Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: We didn't get a single person to pay for our SAAS – what could be wrong?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 325 posts

Re: Ask HN: We didn't get a single person to pay for our SAAS – what could be wrong?

#41

Post by cod3boy »

arjunvpaul wrote: post #32

Emperor Akbar, on a whim, once asked his minister Birbal to find him ten fools. You can get the gist here (Source: http://folklore.usc.edu/?p=24202 ). Birbal stumbled across the third fool while the latter was looking for something at night. The guy was looking under a streetlamp and couldn't seem to find whatever he was looking for. Birbal asked him what he was looking for so frantically. He explained that he lost h…

Thanks for the story, in fact, looking back, I feel quite foolish to ask too much information in one go :D The gist of the story is very interesting, but in our current scenario I don' really have a way to reach the folks who dropped off, that's why I came to HN. I'll be exploring the other points you noted, and work on them.

Re: Ask HN: We didn't get a single person to pay for our SAAS – what could be wrong?

#42

Post by smilesnd »

cod3boy wrote: post #4
mindcrime wrote: post #3

What did we do wrong? Not articulating, testing, and validating all of your initial assumptions before building/launching the project? Who did you talk to first? Are you sure there's a market of people who have the problem you're trying to solve? What research did you to to identify your potential market? How do you know how to reach that market (hint: they might not read Product Hunt)? Do you know how much they're w…

Thank you for all the feedback. I'll go through all of them one by one. About validation, we launched on upcoming a month ago with a landing page https://www.producthunt.com/upcoming/sieve-pro and had over 150 people subscribe. Maybe it's about giving it time, we only launched on product hunt 2 days ago :) I was particularly intrigued by what happens between clicking signup and then dropping off, we had 400 out of 60…

They probably clicked sign up hoping for more information. Found nothing and said that's enough thanks. That is the only reason I click signup. I was hoping it would explain things better. Feature list told me nothing.

Re: Ask HN: We didn't get a single person to pay for our SAAS – what could be wrong?

#43

Post by ryanlol »

cod3boy wrote: post #18
wlll wrote: post #11

Very first gut impression is you might be asking for money from people who don't really have any to spend. Freelancing is a linear profit model and so margins, and costs, matter. I suspect people only at the stage of thinking of becoming freelancers may have even tighter margins. Second, the typeform signup form feels sketchy, and the animation on the homepage made me think "MS Frontpage".

Thanks for the feedback. I am not sure about the spending capacity of the freelancer, but I think there are quite a good number of folks who make decent money. For those people, onboarding the clients, requirement collection, NDAs etc are a pain point. Eventually, we'd also automate the agreements, invoices, and payments to directly reach their bank accounts. I am reworking on the typeform real soon. Thanks :)

>I am reworking on the typeform real soon. Thanks :)

I have to ask. What on earth could possibly motivate you to go with that hideous, broken, typeform garbage instead of quickly implementing your own form?

Re: Ask HN: We didn't get a single person to pay for our SAAS – what could be wrong?

#44

Post by cod3boy »

rupertj wrote: post #20

Your message is bad. It starts “Become a PROFESSIONAL freelancer”. Your target market is freelancers, who no doubt already think they’re professionals (because who likes to think they’re not professional?). They’ll be thinking: “I’m already a professional freelancer. I don’t need this product.” “We help freelancers become more professional with automatic streamlined process...” Again - I am already a professional fre…

Noted, will completely rework on the copy.

Re: Ask HN: We didn't get a single person to pay for our SAAS – what could be wrong?

#45

Post by IanCal »

cod3boy wrote: post #41
arjunvpaul wrote: post #32

Emperor Akbar, on a whim, once asked his minister Birbal to find him ten fools. You can get the gist here (Source: http://folklore.usc.edu/?p=24202 ). Birbal stumbled across the third fool while the latter was looking for something at night. The guy was looking under a streetlamp and couldn't seem to find whatever he was looking for. Birbal asked him what he was looking for so frantically. He explained that he lost h…

Thanks for the story, in fact, looking back, I feel quite foolish to ask too much information in one go :D The gist of the story is very interesting, but in our current scenario I don' really have a way to reach the folks who dropped off, that's why I came to HN. I'll be exploring the other points you noted, and work on them.

