Ask HN: How do you grow a new SaaS business?

I have started a business for my university project (link: https://OrderHappy.uk). I am looking now to grow my business customer base but I'm having trouble doing so. I've been having to devote more time than I'd like to marketing (I'd say a 70:30 split between marketing and developing) yet I'm still struggling to attract new users. I'd love to hear how you guys have grown your businesses and traps and pitfalls that you've fallen into.

I have some bad news for you. For a solo founder, a 70:30 marketing:development mix is on the low side. At this point, unless you're getting a financially backed feature request from a majority of your contacts, you should really be spending almost all your time on sales/marketing. When I say "financially backed feature request", I mean that a majority of your contacts have said if you build $x, they'll pay you $y for $z years.

I checked out your website and I'd argue that your problem is bigger than SAAS marketing. You won't be able to keep restaurants signed up unless you deliver customers to them. At the same time, you won't be able to attract customers unless you have a good set of restaurants.

The restaurant industry is hard to reach, but your best bet with them is to fuck marketing and go straight into sales. To this end, change your website so it's specifically about your city.

Go into places outside their rush hours and ask to speak to a manager. Make your pitch. Ask yourself what went right and what went wrong. Repeat for ~ 3-6 months. In the beginning, you'll do 80% of the talking, but with a few months of experience, you'll do about 20% of the talking. Ironically, that will mean that you're getting good at sales, but you won't believe that until you're already good at sales.

Be prepared to take a major loss on the first 10 businesses you sign up. Good restaurateurs are enamoured with change, yet they're highly risk averse. At first, they won't want to partner with you unless you eat 100% of the risk and increase their margin on sales booked through you. If I were in your shoes, I'd expect to pay my first 10 customers 10% of each order total extra plus agree to pay 100% of the customers' bills when my app fucks up (or they think I did). You'll also find that it's easier to get a 'no' out of a venture capitalist than an FOH focused restaurateur. You'll have better luck hearing a firm no from a head chef, but if you ever hear yes from a head chef, apply to Y Combinator ASAP. You have product/market fit...:)

As far as straight up marketing, at this point, paying for media (ie - advertising) looks like it would be a waste. If I were you, I'd spend your ad budget when you have at least 20 restaurants signed up and want to get them some customers. At least then you'll have an easier time coming up with and testing a hypothesis about what will trigger your users to order food through your app.

I'd focus on earned media (ie - journalists). I don't know enough about your business to suggest a hook, but young entrepreneur are usually an editor's dream on slow news days. The problem is that kind of coverage tends to be long on 'aw shucks' and short on converting actual customers. If you tell me more about your city, its local media landscape and about some of the best reporters, I can maybe give you some better pitch ideas.

Thanks for the links, the interview was really interesting and enlightened me a bit more about how much work there is to do

Thank you for taking the time to reply. I signed up my first customer by offering them the service at an extreme discount but I can't seem to tempt anybody else with this approach. I feel like I definitely need to work on my sales as I have no experience in that area and I think that's what's weighing me down. I've spent the last few days working on a referral feature as the site(s) bring in about 100 users a day and I want to try and capitalise on this high amount of traffic whilst it's still strong. I'm not sure what my next steps from there are however.

The company is based in Manchester (uk) but even there I can't seem to build any traction, I haven't yet spoken to any media/journalists however as I wouldn't even know how to approach them!

This might just be your first go at it. A semi-successful university project that you unplug and move on to your next idea that is in a better market. Or you might be able to make it work. Restaurants are an interesting space, but really hard. Don't be too married to this idea though.