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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?

#121

Post by cod3boy »

briandear wrote: post #77

So Stripe Atlas for freelancers except it costs money. Look at how Atlas works and ask: why does Stripe do it? The answer is because it gets a new Stripe customer out of the deal and SV Bank gets another customer and the follow up legal services generate some money as well; so everyone gets paid at some point but there’s more of a value chain. Why not give away some parts, charge for other parts on the backend rather…

Interesting comment, I'll take a better look. Just that you mentioned about the different sides of business, here is a piece I've written about the whole larger vision https://medium.com/@cod3boy/startup-101-philosophy-vision-an...

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

#122

Post by chvid »

I don’t think your numbers are bad. But I think you are expecting too much. It is not unusual for a new saas company to hand carry the first many customers and only much later be able to get new customers from online ads or organic traffic.

By hand carry I mean do the sale in person to people who you know or get to know by classic salesmanship ie running a meetup or showing up at conferences.

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

#123

Post by arihant »

It seems to require my LinkedIn profile mandatorily. Don’t have one. Also, not putting my credit card in a Typeform.

Not a freelancer, but maybe this will help in some way. I’ve never signed up for a service asking for compulsory links to other social websites. Why not just put a sign in with LinkedIn button and take credit card using stripe pop up later?

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

#124

Post by ci5er »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #98
comstock wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> When a client wants an NDA, they send one Flip side: if I’m hiring, I want to use my NDA.

?

Is that not the same side?

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

#125

Post by [deleted] »

cod3boy wrote: post #64
johnwheeler wrote: post #50

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 T…

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.

[deleted]

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

#126

Post by cod3boy »

meric wrote: post #40
cod3boy wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I really don't like the sign up form. Is there a demo site or profile available?

https://bighead.sievehq.com/ and a demo here 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?

#127

Post by DKnoll »

First off, I'm not a prospective client, but I have some questions. How can I customize the site? How about custom fields in the client on-boarding wizard? Can I use my own domain?

To be honest I don't see anything I couldn't pull off with a CMS, under $10/month in hosting fees and an NDA from Google or thrown together by a paralegal in an hour.

I think the product as you built it has legs, but in a different market at a lower price. Your overhead can't be significant here and $29 a month is way too ambitious. I would pivot to a non-technical market if I were you, like creatives, marketing or even trades.

I may also be totally wrong, but that's my $0.02. Good luck.

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

#128

Post by cod3boy »

Ice_cream_suit wrote: post #8

Went to your site.(Using Chrome on Android) Started to sign up. After putting in a name, it momentarily asks for an email. Then a blank page appears and all further progress stops. You need to do basic testing on your product before rolling it out.

It should be something else, it's working perfectly fine here, and moreover its a Typeform. Can you try again?

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

#129

Post by ci5er »

Q: Are granting shares not a securities violaion in some states (like Missouri Blue Sky?)

I'm old, so I don't need most of this, but in a world where MS Office (which is an unfairly large amount of code!) costs ~$5/month, isn't this steep for a non-vertical-specific product? For example, I have something that I would generally hand-wave and call Slack+Asana-for-healthcare-careteams. I charge about $10/member/month with all the Federal HIPAA compliance and audits and whatever. If pressed, I drop it to about $3/member/month. That said - each "Enterprise Sale" is ~5k~10k members....

What would it cost you to run, at the margin, if you had over 5,000 users? (I realize that at some point, you need to make enough to eat...)

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