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The Business of SaaS

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Re: The Business of SaaS

#121

Post by robodale »

nickjj wrote: post #106
mrisoli wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Found the course very interesting and it's something I intend to build upon. However, I've done similar stuff with rails since it has more batteries included and found it easier of course. However, this comes to mind: https://elsyms.com/the-art-of-over-engineering-your-side-pro... This was followed by a discussion on HN which a lot of people enjoy over-engineering side projects because they use it as a sandbox to lea…

Thanks a lot for signing up. In your case, I think you're best off learning each of those things from separate courses / learning material. Mobile app development and Kubernetes are simply not related at all. This Flask course focuses on building a classic web app using server side templates. It happens to use Postgres and Redis while also performing background jobs with Celery. To me that's the bare minimum for buil…

"...front load your time in making your product really cool and successful, then invest the time (or money) into scaling when you need it."

I agree 100%. ~premature optimization is the root of all evil~

Re: The Business of SaaS

#122

Post by lettergram »

jcadam wrote: post #119
robodale wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is your linode bill so high with so few users? I see a 32GB plan is $120/month. Do you really need that?

1. App Server (all my Clojure services... and the one transient service written in golang) 2. Postgres (Master) 3. Postgres (Standby) 4. Elasticsearch server (yea, only one right now, you know, few users) 5. One linode running RabbitMQ 6. The linode running NGINX that sits in front of the app server and does all of the reverse proxying Also, 7. The linode running the marketing site (wordpress). I know, I know, I'm a…

Don't need the standby server, just use automated backups.

You also don't need the linode running nginx, with so few users put it on one server.

Finally wordpress should be $5/month or less.

Right there you could drop at least $15 / month.

Re: The Business of SaaS

#123

Post by graeme »

icebraining wrote: post #47
graeme wrote: post #30

The free trial section gave me an idea. I have a product (a course) which can be used in 2-4 weeks. This isn't exactly SAAS, but there's some overlap. Has anyone ever seen (or tried) a full free trial which lasts 2-3 days? I currently just have some demo videos, but it occurs to me I might increase conversion if I just let people into the full thing, let them have a taste, and then ask them to pay if they want to kee…

Full-featured time/use-limited trials are pretty common. Netflix, Spotify, Audible, all offer the first month, for example. Specific to your area, Coursera and Lynda both have them.

Mmm. Those are traditional, longer trials though, as they tend to be longer services. Do you think it would work on a shorter timescale for short courses?

Re: The Business of SaaS

#124

Post by kbenson »

biztos wrote: post #105
atg__ wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people that don't show up to the gym are what make the business profitable.

I've heard this before and intuitively it seems right, but only for certain gym cultures. In the US almost everything is membership-based, so a paying member who doesn't show up is free money until they cancel. But there are other places where it's more flexible, for example my gym has monthly passes, dailies, and 10x or 20x passes. The 20x is the best deal if you miss a few days a month due to travel. None of this h…

There are different types of gyms. 24 hour fitness, for example, will happily keep charging you if you don't come in, and if you try to cancel over the phone often tries to force you to come in and do that in person (I'm not sure how much of this part is corporate strategy or poorly incentivized branch behavior).

Re: The Business of SaaS

#125

Post by nickjj »

alex_hitchins wrote: post #100
nickjj wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not too close with PS but the last time I talked to their content director they mentioned wanting to focus on shorter courses and much preferred a bunch of short courses that are loosely coupled but still related vs. 1 longer course. Maybe that's something they are pushing for moving forward. For something like this Flask course, I've had people tell me they cranked through it in 1 day at 1.5x speed, and others h…

Just used your link to get the course. It can't hurt to get exposure to alternatives and broaden my horizon. Thanks again for your comments and you discount link!

Cool. Good luck with the course and if you have any questions, feel free to email me or post an issue (details are in the course).

Re: The Business of SaaS

#126

Post by jgable »

alex_hitchins wrote: post #108
jgable wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m keeping a journal as I go thru the class that I plan to publish at some point. I’ve just gotten to some meaty parts and I can say I’m impressed, but you’re right, I’m not a success story (yet). We will see!

I'd be very eager to read whatever you post. My contact details are in my bio if I can be cheeky enough to be remembered when you do publish!

