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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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111–120 of 325 posts

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

#111
> It's not the product, I strongly believe we have a decent product.

You may be right... but there are a couple problems with that statement:

1) "Decent" isn't good enough. Aim higher.

2) You aren't going to deliver the best product to your audience if you go in defensively insisting that your product is fine. Listen to what people say, and be willing to build the product they want, not the one you think is best.

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

#112
post #109

So my problem here is: do you offer anything unique? As a potential customer, I see you smashing together tons of third party services, and I could do that myself without paying you a dime. So, what’s the benefit? I don’t think you have a great product here, it feels like reselling.

Can you please take a quick look here and send a feedback? This is the real product https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k32kJRAbIoU

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

#113
post #16
post #9

I also clicked on signup, but then didn't. Here is why: I wanted to sign up to test the product, but after clicking on signup I get a Typeform modal. Typeform as a signup form makes me suspicious that the product doesn't really exists, and the startup is doing some sort of landing page -> signup validation. You also ask that I enter my credit card and you want to charge me 10$ upfront, without having established any…

Thanks, Makes sense. Before we were asking $348 ;-) but then our program was that we'd giveaway shares for the first 100 people. The whole thought process behind that was, We are a small team of hustlers wanting to build the best experience for freelancers to work with their clients. Soon in our journey, we realized building a startup is a lot of work, and it’s hard to focus on multiple areas. This is why we’ve launc…

I'm not a lawyer, but the share thing sounds illegal. I don't think you should be doing that, otherwise you will probably get in trouble with the SEC. Companies usually only sell (or give away) shares to the public when they have an IPO.

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

#114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not sure if the real source can be traced. Birbal lived in the 1500's and I have heard another version atributed to another court jester called Tenali Raman who lived in the same century.

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

#115
post #52
post #9

I also clicked on signup, but then didn't. Here is why: I wanted to sign up to test the product, but after clicking on signup I get a Typeform modal. Typeform as a signup form makes me suspicious that the product doesn't really exists, and the startup is doing some sort of landing page -> signup validation. You also ask that I enter my credit card and you want to charge me 10$ upfront, without having established any…

update: don't let the data discourage you, though. it's actually not bad. 400/600 clicked signed up? that's fantastic! only 40 people went through with the sign up? I would say thats just user churn because of bad onboarding. the first thing I would do is let people sign up with just email and password, and actually let them use your product, for a free trial period. the second thing I would focus on is getting your…

This is great advice when I envision when to ask and how much I should charge for a saas business I’ve been struggling to get going. I hadn’t seen this before despite being a near daily reader in HN.

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

#116
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Noted, we are working on this as we speak. Here is a quick video (raw) if you are intrigued https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7wAeenBe-c

Do not, not, not autoplay the video (as the site currently does). Especially not with sound enabled. That will get the site closed with prejudice by many people, and upset most of the rest. Especially when they can’t even see the video because it’s below the fold. For user engagement, having a video available is good, but playing it contrary to user expectations is really bad.

Disabling in a moment :)

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

#117
post #75

How much did you pay for those 600 people and were they targeted long-tail searches from google (ndas for freelancers) or random visitors? Usually the conversion rate for visitor to payed customer is 0.1-1%, depending on your product, that's normal.

We paid nothing, it was all from Product hunt. We were on the top 5 day before yesterday.

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

#118

If you've got a leaky funnel: 1. Identify the steps of your funnel 2. Per each part of the funnel, understand how many people enter, how many people pass through it and how many people leave. 3. Work on the parts of your funnel where people leave.

Noted, thanks :)

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

#119
post #70

It's really hard to tell if this product is any good: - There is no way to try out the product before actually buying it. - There are no examples of existing profiles to check out.

Working on this, thanks. Here is a quick raw video btw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7wAeenBe-c here is a quick demo profile btw https://bighead.sievehq.com/

That's not a quick video. It seems slow even speeded up 2X. Even so, the first page ("Hello There") disappears in about a second, despite having some important information. You can't expect people to wait as text is slowly being entered into text fields, so I hope by "raw" you meant that it will be edited to speed up the text entry somehow. (And check your grammar. One page asks, "What is the monetization plans or business model?" This will lose you customers! Hire an editor.)

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

#120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The first I heard of it was a translation of a 13th Century Sufi tale. So,... older than Baby Huey.
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