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Ask HN: I need advice on my first B2B SaaS startup

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Re: Ask HN: I need advice on my first B2B SaaS startup

#71

Post by throw_14JAS »

oliverx0 wrote: post #32
LeonM wrote: post #29

You need someone with sales experience. Without knowing what business you are in, $10/month/seat sounds _way_ to cheap. You are working with businesses here, not consumers. At this price point you would have to sell about a 1000 seats just to pay for yourself and your co-founder. If you want to bootstrap and hire 4-6 people, you would need to sell a whole lot more. If you can really 'automate pretty much any business…

The logic we followed when pricing it so cheap was: we are just getting started, this will help get some revenue in quickly, etc. Will think hard and perhaps reconsider the pricing model.

Your first customers will be sold to in person. Let them tell you when something is too expensive (then discount to make the sale). If they aren't commenting on your pricing, you are charging too little.

Also reconsider your pricing model. Charging per user per month will place a limit on how many people use the service, limiting what you can learn. Get them focusing on the value you're adding more than optimizing price. What you learn from them will be hugely valuable.

Re: Ask HN: I need advice on my first B2B SaaS startup

#72

Post by anthonys »

oliverx0 wrote: post #32
LeonM wrote: post #29

You need someone with sales experience. Without knowing what business you are in, $10/month/seat sounds _way_ to cheap. You are working with businesses here, not consumers. At this price point you would have to sell about a 1000 seats just to pay for yourself and your co-founder. If you want to bootstrap and hire 4-6 people, you would need to sell a whole lot more. If you can really 'automate pretty much any business…

The logic we followed when pricing it so cheap was: we are just getting started, this will help get some revenue in quickly, etc. Will think hard and perhaps reconsider the pricing model.

One thought I have on your model is make your entry price some sort of bundle. Your product is designed for workflows and you can't really have a workflow with 1 user so already you are at 2 users to start.

I am sure you can play around with this but it feels like this product would benefit from getting into as many users hands as possible when you are establishing yourself in a client business. Atlassian is an example of this where all of their products (or almost all of them) are $10/10 users and once you hit 11 users, it goes up quite a bit. That might seem like quite a jump but imagine what you are paying in salaries at 11 people vs. what your JIRA subscription now costs?

Re: Ask HN: I need advice on my first B2B SaaS startup

#73

Post by ericmarcos »

NewDimension wrote: post #64
ericmarcos wrote: post #12

I'd recommend you to do some consulting. I know it's counter-intuitive and something you don't want to do forever, but at the beginning of a B2B company it's extremely useful for 3 reasons: 1) It provides quick cash so it removes the stress of having to look for money too soon. 2) Direct customer feedback while working with them on day to day problems. At this point you really want to understand your customers pains…

How does one approach companies for consulting when it's process improvement? I have a product for a specific industry I'm part of, it needs to be adopted company wide as it touches on all departments. Ideally, a company would let me spend a few days to understand their processes, and I'd tell them how they can improve. I would do the discovery phase for free, but I'm not sure how to phrase it. I fear using the word…

1) Work your network. Our first few customers were personal connections or connections of a strategic business angel of ours. Identify the ones that most feel the pain you're solving. I'm talking about specific roles in these companies, not the companies as an entity. For example, imagine you're building a tool that improves collaboration between marketers and devs, find out who needs this more: the CMO? the CTO? VP Eng? a project manager? Find your champion and deeply understand his pains.

2) Even if your technology solves a company wide process, I wouldn't sell it like this at the beginning. Touching many departments it's a pain in the ass for your champion: need to convince a lot of people, etc, so it's unlikely they'll do it. Optimize for your champion pains and find a reduced version of your product that solves his pains.

3) Engage your champions in the product discovery, make them feel like if they're also defining the features (but don't build exactly what they asks for!!). Once they're excited about it start selling them the grand vision so they can sell it internally involving more departments.