Just made a reminder note to do so! As it turns out, you’re squarely in my target audience, as “a software person with hardware ambitions.” :D Will keep you posted.

Re: The Business of SaaS

#127

Post by dankohn1 »

jwr wrote: post #83
ultrasounder wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technical details, for those so inclined: the software is written in ClojureScript (compiled to highly optimized JavaScript) on the client side, using React.js for user interface updates, and Clojure on the server side, running in a JVM (Java Virtual Machine). It uses the RethinkDB distributed database for data storage. Interesting choice of Tech stack. Care to explain why you went with Clojure backend and ClojureScr…

Those are very pragmatic choices. I don't think I could a) tackle the complexity and b) achieve the performance I wanted without Clojure and ClojureScript. RethinkDB is used for two reasons: 1. It's the only database that provides changefeeds that I need to implement real-time updates for users. Complete changefeeds, as in: get an initial state and then updates. 2. I wanted to easily solve replication, fault-toleranc…

As someone involved in re-licensing RethinkDB and finding a new home for it at the Linux Foundation, I'm thrilled to hear your use case.

https://www.cncf.io/blog/2017/02/06/cncf-purchases-rethinkdb...

Re: The Business of SaaS

#128

Post by pfarnsworth »

jcadam wrote: post #119
robodale wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is your linode bill so high with so few users? I see a 32GB plan is $120/month. Do you really need that?

1. App Server (all my Clojure services... and the one transient service written in golang) 2. Postgres (Master) 3. Postgres (Standby) 4. Elasticsearch server (yea, only one right now, you know, few users) 5. One linode running RabbitMQ 6. The linode running NGINX that sits in front of the app server and does all of the reverse proxying Also, 7. The linode running the marketing site (wordpress). I know, I know, I'm a…

Consolidate that all down to a single server and save your configurations in case you ever do get customers. There’s no need to be wasting $120/month when you literally have no customers at this point.

Re: The Business of SaaS

#129

Post by the_bear »

a13n wrote: post #74

Yikes, that was the best article on SaaS that I've read all year. So much great information. A few things jumped out to me as off: > Conversion rates of low-touch SaaS trials with credit card not required: > 2%+: extremely good Really? 2% seems awful. If a company signs up for your trial, they must have a problem they're trying to solve. If you don't solve 98% of peoples' problems, it seems like you have a problem ge…

Yeah, that's the one part of the article that seemed off to me. For my low-touch, no-credit-card-up-front SaaS product we get about 25% trial-to-paid conversion rate. I think it's possible we're above average, but we're not doing 10x better than "extremely good" peers.

Maybe there's just so much variance that it's impossible to give a good benchmark, but even still, 2% seems low.

I also suspect that marketing has a lot to do with it. A company that's much better at marketing than product will be better at getting someone to sign up for a trial and worse at converting them, so maybe their numbers would be down in the 2% range. I feel like I'm the opposite (bad at marketing, but pretty good at product)

Re: The Business of SaaS

#130

Post by samsolomon »

biztos wrote: post #110
samsolomon wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From a business perspective, I would say Adobe is squarely in the SaaS business. Creative Cloud is mostly light touch product with an few large companies and agencies requiring high touch.

Interestingly, I often feel like Adobe wants it to be higher-touch. I've had the $10/mo Photoshop+Lightroom bundle forever. I almost never use them, and when I do it's definitely not for pro-level stuff, but I find it worth the price to have these tools available when I need them. Adobe, on the other hand, really really wants me to get into Behance, watch this or that instructional video, take a survey, read their bl…

I think you may have it backwards. In SaaS high-touch refers to the actions the company takes on an account, not your engagement with the product.

Self-serve items are generally considered low-touch. Knowledge Bases, Documentation, Instructional Videos—these are all things that are created so the company doesn't have to spend time with you. Support is considered a fall-back when none of those options work.

High-touch means a Customer Success Manager is assigned to your account. Generally the CSM will try and setup monthly or quarterly check-ins to:

—Troubleshoot any problems

—Spot and address churn risks before they arise

—Inform the customer about product changes

—Handle renewals (Although this is sometimes a sales function)

If you're paying $10/mo and not sending Adobe any support tickets, it sounds like you're the perfect low-touch customer.

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