Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I stopped setting a financial goal for my SaaS

blog.inkdrop.info

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 123 posts

Re: I stopped setting a financial goal for my SaaS

#91

Post by zrail »

navs wrote: post #66
jmduke wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm using a combination of Mailgun and Postmark to send emails, and heartily recommend them both.

A combination of? Aren't they largely the same product? I'm just curious why you'd be using both.

Not the OP but I wouldn't be surprised if they use both for different purposes. Postmark has extremely high delivery rates but is very particular about primarily sending transactional email like account updates, receipts, etc. They did recently add bulk API messages but it seems like a higher tier feature.

Mailgun is much more flexible about what they allow to go through their servers, but they have correspondingly lower delivery rates.

Re: I stopped setting a financial goal for my SaaS

#92

Post by bransonf »

unilynx wrote: post #60
kho wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey Jmduke, Others have pointed out about the free plan and I mostly agree with them. One thing that hasn't been mentioned yet is the opportunity to position your product as the alternative for people that think mailchimp is just too much. Tell me this on the headline. "The easiest way to run your newsletter." sounds generic. Maybe something like "Write and click send, that's all it takes. No templates, no extra step…

Write Click Send. I like it. it's not even registered as a .com (or maybe I shouldn't say that out loud)

Can confirm, someone bought this today through Google domains. I had the thought to do exactly that as soon as I read this. That's quite an OG domain, you should have bought it.

Re: I stopped setting a financial goal for my SaaS

#94

Post by toomuchtodo »

katzgrau wrote: post #89
jmduke wrote: post #3

This post resonates a lot with me! I've got a side project that's current bringing in around ~2-3K MRR ( https://buttondown.email ). I spent a long time daydreaming about having it hit four-digits in recurring revenue — it felt like such an accomplishment that if I were able to crack it, it'd be a dream come true. It's certainly not enough to live off of (especially living in Seattle), but it's a non-trivial amount o…

Consider hiring a virtual personal assistant and delegating the low impact, high (time) cost tasks. There will be an inherent limit to how much money you can make if you try to do it alone. If you truly want to learn to build a business, realize that you aren't a software developer anymore. You're a businessperson and thats completely different. It's a different field and you can have a lot of fun learning it. It's a…

Something I've found helpful is to make a list every day of the tasks you completed, and circle anything you could've delegated. This is then an iterative process to help you improve your delegation skills, which should allow you to focus specifically on business tasks that provide the most leverage.

Re: I stopped setting a financial goal for my SaaS

#95

Post by imron »

rubicon33 wrote: post #85
wdewind wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not OP but I've spent a lot of time setting up email sending for SaaS apps. It shouldn't be too difficult, just use a third party provider like sendgrid and make sure your DKIM and SPF records are setup properly and you should be good to go. I've also used stuff like Amazon SES and it's not worth the trouble for side projects (or even medium sized, real businesses, honestly). If you have specific questions feel free…

Hey there - How would I setup a "native" email system. I don't want to use some third party that I have to pay for. I'd like to be able to send the "raw" email myself. So for example my current system uses Java + GMail's SMTP server. I have to pass it a username+password, and I can send basic emails that way. There are at least 2 major problems with this setup: 1) So far, all I have done is send REALLY basic 100% tes…

Create an app password [0], and then use something like ssmtp for sending the mail.

Your app then then just call out to ssmtp, passing in the relevant mail information (to, from, subject, message, etc).

0: https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/185833?hl=en

Re: I stopped setting a financial goal for my SaaS

#96

Post by wdewind »

rubicon33 wrote: post #88
wdewind wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basically you don't. It's a really big challenge to create a consistently non-blocked email sending service, especially if you host on a big cloud provider like AWS. Sounds like you are using the Gmail API. To be honest that's not really fit for sending transactional emails, and is increasingly unfit for 3rd party consumption due to API restrictions. Sendgrid also has a free tier that may work for your use case if th…

Well, how does Sendgrid do it?

Sendgrid puts a huge amount of money and resources into maintaining both technical and political legitimacy. They have relationships with other major senders and receivers of email, they follow every single rule to the T, they aggressively police their own IPs (of which they have many) etc. It's a complicated business, which is why it's totally worth it to pay them to do it for you.

Re: I stopped setting a financial goal for my SaaS

#97

Post by fefb »

jmduke wrote: post #3

This post resonates a lot with me! I've got a side project that's current bringing in around ~2-3K MRR ( https://buttondown.email ). I spent a long time daydreaming about having it hit four-digits in recurring revenue — it felt like such an accomplishment that if I were able to crack it, it'd be a dream come true. It's certainly not enough to live off of (especially living in Seattle), but it's a non-trivial amount o…

Cool

Re: I stopped setting a financial goal for my SaaS

#98

Post by ambicapter »

zrail wrote: post #16
jmduke wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is one of things where my Business Brain 100% agrees with you (the majority of my customer support burden comes from free plans, though it's worth pointing out something like two-thirds of my paid cohort converted from free) but my Hacker Brain things this project _should_ have a free plan, because free plans are nice and good and neat.

You could run an experiment and track the data. Three cohorts: paid, free, trialing. Data points per cohort: customer support tickets per 100 accounts, conversion rate, ARPU, LTV, churn %. I think you'll be surprised at the results. At the very least your hacker brain will be more informed, especially if you put a dollar figure on your customer support time. Doesn't have to be anything fancy, it could even be minimum…

A lot of small business don't nearly have the customer base to make statistically significant claims about their business.

Re: I stopped setting a financial goal for my SaaS

#99

Post by ambicapter »

wdewind wrote: post #96
rubicon33 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, how does Sendgrid do it?

Sendgrid puts a huge amount of money and resources into maintaining both technical and political legitimacy. They have relationships with other major senders and receivers of email, they follow every single rule to the T, they aggressively police their own IPs (of which they have many) etc. It's a complicated business, which is why it's totally worth it to pay them to do it for you.

Funny how its a common refrain on HN that email is the one true decentralized communication protocol, and yet...
Post reply on HN