Re: Ask HN: I need advice on my first B2B SaaS startup

#74

Post by going_to_800 »

ghiculescu wrote: post #44

My story is very similar to yours. B2B SaaS, bootstrapped (still no capital raised after 7 years), even the price is the same. We had 4 co-founders, I wrote the code. Here's a brain dump of things we learned: When we started we were all fresh out of (or still finishing) university and had fairly small savings. Definitely not a year of runway. So we found jobs that were relatively easy, well paying, and minimally dist…

Any advice (books,blogs, etc) for someone looking to hire the first people?

Re: Ask HN: I need advice on my first B2B SaaS startup

#75

Post by throw3982 »

To everyone saying they should do consulting, how can they they keep the IP rights then?

If they consult for another company, wouldn't that company own the rights?

From what I've seen, not many companies are willing to pay consulting fees and give up ownership of the work.

Re: Ask HN: I need advice on my first B2B SaaS startup

#76

Post by detaro »

throw3982 wrote: post #75

To everyone saying they should do consulting, how can they they keep the IP rights then? If they consult for another company, wouldn't that company own the rights? From what I've seen, not many companies are willing to pay consulting fees and give up ownership of the work.

If you do consulting around a product, it's typical to exclude improvements to the actual product from any rights assignment clauses, potentially in exchange for better terms. So e.g. any integration on customer-side would be owned by the customer (or grant the customer lots of rights to it), but changes made to the service itself would not, but potentially be cheaper/come with included credits to use the service/...

Re: Ask HN: I need advice on my first B2B SaaS startup

#77

Post by throw3982 »

detaro wrote: post #76
throw3982 wrote: post #75

To everyone saying they should do consulting, how can they they keep the IP rights then? If they consult for another company, wouldn't that company own the rights? From what I've seen, not many companies are willing to pay consulting fees and give up ownership of the work.

If you do consulting around a product, it's typical to exclude improvements to the actual product from any rights assignment clauses, potentially in exchange for better terms. So e.g. any integration on customer-side would be owned by the customer (or grant the customer lots of rights to it), but changes made to the service itself would not, but potentially be cheaper/come with included credits to use the service/...

But in this case their customers want specific features that would be integrated in their own SaaS product.

How would that work, am I misunderstanding something?

Re: Ask HN: I need advice on my first B2B SaaS startup

#78

Post by detaro »

throw3982 wrote: post #77
detaro wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you do consulting around a product, it's typical to exclude improvements to the actual product from any rights assignment clauses, potentially in exchange for better terms. So e.g. any integration on customer-side would be owned by the customer (or grant the customer lots of rights to it), but changes made to the service itself would not, but potentially be cheaper/come with included credits to use the service/...

But in this case their customers want specific features that would be integrated in their own SaaS product. How would that work, am I misunderstanding something?

Not necessarily they same customers as the ones that already have made feature demands (ideally you'd find more while doing this!), or if them, then consult on the entire integration, not just the features in the app they requested.

Re: Ask HN: I need advice on my first B2B SaaS startup

#79

Post by throw3982 »

detaro wrote: post #78
throw3982 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But in this case their customers want specific features that would be integrated in their own SaaS product. How would that work, am I misunderstanding something?

Not necessarily they same customers as the ones that already have made feature demands (ideally you'd find more while doing this!), or if them, then consult on the entire integration, not just the features in the app they requested.

I get it the consulting on the integration but on the features, the first customers that request a particular feature would own the code for it.

Re: Ask HN: I need advice on my first B2B SaaS startup

#80

Post by detaro »

throw3982 wrote: post #79
detaro wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not necessarily they same customers as the ones that already have made feature demands (ideally you'd find more while doing this!), or if them, then consult on the entire integration, not just the features in the app they requested.

I get it the consulting on the integration but on the features, the first customers that request a particular feature would own the code for it.

No, that you would exclude in the contract so you keep it. If and to what terms of course depends on the specific case, as a new startup you'll have to give something.
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