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

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

#81

Post by cod3boy »

SimonPStevens wrote: post #76

Just my thoughts. I need to see far more, with far less commitment from me before I start evening thinking about paying you. I need to see demos and example pages, and perhaps a trial of some kind where it basically works immediately, and I can fill in as much or as little as I want to get an idea about what it does and how it might work for me. Basically all you have is a couple of screenshots on your landing page,…

(I'll work on the first comments) About the last part, how much is the time delay in getting the NDAs signed back? also I've tried taking the requirements over phone/email, but I it usually end up with multiple exchanges while with sieve you can get it all done in one go. Can you please take a quick look at this video, and send a feedback on the requirement collection process? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7wAeenBe-c

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

#82

Post by cod3boy »

discordance wrote: post #74

You were giving away shares in your company in return for people signing up for your product? I get that this might sound like a nice referral scheme idea, but it’s way too much to think about if I were one of your potential customers. Feels like a modern take on the free steak knives. Why not incentivize around what your product does? - a 30 day demo or access to parts of the pack.. etc

Yes, I've explained the concept behind that thought process in a different thread here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15733157

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

#83

Post by rticesterp »

cod3boy wrote: post #30
robin_reala wrote: post #26

I think your copy might be part of the problem. Just taking the hero as an example: Become a PROFESSIONAL freelancer Sounds insulting to people who consider themselves professional already but could do with some extra help. We help freelancers become more professional with automatic streamlined process for managerial tasks like client onboarding, signing NDA and requirement collection right from their personal websit…

I think I never thought about it that way, I thought it like we help freelancers appear more professional like a company. Many freelancers don't have a clear process in place like a company do, to onboard clients, collect requirements etc. I'll work on the copy real soon.

Also, not to nit pick, but the grammar in your second to last sentence doesn’t give me confidence in the quality of material on your site. I understand you are receiving a large amount of feedback in a short amount of time. However, the attention to detail needs to be there in all of your communication.

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

#84

Post by IanCal »

cod3boy wrote: post #61
IanCal wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yes, but tons of other people dropped without any information.

Have you contacted them?

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

#85

Post by cod3boy »

albaqawi wrote: post #68
cod3boy wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've pulled the program at the moment.

First of all, asking for help everywhere is awesome, as humility is the key to take the right steps to fix a problem. If you cannot talk to those who did not sign up or like the offers, then you need to take to people who have extreme pains in using sites like freelance.com or upworks.com these sites have crazy traffic but until today they have not resolved key issues for freeelancers or seekers of freelance talents.…

Thanks, got it! will get back to you soon.

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

#86

Post by beautifulfreak »

danieltillett wrote: post #46
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.

The first version of it I ever saw was in a Baby Huey comic book in about 1967, a single page comic, and it struck my infant self as wise and unusually funny. I wonder how old the joke is.

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

#87

Post by praulv »

comstock wrote: post #80
cod3boy wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think so. All of the things you explained below takes at least a week in real life to complete. To and fro emails to get the requirement right, using DocuSign to sign NDAs, then setting up a call. While with Sieve PRO all of this happens right away. About equity, we've already raised an angel round, so I think it creates some value, but now I think we need to convey this better to the audience.

As a freelancer, this also just doesn’t fit with my personal experience. When a client wants an NDA, they send one. I rarely/never care. I’ll check over the language, but they don’t want to use my NDA in general. Invoicing, time tracking is done through my accounting system. Scheduling meeting is pretty easy. Setting up a personal website is pretty easy, and if you’re a Webdev you probably already have one. In my exp…

Exactly as my sentiment below. I would try targeting this to non-tech freelancers e.g. healthcare professionals, writers, environmental/civil engineers.

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

#88

Post by cod3boy »

comstock wrote: post #80
cod3boy wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think so. All of the things you explained below takes at least a week in real life to complete. To and fro emails to get the requirement right, using DocuSign to sign NDAs, then setting up a call. While with Sieve PRO all of this happens right away. About equity, we've already raised an angel round, so I think it creates some value, but now I think we need to convey this better to the audience.

As a freelancer, this also just doesn’t fit with my personal experience. When a client wants an NDA, they send one. I rarely/never care. I’ll check over the language, but they don’t want to use my NDA in general. Invoicing, time tracking is done through my accounting system. Scheduling meeting is pretty easy. Setting up a personal website is pretty easy, and if you’re a Webdev you probably already have one. In my exp…

This could be the case somewhere, I am yet to do the complete validation, but we had over 150 people subscribe to upcoming and 400/600 people click signup. So I was assuming the problem was somewhere in the onboarding. https://www.producthunt.com/upcoming/sieve-pro

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

#89

Post by detaro »

vfulco wrote: post #67
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…

What's the beef with Typeform? It is a slick service, award winning, very well thought out and designed. With Zapier it integrates to over 500+ apps downstream including Invoice Ninja (another amazing service integrated with 40 payment vendors). A happy customer for one year. Would appreciate your take on it.

As a user, if I see typeform I expect a long questionnaire (e.g. from someone explicitly asking me to give them some time to help them research something) or it to be an e-mail list signup. Neither are things I want when trying to sign up to a service - it looks like you are just fishing to collect user data and don't actually have anything yet. I have no idea if they are prepared to actually handle financial data properly (unlike I'd be with a conventional payment gateway I've heard of). The entire presentation with "pages", asking question after question (I think OP updated the signup already, now it asks 3 questions and doesn't manage to fit the 3 form fields on a Full-HD screen!), progress bar looks like "this is complicated". The keyboard hints it gives me don't actually work.

It's a massive contrast to the relatively polished (if content-less, which again makes one question if there is an actual product) landing page, which makes it look even more like you prioritize looks over quality. These guys supposedly help me sign up customers, is their solution to that going to be "set up a typeform"?!

It might be slick (I'd argue that, but my tastes don't necessarily align with people creating such labels) and award-winning, but primarily it sends the wrong message.

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

#90

Post by HelloNurse »

Let's try to visit your site, step by step.

First screen

- A gratuitous 3D animation shows sample pages from your site. Why didn't you spend that effort to make the pages look better?

- There's a profile cover page featuring a portrait of a white hipster with a sad expression, "Nelson Bighetti" from "Silicon Valley". It looks like LinkedIn, but more importantly it is strangely prominent. Moreover, who is he? A mock profile? Someone in the company? A clumsily leaked actual customer? Uncertainty is bad.

- Another skewed but readable sample page in the 3D splash is titled "Projects" and it looks very simple and sparse. Is it the limit of what you can do? Being used to ERP and CRM tools with tables of tables and rabbit holes of lookups and details and popups and cross references, I'm not impressed.

Scrolling: features list

- Personal web site? Better than what I already have? What does it look like? I can't tell by the generic self-praise words in your text-only item.

- Client onboarding: I can definitely write down contact and payment information in other ways that make sense to me. What about the "onboarding" of making them well-behaved customers?

- Client NDA? Either I don't need it or my lawyer and I designed and drafted it a long time ago before I started freelancing. Why should I use a standard form without discussing it with a lawyer? Risky at any price.

- Personal assistant? Expensive and hard to train. I'll do without, as much as possible.

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