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Lessons we learned while bootstrapping

kinsta.com

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Re: Lessons we learned while bootstrapping

#21

Post by stanleydrew »

mlevental wrote: post #6

here's my problem if anyone is willing to lend a helping hand: i'm building an enterprise saas product that involves some cool buzzwords and potentially really adds value in the space i'm targeting but i'm getting no traction. i have an mvp (phone app and webapp) to demo to customers. i have the decks and sales pitch. i'm a reasonably smart and articulate person and communicate well (able to "speak sales"). yet becau…

> maybe i have poor product/market fit

This is going to sound harsh I guess, but you don't just have poor product/market fit, you have none at all.

I would recommend reading Steve Blank's Four Steps To The Epiphany (again if you have already).

Re: Lessons we learned while bootstrapping

#22

Post by blizkreeg »

raleigh_user wrote: post #20
_m8fo wrote: post #10

Random sidenote: I feel that a ton of sites have the exact same visual style as kinsta. Is this a template or something? If so, which one is it?

no clue but I also love the style. Seen it everywhere and can't seem to figure it out.

where do people go to get those graphics/illustrations created? they all look in the same style.

Re: Lessons we learned while bootstrapping

#23

Post by frandroid »

tw1010 wrote: post #9

Is it possible to block all websites from asking about enabling notifications? Every time I have allowed it have I regretted it, and every time I see the little dialog box asking for my permission do I feel slightly more desire to just close down the tab and read something else.

They really should be asking on the second visit. I've enabled them for some sites (actually, this reminds me I haven't seen notifications for one in a while) but popping up before I've had time to assess the content is rude.

Re: Lessons we learned while bootstrapping

#24

Post by billysbeanes »

shafyy wrote: post #14
mlevental wrote: post #6

here's my problem if anyone is willing to lend a helping hand: i'm building an enterprise saas product that involves some cool buzzwords and potentially really adds value in the space i'm targeting but i'm getting no traction. i have an mvp (phone app and webapp) to demo to customers. i have the decks and sales pitch. i'm a reasonably smart and articulate person and communicate well (able to "speak sales"). yet becau…

It's hard to give advice without knowing more details, but this sounds like there is really no need for what you're offering. How did you come up with the idea? How do you know it's something people want in the first place? To me, this sounds more like a fundamental product problem as opposed to a sales/marketing problem. Try talking to (potential) users and find out what version of the general idea you want to build…

I ran into this problem with my previous startup. We had cool tech, but it didn't solve something that was a major active problem for them.

OP - you may want to examine if you're offering a solution in search of a problem. Problems are harder to find and drill into than solutions. (And enterprise sales are hard, so make sure you're aware of the software valley of death and are in the mid 5 figure annual contract if you've got a long sales cycle).

Re: Lessons we learned while bootstrapping

#25

Post by mlevental »

the_bear wrote: post #11
mlevental wrote: post #6

here's my problem if anyone is willing to lend a helping hand: i'm building an enterprise saas product that involves some cool buzzwords and potentially really adds value in the space i'm targeting but i'm getting no traction. i have an mvp (phone app and webapp) to demo to customers. i have the decks and sales pitch. i'm a reasonably smart and articulate person and communicate well (able to "speak sales"). yet becau…

Do you have to target enterprise customers rather than small businesses? Enterprises have very complicated decision-making processes that can be hard to navigate if you're not experienced, and even harder if you don't already have traction. Small businesses on the other hand will normally try out a demo of the product and decide on the spot if they like it or not. They aren't all that way, but if you talk to 50 10-pe…

it's true that one of the difficulties has been finding who exactly in the larger organizations to pitch the product to. early on we figured out that it should be people with a budget (i.e. those directly in charge of p&l) rather than executives or product teams but we've actually been "gatekept" from getting access to those people.

but this is a good idea. i've tried cold outreach but to larger organizations. i'll try reaching out to smaller (tiny) customers. thank you

Re: Lessons we learned while bootstrapping

#26

Post by brightball »

mlevental wrote: post #6

here's my problem if anyone is willing to lend a helping hand: i'm building an enterprise saas product that involves some cool buzzwords and potentially really adds value in the space i'm targeting but i'm getting no traction. i have an mvp (phone app and webapp) to demo to customers. i have the decks and sales pitch. i'm a reasonably smart and articulate person and communicate well (able to "speak sales"). yet becau…

My advice: take a sales class. I waited waaaaaay to long to do that and realized so many mistakes and missed opportunities in hindsight.

