I've run http://www.hogbaysoftware.com as my full time job since late 2003. Except for a few years (2010 to 2013) I've been the only employee. Dates might be off by 1 or 2 years but here's an abbreviated history: - 10k first two years. - Growing somewhat steadily to 250k around 2010 - Revenue (this is period when I was working 3 others) grew to 350k) by 2013 - Crashed to 40k in 2014, 2015 after cutting bunch of apps…
Hey I really like your products. I was a big fan of WriteRoom, was always to come up with great ideas using it. Thanks, hope you will continue to make stuff.
Because I live in the Netherlands. And if I want to keep living here, I can't just offshore my company to somewhere and run it from here. Especially not since it's a 1-person company. It'll be judged by the Dutch IRS as a Dutch corp. not an Estonian corp. Then I'm double taxed. Depends if you're audited or not for this to happen. It's a myth you can just open a corp anywhere and benefit from low tax, a lot depends on…
You can but I don't want to make a case since you already feel strongly about not doing it.
>> single founder company...running multiple SaaS services This is the model I am biased towards. Mind giving out more information? What sectors do you operate? Do you currently have any employees? Any tips for a newbie?
All pretty niche services mostly in the real estate and home improvement type sectors. None have/had the potential to really be unicorns but all have/had the potential to be million dollar+ businesses. I didn't start off hiring employees. In the beginning I did everything myself (programming, marketing, customer support, accounting, etc.). A year in I hired my first customer support employee and throughout the years…
I would also like to add one more.
#6. It is not easy! Prepare to put in long hours especially in the beginning. Prepare for it to take a mental toll at times. You will second guess yourself, feel insecure, be consumed oftentimes with your business.
You will now have thousands of bosses rather than just 1 or 2. Your customers are now your bosses and many of them will be requesting different things. You will have to learn how to filter through all of that noise and decide which to listen to and what to implement into your software. That is harder than you think.
I think a lot of people have un-realistic expectations on being your own boss. I am not saying the 4 hour work-week hasn't worked for some but it has never been a reality for me. Maybe someday ;)
I don't want to make it sound bad because it is not. It is just not as easy as many make it out to be either.
Glad you found the info valuable. Multiple landing pages may be the way to go, and can have value from an SEO standpoint as long as they are not too repetitive. Beyond that though, consider entry into those pages. Odds are you want to give a different message to different people, so think about how you might incorporate some sort of self-selection mechanism when people arrive at your site. Maybe asking them in a litt…
Thanks shostack - very much appreciated. Will be making these changes over the next couple weeks, should be fascinating once its all wired up (I'm an engineer dabbling in all this for the first time). Thanks Again!
Good stuff--feel free to post back here with the results, I'd love to hear how it goes.
I work on https://www.blabladns.co - a free dynamic dns service with an easy api and many integrations (e.g. Slack, PagerDuty, Messenger, etc.). Working Solo on it and its not profitably, because there is no paid plan yet. More premium features will cost and will be integrated soon. Growth? Very slowly with one to two user per week. Probably because I dont do marketing at all (only the blog).
Wait, what are some use cases for this service ?
E.g. you want to access some server or services at your home, but your ISP is changing your ip address every 24 hours. With a DDNS service you can always use the same dns name, only the a/aaaa records of these will be updated when you get a new ip address from your isp.
How do you founders find an idea? I want to work on projects but I can't find any ideas that could potentially become a business. Where do you look? Who do you talk to?
This question could have it's own separate thread.
How do you approach ideation right now ?
While I won't say I have implemented any ideas recently, my approach is very straightforward. Look at what is working (on threads like these), understand why it is working, and assimilate those points while ideating.
A couple of years ago I started DataCommandr which was supposed to be an Excel for big data - an easy to use self-service tool for data transformation and analysis: http://conceptoriented.com . Yet, I had to split between several quite different activities: development, marketing, prototyping (it is an innovative product). Eventually, I decided that the process is too slow and with this speed I will never reach the g…
"Transform data into the desired custom format by taking into account semantic relationships and relying on a novel concept-oriented model of data"
Way too complex for an introductory line.
I had to read it multiple times to get a faint idea of what you might be doing.
Screenshots and illustrations might work even better.
The design does not look professional. You might want to look at other SaaS sites and themes from themeforest or somewhere to get ideas on the page design.
The tools is interesting. What is your target market ?
Who are your users ? What are some use cases ?
How do you plan on marketing the application ?
E.g. you want to access some server or services at your home, but your ISP is changing your ip address every 24 hours. With a DDNS service you can always use the same dns name, only the a/aaaa records of these will be updated when you get a new ip address from your isp.
Interesting ... any enterprise oriented use-cases ?
I started https://www.pubexchange.com in 2013 and have been running it solo ever since. PubExchange is a platform that helps publishers establish traffic exchanges with other sites (similar to a social network) so that they can promote one another via widgets, social, and in-article links. It's been profitable since 2014 and I work with over 600 sites, including HuffPo, Refinery29, and POPSUGAR.
Wow, that sounds like a modern version of Tony Hsieh's LinkExchange, from the 90s. Glad that the model is still working. How did you go about signing up such impressive publishers? Was it organic, or did you hustle to make it happen?
Thanks! The LinkExchange model is actually pretty different, but I hear that a lot. LinkExchange, and other webrings, automatically connected sites and had them all link to one another. The main benefit of those exchanges (particularly in the 90s) was the SEO lift (which is now frowned upon by Google). In the past 4-5 years, most major publishers have begun establishing direct partnerships with other sites, so that they can promote one another on social and through other direct links. The main benefit of that type of partnership is the traffic, but also the editorial control, and brand association. The challenge is that it is a very time consuming process to put those deals together, manage the partnerships, and track the traffic. I used to lead business development at Rolling Stone and Us Weekly, and MTV before that, so I am familiar with all that goes into it, and I created PubExchange to address that. It did require hustle to get the first sites to use the platform, but since the platform works like a social network, most sites that join now, hear about it through word of mouth.