The forty people who signed up surely put in some contact information?

Re: Ask HN: We didn't get a single person to pay for our SAAS – what could be wrong?

#46

Post by danieltillett »

arjunvpaul wrote: post #32

Emperor Akbar, on a whim, once asked his minister Birbal to find him ten fools. You can get the gist here (Source: http://folklore.usc.edu/?p=24202 ). Birbal stumbled across the third fool while the latter was looking for something at night. The guy was looking under a streetlamp and couldn't seem to find whatever he was looking for. Birbal asked him what he was looking for so frantically. He explained that he lost h…

I love this story because it is a new angle from the usual drunk looking for his car keys under the street lamp.

Re: Ask HN: We didn't get a single person to pay for our SAAS – what could be wrong?

#47

Post by smilesnd »

cod3boy wrote: post #22
oulu2006 wrote: post #12

There is almost _no_ information on your website about how any of those services you are offering work or what they look like. I would have thought you'd at least make each of those 6 services clickable so I can see how they will look if I sign up. Simple things like lacking a floating header so I can move up and down the site make it feel gimmicky. Signup form looks cheap and nasty; if you're going to be presenting…

Noted every one of this feedback. During the product hunt launch, we had most of the information and a gif explainer in the PH page. We are working on a video demo of whole product as we speak. I am just adding a raw video here quickly. Would love some feedback here too :) https://drive.google.com/open?id=11uAP1oNm7HzLo3q9fHiAXheFg6... https://www.producthunt.com/posts/sieve-pro

The video show me all the user you have for login into admin. Time to fire up a bot and see if any of them use a weak password.

Re: Ask HN: We didn't get a single person to pay for our SAAS – what could be wrong?

#49

Post by ryandrake »

cod3boy wrote: post #33
deanclatworthy wrote: post #21

Your sign-up process is completely broken. Sign-up forms can be big barriers, why do you ask me for so much information in some modal popup for a service called Typeform that I have never even heard of. I'd suggest that your "Get Started" button drops the user immediately into the app. Generate a "guest user" account, give the user a tour. Have a banner at the top of the page reminding them that if they want to save…

Noted, we'll be reworking the home page completely and about the signup flow. We are already working on the video as we speak. Here is raw demo if you are intrigued https://drive.google.com/open?id=11uAP1oNm7HzLo3q9fHiAXheFg6...

Maybe a demo video is a good idea, maybe not. Personally, I would not look at a demo video at all, but perhaps others would. Don't take my word for it (sample size N=1) Presumably you've asked your potential customers and believe it would help.

Agree 100% with the other commenters: The sign-up flow is super-high friction. You did the first step right though, you measured the funnel and found out that people are dropping out! Have you measured each screen in your sign-up flow to see which one is causing the most churn? At a previous company, the best thing we did to increase active users was to remove almost all of the multi-step sign-in flow and get people into the application right away. We were down to a single E-mail capture screen, which I strongly argued to remove as well, but couldn't convince Marketing. I instead got a button to skip the E-mail capture, which helped :)

Keep measuring!

Re: Ask HN: We didn't get a single person to pay for our SAAS – what could be wrong?

#50

Post by johnwheeler »

To me, it is the product...

You’ve essentially taken a bunch of things that are already free, bundled them together, and charged a steep price.

* Your NDA could be replaced with a simple Google search

* There are plenty of ways to throw together a quick, pro looking website.

* Scheduling calls is done over email, and gmail and outlook already add appointments to your calendars.

* Chat assistant can be replaced with Tawk.To

Moreover, I think that giving shares away is not a good idea - not because equity in general is so valuable, but specifically because your equity is somewhat worthless at this point. When you position doing that as a value-add, it makes me question your value proposition in its entirety (seems gimmicky)

Post reply on HN