Re: Lessons we learned while bootstrapping

#27

Post by graystevens »

buf wrote: post #13

I've been bootstrapping https://www.castingcall.club for about 2 years now. Although I don't have a team (just me) and I've not in the 7-figure range (still in 6), a lot of the lessons from Kinsta holds true. I wanted to point out one bullet though: Automation My product is a SaaS product. I've automated every single thing possible from self-creating wikis to recommendations. I stepped away to visit Japan for 3 weeks…

Agreed with the automation — I’m a fellow bootstrapper[0] in the SaaS space, and wouldn’t be without it. If there is anything that can be automated, even if slightly prematurely before the need to scale arises, I do so.

In terms of infrastructure, this meant using Ansible for quickly deploying new servers where needed and adding them to the right load balancer. Currently all I need to do is spin up a new instance with the right tag & run the relevant Ansible script - this will grab a copy of the site from git, sort out dependencies and any other apps needed (supervisord and so on), and add it to the nginx loadbalancer config as a new upstream server.

Same applies for things like billing. Yes I could have started off doing billing manually, sending out invoices etc, but these take time and realistically need to be automated to avoid any errors.

These things definitely meant I didn’t get my MVP out in weeks, but meant I could still do this as a solo-bootstrapper and look after a young family and such.

[0] https://breachinsider.com

Re: Lessons we learned while bootstrapping

#28

Post by abarringer »

mlevental wrote: post #6

here's my problem if anyone is willing to lend a helping hand: i'm building an enterprise saas product that involves some cool buzzwords and potentially really adds value in the space i'm targeting but i'm getting no traction. i have an mvp (phone app and webapp) to demo to customers. i have the decks and sales pitch. i'm a reasonably smart and articulate person and communicate well (able to "speak sales"). yet becau…

It depends on your vertical. It can take years to get the first deal in the "Enterprise" space even with very strong industry connections. It took us a few years to ink the first deal and many enterprise deals we work on are multi-year courtship dances. Hopefully you have a very long runway for takeoff.

Re: Lessons we learned while bootstrapping

#29

Post by mlevental »

shafyy wrote: post #14
mlevental wrote: post #6

here's my problem if anyone is willing to lend a helping hand: i'm building an enterprise saas product that involves some cool buzzwords and potentially really adds value in the space i'm targeting but i'm getting no traction. i have an mvp (phone app and webapp) to demo to customers. i have the decks and sales pitch. i'm a reasonably smart and articulate person and communicate well (able to "speak sales"). yet becau…

It's hard to give advice without knowing more details, but this sounds like there is really no need for what you're offering. How did you come up with the idea? How do you know it's something people want in the first place? To me, this sounds more like a fundamental product problem as opposed to a sales/marketing problem. Try talking to (potential) users and find out what version of the general idea you want to build…

> It's hard to give advice without knowing more details, but this sounds like there is really no need for what you're offering.

this has occurred to me of course but i just don't think it's true. without giving too much away it's a simple app that makes distribution of content at tradeshows much easier, personalized, and trackable (lead gen/capture for the content producer). if that's not a thing that tradeshows dearly need then i don't know what is.

> How did you come up with the idea? How do you know it's something people want in the first place?

everyone on the "advisory board" has decades of experience in the industry. it was one particular advisor's idea and i've run with it.

> Try talking to (potential) users and find out what version of the general idea you want to build they could use and why.

truf

Re: Lessons we learned while bootstrapping

#30

Post by hyuuu »

mlevental wrote: post #6

here's my problem if anyone is willing to lend a helping hand: i'm building an enterprise saas product that involves some cool buzzwords and potentially really adds value in the space i'm targeting but i'm getting no traction. i have an mvp (phone app and webapp) to demo to customers. i have the decks and sales pitch. i'm a reasonably smart and articulate person and communicate well (able to "speak sales"). yet becau…

im on the same boat as you, the problem is pretty much validated and I got 2 credit card before writing a single line of production code. Unfortunately, I am not able to grow from ONE paying customer (from the 2 credit cards), I am afraid that I have either built the wrong product or targeting the wrong demographic (CPAs/bookkeepers).
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