be held personally liable and get really screwed? I'm imagining a scenario where you have some sort of SAAS that a customer uses, then ther…

> Because at that point, if there is a legal dispute can't you be held personally liable and get really screwed?

1) If you're one guy, it's pretty easy to "pierce the corporate veil."

2) Investors normally have you redo the paperwork later.

3) If you're squeamish, don't do a startup. Your customers don't care what you spent on paperwork.

Re: Ask HN: Books giving practical advice on starting a solo SaaS business?

#92

Post by josephjrobison »

victor9000 wrote: post #10

Having done this a few times, the biggest advise I can give is that time is your most valuable resource. So look to maximize this resource with each decision you make. For example, in buy vs build situations you should err on the side of buy. You can find affordable services that will handle close to 100% of your generic SaaS needs. So don't reinvent the wheel, and go with as much off-the-shelf as possible.

What are some examples of those services that handle close to 100% of SaaS needs?

Re: Ask HN: Books giving practical advice on starting a solo SaaS business?

#93

Post by josephjrobison »

ScottFree wrote: post #80

Am I the only one here that finds it odd that not a single response so far has included a book on the nuts and bolts of how to start and operate a business? How and where to register the company, how to keep payroll, how to hire/fire, how to pay taxes, how to generate and read P&L sheets, etc. Has anybody here read Small Time Operator: How to Start Your Own Business, Keep Your Books, Pay Your Taxes, and Stay Out of T…

I own that book and it’s good to have as a resource. Rather than read

I bought “Finance for Non-Financial Managers” and like that better for the clarity and humor on the financial side of things.

I would say both are good for an overview - it will make you realize where you need to learn more and dig in.

For even more I’d recommend “Profit First” and “Simple Numbers...”

Re: Ask HN: Books giving practical advice on starting a solo SaaS business?

#94

Post by ironchef »

akabaka101 wrote: post #73
ganstyles wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've found this to be true in a lot of subjects. When I started really getting into machine learning a few years ago, I did all the courses, refreshed on my college math, followed tutorials to learn things like tensor flow. But despite all that, I was totally flummoxed on my first day as an ML engineer at work. It wasn't until I started building things to solve problems and learned practical lessons by doing that (wi…

Did you work on any projects before getting the ML job? i try to learn by myself but never seems to me any employer would hire me on the basis of doing online courses. So how did you end up crossing that gap?

You need to find an employer who is hiring based on potential or potential + a track record in a different area. I wouldn't hire an ML practitioner with no practical experience. I would hire someone who's produced in other areas and is looking to make the move to a junior ML practitioner (or who has domain expertise in our corner of the world).. It's like the rest of engineering... just because you've taken a course in Python doesn't make you a software engineer or proficient in it. Now show me that you've done things in other languages and we can start talking. Like, courses in ML don't _really_ teach you about things like:

* reproducing model training * deployment of experiments in a CI/CD pipeline * observability of models * discoverability and governance of results * versioning of data / models * optimizing for latency vs throughput * when to use batch vs real time etc

Just like a course in a computer language wouldn't necessarily teach you about CI/CD, horizontal vs vertical scaling, or domain-specific bits.

Re: Ask HN: Books giving practical advice on starting a solo SaaS business?

#95

Post by ganstyles »

ironchef wrote: post #94
akabaka101 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you work on any projects before getting the ML job? i try to learn by myself but never seems to me any employer would hire me on the basis of doing online courses. So how did you end up crossing that gap?

You need to find an employer who is hiring based on potential or potential + a track record in a different area. I wouldn't hire an ML practitioner with no practical experience. I would hire someone who's produced in other areas and is looking to make the move to a junior ML practitioner (or who has domain expertise in our corner of the world).. It's like the rest of engineering... just because you've taken a course…

Just seeing this. This is exactly right ime, I had years of senior full stack SWE experience /track record of SWE at my employ and was able to get myself on a RNN project initially, then expanded from there. I didn't get hired at a new company as an ML person out of the gate.

Re: Ask HN: Books giving practical advice on starting a solo SaaS business?

#96

Post by abiogenesis »

josephjrobison wrote: post #92
victor9000 wrote: post #10

Having done this a few times, the biggest advise I can give is that time is your most valuable resource. So look to maximize this resource with each decision you make. For example, in buy vs build situations you should err on the side of buy. You can find affordable services that will handle close to 100% of your generic SaaS needs. So don't reinvent the wheel, and go with as much off-the-shelf as possible.

What are some examples of those services that handle close to 100% of SaaS needs?

Three examples: Authentication, payment processing, invoices:

https://thebootstrappedfounder.com/not-in-house-on-reinventi...

I would add things like sending newsletters (Mailchimp), monitoring (Sentry), various types of analytics (Segment, Hotjar) to the list.

Re: Ask HN: Books giving practical advice on starting a solo SaaS business?

#97

Post by ScottFree »

josephjrobison wrote: post #93
ScottFree wrote: post #80

Am I the only one here that finds it odd that not a single response so far has included a book on the nuts and bolts of how to start and operate a business? How and where to register the company, how to keep payroll, how to hire/fire, how to pay taxes, how to generate and read P&L sheets, etc. Has anybody here read Small Time Operator: How to Start Your Own Business, Keep Your Books, Pay Your Taxes, and Stay Out of T…

I own that book and it’s good to have as a resource. Rather than read I bought “Finance for Non-Financial Managers” and like that better for the clarity and humor on the financial side of things. I would say both are good for an overview - it will make you realize where you need to learn more and dig in. For even more I’d recommend “Profit First” and “Simple Numbers...”

Thank you for the recommendations! I'll check those books out.

Re: Ask HN: Books giving practical advice on starting a solo SaaS business?

#98

Post by narrowboat »

jurgenwerk wrote: post #46
mtlynch wrote: post #8

Fellow aspiring solo founder here! Here are a few books/resources I've found helpful: --- The Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick This book stresses the idea of starting with customer interviews before you build anything and how to ask questions of prospective customers to get meaningful information when people's bias is to just tell you, "Yeah, that sounds like a good idea," even though they'd never pay money for it. I spen…

Start Small, Stay small is 10 years old. A lot has changed since then. The author made an unfortunate decision to write extensively about things that are not perennial. So after reading for a while about software tools and practices that are now dead or outdated, describing the limitations of an iPhone 3G, etc, I decided to stop and return the book.

\\

Re: Ask HN: Books giving practical advice on starting a solo SaaS business?

#99

Post by futhey »

p0d wrote: post #33

I'm stuck on your opening statement rather than your question. I did the 40hr week and now do what you aspire to do. Your life will be more challenging if you start a SAAS business. It will not be easier. The only people in SAAS I know with an easy life poured their life into their company and things came good. Investors are starting to see SAAS as a 10yr investment, to give you a sense of time. Ironically those I kn…

Not to say "You have this backwards", but starting a company (especially SaaS) is really for people who love to work and want to work some more, not people who want to get out of it. You will take more risk and work harder for potentially more income, eventually.
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