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Lessons we learned while bootstrapping

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Re: Lessons we learned while bootstrapping

#71

Post by dboreham »

mikeokner wrote: post #63
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 mone…

>Give users the ability to sign up and pay you money.

Agree with this. Years ago I ended up in a situation where I had 10's of thousands of people using our "beta, not for serious use" service for free. I didn't want to charge money because I figured that only made sense if the product was finished and up to the standard I'd want (it wasn't). People would email every day asking if they could pay something.

Not so smart...

Re: Lessons we learned while bootstrapping

#72

Post by dboreham »

telesilla wrote: post #68
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.

Parent may be saying that 100k is a reasonable per-clueful-person cost pretty much anywhere. I'm in the middle of the USA and I wouldn't expect to hire a competent engineer for less than $100k.

Re: Lessons we learned while bootstrapping

#73

Post by HumanDrivenDev »

hencq wrote: post #64
mlevental wrote: post #29

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. 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.

Perhaps they don't want to announce to the world that their SAAS is in trouble.

Re: Lessons we learned while bootstrapping

#74

Post by Cyberdog »

jimnotgym wrote: post #41

Please can we move on to a better term than 'bootstrapping'. It is non specific, means little to non-HN peeps and is just hard on the ears. How about self-funding?

If posts involving domain-specific jargon were not permitted on HN, this would be a very barren place.

Re: Lessons we learned while bootstrapping

#75

Post by HumanDrivenDev »

jimnotgym wrote: post #41

Please can we move on to a better term than 'bootstrapping'. It is non specific, means little to non-HN peeps and is just hard on the ears. How about self-funding?

As a fellow pedant who has complained about tech lingo before ('legacy' always makes my skin crawl a bit), what's wrong with 'bootstrapping'? The term has a fairly rich history in computing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bootstrapping#Computing

Re: Lessons we learned while bootstrapping

#76

Post by jcadam »

mikeokner wrote: post #63
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 mone…

Thanks, a few folks have told me to just launch the thing already. I’ve been stuck in a “just one more feature” loop for too long. Probably ought to just give the stripe integration a good round of testing and call it v1.

And yes, I definitely need to work on the marketing site... I’m afraid I’m not the world’s best salesman.

Re: Lessons we learned while bootstrapping

#77

Post by shafyy »

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…

Just because someone with experience in the industry thinks it's a good idea doesn't make it a good idea :-)

Let's do an exercise: I don't know anything about tradeshow. Can you explain to me what you mean by content and how it's distributed currently?

Re: Lessons we learned while bootstrapping

#78

Post by uladzislau »

The first tip - red ocean/blue ocean strategy contradicts what these guys have been doing themselves - 1. take a proven "premium WordPress hosting/WPengine" model 2. use hip violet cartoonish website design as hundreds of other startups. 3. run affiliate program with huge payouts $500/referral (potentially). Now I'd take every advice mentioned with a grain of salt.

Re: Lessons we learned while bootstrapping

#79

Post by reubenswartz »

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…

Sorry to plug my (guest's) stuff, but this sounds like the kind of thing Lean Startup is designed to help you handle more efficiently and effectively.

Ash Maurya came on my Sales for Nerds podcast and talked about it.[0]

I remember saying something like "I wish I'd known this 5 years ago."

And he said, "me, too." ;-)

[0]: https://www.salesfornerds.io/episode-7-ash-maurya-on-scaling...

Re: Lessons we learned while bootstrapping

#80

Post by dboreham »

mlevental wrote: post #25
the_bear wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

In general I've realized over the years that you are much better off if you can somehow get the customer to come to you, asking for your product or service (vs trying to "sell" to them). Of course easier said than done, but this is the essence of marketing -- perhaps make some noise in the right places so interested customers become aware of you.
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