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Lessons we learned while bootstrapping

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Re: Lessons we learned while bootstrapping

#61

Post by graystevens »

mikeokner wrote: post #55
graystevens wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wit…

> 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 To me, this still sounds awfully manual. You still need to always have an eye on load/health and proactively provision instances or risk not having the necessary capaci…

Valid point, and something I considered initially. However we've a security startup – the likelihood hood of us getting a huge wave of visitors, the hug of death, is highly unlikely. Our landing page is static & anything remotely intensive requires an account. We are more likely to be hit by a DDoS, which I would hate to consume by upscaling servers and burning any potential profits we have.

Additionally, I have multiple alerts setup for any signs of downtime, so that any deployment can be invoked as soon as possible.

However, I completely understand your perspective, and if this was a different type of startup or industry, I would probably implement it the way you mentioned.

Re: Lessons we learned while bootstrapping

#62

Post by guntars »

enraged_camel wrote: post #46
hawkice wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My recommendation: leave. Websites won't stop doing something intrusive and annoying until it costs them more than it gets them.

Yeah but how are they going to realize people are leaving because of that one specific thing?

They are doing A/B tests on something like that, right?

Re: Lessons we learned while bootstrapping

#63

Post by mikeokner »

jcadam wrote: post #48

I’ve been building a SaaS product for the last year or so while working a day job and raising a family, and am only now close to the point of having something I consider beta-able ( https://www.contabulo.com ). I think I made the mistake of getting too fancy with the architecture (but designing architecture was too much fun to resist), so I’ve ended up with something that’s a collection of Clojure services on the bac…

> Contabulo is Coming Soon

> We’re currently working hard on getting Contabulo ready and hope to launch a beta in the very near future.

That's probably killing you. My advice would be to get rid of that immediately.

It sounds like in general you need to reprioritize and refocus. You use the words "SaaS product," "project," "creative outlet," and "this thing" to describe your efforts thus far. "Things" don't make money, businesses do. You need to stop being an engineer building a product and start building a business if you actually intend to generate income from this endeavor. To that end, I suggest a few immediate actions:

- Give users the ability to sign up and pay you money. If users can't pay you, you'll never make a dime. Stop worrying about architecture or feature development or closed betas and focus 100% on attracting and retaining high-quality customers. Don't do any further development beyond bug fixes until you have paying customers and can articulate why additional features will drive growth.

- Consider offering a free trial to get "testers" instead of a beta (but don't call them that). The free trial will allow you to collect feedback from real customers without establishing an ongoing expectation of free or reduced cost that can kill long-term revenue. In general, startups price too low. Read a few articles like https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2004/12/15/camels-and-rubber-... and https://www.sequoiacap.com/article/pricing-your-product/

- Spend a lot more time & effort on your branding/marketing. In particular, your site currently shows two screenshots that look quite similar to Trello + photo attachments, and has a bland tagline of "Organize. Collaborate. Get stuff done." Differentiate yourself from potential competitors and clearly communicate value. Also, minor nit but there's no reason a static landing page should show a loading bar before revealing the content. That alone is going to cost you real $$$ in page bounces.

Re: Lessons we learned while bootstrapping

#64

Post by hencq »

mlevental wrote: post #29
shafyy wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 dear…

> without giving too much away

I don't really understand this attitude. Why are you keeping this a secret? Aren't you trying to sell your app/service? That seems hard if you're not willing to tell people what it is/does.

Re: Lessons we learned while bootstrapping

#65

Post by vhost- »

tga wrote: post #54
juanmirocks wrote: post #49

Sorry: Wrong Thread. Does this study also consider that children remain living at their parents' for longer and longer? For example, it is not bizarrely uncommon in Spain to find people in their late twenties or thirties still living with their parents.

Just curious, how do you manage to post a comment in the wrong thread? Are you using some kind of client?

though, I can't remember what thread it was in, I saw this happen yesterday too.

Re: Lessons we learned while bootstrapping

#66

Post by chronic824 »

bacongobbler wrote: post #38
wheresmyusern wrote: post #32

this blog post is a kind of guide to starting your own company and making millions of dollars. this is a little unrelated but i just find it funny to read this guide because its very convoluted. there is actually a much simpler guide that their guide is a derivation of. here is the actual guide: step one: be more intelligent than most people behind almost every business, behind almost every professional success and b…

Sure, if you look at it from the closed mindset that nobody improves or can "git gud". It's been proven time and time again that humans can learn and adapt to achieve their own aspirations. Take one quick look at the special olympics; you'll see a very large group of individuals who have all overcome amazing obstacles to become olympians. Similarly, highly intelligent people may not have the domain knowledge required…

> Being smart does not necessarily make you more equipped than "dumb" (and highly motivated) people, but it does give you a decent head start.

This is absurd. Of course if you are smart, you are far better equipped. Your line of thinking promotes the idea that "anyone can work hard and achieve their dreams." We both know this is not true.

Re: Lessons we learned while bootstrapping

#67

Post by treis »

I wonder how profitable these I make $X,XXX,XXX in revenue and here's how type posts are. I counted 17 people in one of their pictures and if you assume they cost $100,000 each, that's $1,700,000 in salary cost alone. Then there's 3 offices and all of the other overhead/costs they have to pay.

I've worked on some hobby SAAS stuff and every time I look at the numbers to see what it would take to equal my salary the numbers are staggering.

Re: Lessons we learned while bootstrapping

#68

Post by telesilla »

treis wrote: post #67

I wonder how profitable these I make $X,XXX,XXX in revenue and here's how type posts are. I counted 17 people in one of their pictures and if you assume they cost $100,000 each, that's $1,700,000 in salary cost alone. Then there's 3 offices and all of the other overhead/costs they have to pay. I've worked on some hobby SAAS stuff and every time I look at the numbers to see what it would take to equal my salary the nu…

>$100,000 each

I think that's the key point made here, that these high salaries are not demanded if you aren't hiring on the U.S. west coast.

Re: Lessons we learned while bootstrapping

#69

Post by hawkice »

enraged_camel wrote: post #46
hawkice wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My recommendation: leave. Websites won't stop doing something intrusive and annoying until it costs them more than it gets them.

Yeah but how are they going to realize people are leaving because of that one specific thing?

There's a sense it which it isn't your responsibility to figure that out. If they never check, you avoid annoyance. If they do check (A/B test, eyeballing it, whatever), they'll see. If they're unwilling to turn it off no matter what then they're kind of terrible, and probably should lose lots of traffic.

Re: Lessons we learned while bootstrapping

#70

Post by 3pt14159 »

wheresmyusern wrote: post #32

this blog post is a kind of guide to starting your own company and making millions of dollars. this is a little unrelated but i just find it funny to read this guide because its very convoluted. there is actually a much simpler guide that their guide is a derivation of. here is the actual guide: step one: be more intelligent than most people behind almost every business, behind almost every professional success and b…

I've analyzed a lot of startups data over time and at least over the past ten years I've found that determination correlates higher to success than intelligence. Most startups are not rocket science.
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