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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?

#241

Post by a_imho »

jlgaddis wrote: post #235
a_imho wrote: post #217

I'm at problem zero, how did you get 600 people to come to your website, what channels did you use? Some piggybacking here, if anyone is up to giving advice https://smileydelta.com/

If you really want some comments, why not start a new thread that is more likely to be seen? (After looking at your front page, I have NFI what your company is, does, or why I should give you money.)

Well, I did, but it never got any responses.

It is a platform where peers can give feedbacks

1. to each other. It was customary at many companies I worked to evaluate at retrospectives how we did the past sprint: what went right and what to change in the next one. Who did well, who should improve

2. to management, what are the impediments regarding work, how satisfied is one with the job, whether jumping ships is imminent etc.

In my experience these kind of systems are often paper based or there is some weird JIRA project abuse going on. Sometimes people just pretended issues were never raised.

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

#242

Post by bastijn »

niko001 wrote: post #148

1. Get a native speaker to proofread your website copy 2. The title of the page is "Sieve Pro - The best management tool for" (missing a "freelancers")? 3. Some people might like it, but I'm always turned off when websites are using SV characters as profile placeholders - makes the site itself seem like a joke 4. As others have said, develop your own signup form instead of using TypeForm - TypeForm always gives me an…

Woah, all my points already here. Would add, and please don’t take this personal, but get a native speaker to do the voice over. You are unlucky to have a bad stereotype matched with your dialect.

In addition:

1. Don’t use thumbs up icons and smileys in your professional website. I’m not on Facebook.

2. So many grammar errors. Also in the video.

3. First overview in the video has so much information yet tells me nothing. To be honest your product already failed here for me. If not for the Ask HN I would close my tab and never look back.

4. What’s up with all the multi-page flashy text box questions? For me, on a professional site, don’t do animations and just keep a single page for one question list. Be really, really careful with animations. The one on your landing page already touched my nerves btw. Feels like someone who does his first keynote/PowerPoint presentation. Animations everywhere.

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

#243

Post by Izkata »

Veratyr wrote: post #211
noobhacker wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What grammatical or typographical errors prompt the advice to get someone to proofread the website? I'm asking because I see this advice quite often, and most of the times I can't find anything wrong. Could someone point out specific errors that I miss? Perhaps I need to get an editor myself.

"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 website." "with automatic streamlined process" should probably be "an automatic streamlined process". I don't think the way it is now is technically wrong but it doesn't feel right. "Never delay your client to wait for an NDA." d…

> > "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 website."

> "with automatic streamlined process" should probably be "an automatic streamlined process". I don't think the way it is now is technically wrong but it doesn't feel right.

Ambiguous plurality. Go for either singular "with an automatic streamlined process" or plural "with automatic streamlined processes".

I believe this is a common mistake for people whose first language is Chinese, which doesn't have indefinite articles. A co-worker drops articles pretty regularly.

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

#244

Post by jasonrhaas »

I'm a freelancer. And, like other have said, the hardest part about freelancing is finding good clients to work with. Also, your value prop is at odds with the priorities of new freelancers.

When you first start out freelancing, you likely have no clients or only a few. You really don't need an assistant, automatic call scheduling, NDA generation. Also -- don't the clients provide the NDA's, not the freelancer?

With your existing product I think your target market is the experienced, established freelancer, not someone brand new to freelancing.

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

#245

Post by brandon272 »

jasonrhaas wrote: post #244

I'm a freelancer. And, like other have said, the hardest part about freelancing is finding good clients to work with. Also, your value prop is at odds with the priorities of new freelancers. When you first start out freelancing, you likely have no clients or only a few. You really don't need an assistant, automatic call scheduling, NDA generation. Also -- don't the clients provide the NDA's, not the freelancer? With…

> When you first start out freelancing, you likely have no clients or only a few. You really don't need an assistant, automatic call scheduling, NDA generation. Also -- don't the clients provide the NDA's, not the freelancer?

This was one of the things I found confusing when reviewing the product -- if I'm "starting a project" with a freelancer, why is the freelancer giving me an NDA to sign..?

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

#246

Post by arjunvpaul »

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 intent was not to make you feel foolish.

Maybe its a good thing you feel embarrassed. It probably means that you haven't released late. Listen to Episode 4 of Reid Hoffman's Podcast Masters of Scale. "So don’t fear imperfections; they won’t make or break your company". Forge Ahead!

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

#247

Post by Bjartr »

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.

Listen, you can say "I don't think so" all day long, but the lack of sales says what you think is wrong. The product, as described, is not worth what you are asking for it. You _know_ this to be true because not one person bought it.

_Something_ will have to change in your offering to make it successful, so stop arguing with the people who disagree with you and start working on understanding _why_ they disagree with you. You will want to do this in a way that doesn't start by telling them they're wrong and then listing reasons why they're wrong as you've been doing.

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

#248

Post by nnd »

ploggingdev wrote: post #94
vfulco wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

1) It should not be used to collect credit card details. 2) If you claim to cater to professionals, you should not be using typeform for the signup process. 3) I am clearly not in the target audience, but I'll share my concerns : I would never use a service that hacks together a bunch of third party tools. It's great from the founders point of view (MVP, fail fast, early validation, hustle and whatever else), but it…

What's wrong with collecting credit card details with Typeform?

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

#249

Post by dfabulich »

tfmatt wrote: post #230
dfabulich wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this common on a SaaS site? My experience with landing pages is that people will cheerfully enter their work email address without a second thought.

Cheerfully enter my work email!? I am way more reserved with that than my personal address!!

Me, too! I may have been as surprised as you.

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

#250

Post by dboreham »

I haven’t dived into the details on your product offering but I will say this : getting people to give you money for something is much harder than you might expect if you’ve (a) never tried before and (b) believed the lore from the “startup-industrial complex”.

Consider the things that are sure-fire sellers: drugs; things you might go to jail if you don’t buy; things that cure severe pain (e.g. dentists); things that might get you sued if you don’t buy. The further away your product is from these things the harder it is to sell for $$. Just being “kind of useful” doesn’t typically work unless you’re very lucky. It needs to be more like “make $1000/week extra income freelancing with our amazing secret sauce” (but what would that sauce be given that web sites and CRM are commodified long ago?)

I think also you may have overestimated the size of your market: you’re not even selling to “freelancers”, which I suspect is quite a small market, but rather “people starting freelancing” which is a much smaller market again. Anyone who is already freelancing by definition doesn’t need help starting.

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