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I wrote a SaaS product because the internet made me believe it'd make me rich

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Re: I wrote a SaaS product because the internet made me believe it'd make me rich

#201

Post by mylons »

dvt wrote: post #39

This is a pretty good atticle, and the product is actually quite solid (maybe a tad overpriced), but this right here is a rookie mistake: > In January, 2019 I launched to HackerNews and some subreddits ... Really? That's a "launch" these days? At least scrounge up a few hundred bucks and throw up some Facebook ads. Reddit and Hacker News have some of the most cynical and thrifty readers out there. Networking and gett…

agreed. making the product is just the beginning. sales is the hard part. figuring that out myself with a kettlebell bell app i made and here’s the plug because i can’t help myself: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/simple-and-sinister/id15132753...

Re: I wrote a SaaS product because the internet made me believe it'd make me rich

#202

Post by cushychicken »

CM30 wrote: post #140
dvt wrote: post #39

This is a pretty good atticle, and the product is actually quite solid (maybe a tad overpriced), but this right here is a rookie mistake: > In January, 2019 I launched to HackerNews and some subreddits ... Really? That's a "launch" these days? At least scrounge up a few hundred bucks and throw up some Facebook ads. Reddit and Hacker News have some of the most cynical and thrifty readers out there. Networking and gett…

This plus the mention of ProductHunt makes me think they fell into the trap of marketing to their fellow creators rather than their audience. That's a common mistake plenty of people make when building anything. Game developers market their games on game development forums, website owners market their sites on web development/webmaster forums, authors market on writing forums, etc. They then forget that the typical p…

fell into the trap of marketing to their fellow creators rather than their audience

That's a great way to describe it.

Re: I wrote a SaaS product because the internet made me believe it'd make me rich

#203

Post by elbear »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #167
kjakm wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who got hired through it for years I can confirm this: > learn to sift through the legit profiles vs the dodgy It's also important to get longer term projects through it (either a client that brings you repeat work or short-medium term hourly contracts). It has got more and more difficult over the years imo as the various freelance sites merged and you had more crap to sift through.

Thanks for that. I couldn't believe that my experience was the norm, as the site couldn't stay in business. I'm not kidding, though. Every. Single. Contact. that I had was "dodgy." I really must have had something in my profile that attracted them. I don't know what it could have been. I use a similar approach in all my endeavors, but that site responded quite differently. I remember one that was pretty scary. They k…

Another data point: I also found multiple jobs with multiple clients through Upwork. I even built a transpiler for the most recent client, which is the coolest thing I've ever done.

Re: I wrote a SaaS product because the internet made me believe it'd make me rich

#204

Post by mellosouls »

kumarvvr wrote: post #181

To be fair, I would re-phrase the author's thought as "I wrote an SaaS product because I believed it would get me rich and I went and scoured the internet for a well that echos my thoughts" The author speaks about exactly one example, that,I guess I can say inspired him to get going with his idea. No, The internet did not convince him. He convinced himself using the internet to find evidence for a conclusion he alrea…

If you rephrased his thought like that you would take all humour out of it; humour being clearly the intent of his chosen phrasing.

Re: I wrote a SaaS product because the internet made me believe it'd make me rich

#205

Post by sokoloff »

laurentdc wrote: post #184

> Don't hire people for stupid things. Adobe cloud is 20 bucks a month, read a few books, watch a few videos and make simple designs yourself. If your thing takes off, you can always hire for better later. This resonates so much. My company hires and outsources for the most stupid things, like, we need to change colors on a design file or move some buttons around? Let's go on Upwork or through our address book, write…

OTOH, I am not great at creating graphics and find that throwing $11ea to 1-4 contractors on fiverr and picking the best of what comes in the next morning is a pretty solid use of time and money.

For the $240/yr Adobe CC might cost me, I get better results and lower stress than trying to DIY it.

Re: I wrote a SaaS product because the internet made me believe it'd make me rich

#206

Post by rfrey »

amdavidson wrote: post #173
InvOfSmallC wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually the YC startup school says you should not pay for customers initially. Paid ads come to a later stage.

Its not particularly useful to just parrot the information without also including their justification; not all of us take YC mantras as the gospel. Did they give you a reasoning for this guidance?

I have not attended the Startup School, but I imagine there's a lot of value in personally recruiting your first 20 or 50 customers. You get to talk directly to them; you get a chance (not easy, though!) to find out the real reason they stopped using it, etc.

Re: I wrote a SaaS product because the internet made me believe it'd make me rich

#207

Post by kumarvvr »

mellosouls wrote: post #204
kumarvvr wrote: post #181

To be fair, I would re-phrase the author's thought as "I wrote an SaaS product because I believed it would get me rich and I went and scoured the internet for a well that echos my thoughts" The author speaks about exactly one example, that,I guess I can say inspired him to get going with his idea. No, The internet did not convince him. He convinced himself using the internet to find evidence for a conclusion he alrea…

If you rephrased his thought like that you would take all humour out of it; humour being clearly the intent of his chosen phrasing.

Maybe I am wrong, but the article doesn't come off as satirical.

Re: I wrote a SaaS product because the internet made me believe it'd make me rich

#208

Post by dragandj »

petargyurov wrote: post #135
Androider wrote: post #42

Writing the software is the easy part of SaaS.

You're right. But that doesn't make it easy :P I think a lot of devs think that project management, business sense and marketing (basically everything but development) are easier. I used to think that too. Until I had to start thinking about business strategies, sharing my product and understanding my customers... If only I could install packages for that kind of stuff IRL.

But you can install packages for that, too. It’s just that you’ve used the wrong terminology. Instead of “install”, it’s called “pay”, and instead of “packages”, it’s “professionals”.

Re: I wrote a SaaS product because the internet made me believe it'd make me rich

#209

Post by mellosouls »

kumarvvr wrote: post #207
mellosouls wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you rephrased his thought like that you would take all humour out of it; humour being clearly the intent of his chosen phrasing.

Maybe I am wrong, but the article doesn't come off as satirical.

The title is just intended as a good-natured dig at his own experience (I made literally TENS of dollars) drawing on the gullible-get-rich-quick trope, nothing more.

Re: I wrote a SaaS product because the internet made me believe it'd make me rich

#210

Post by rodolphoarruda »

pembrook wrote: post #194
hckr_news wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey, this isn't true at all. Reading up documentation/resources, watching youtube tutorials, and even sometimes banging your head against the wall is a normal part of the software development process. Don't let the frustrations get to you. You mentioned the 90s but boy were people jerks back then (from the horror stories I read). I think today is probably the best time to be working on software with so many open sour…

> As far as tooling goes, just keep a simple. Aim for a simple MVP. DB? Go mysql. Frontend? Choose a templating engine like EJS and css. Backend? Node/Express ecosystem would be my go to. Push it to Github. Host it on Netlify. I think what OP was referring to is that what you describe is, ironically, the antithesis of "simple." Your "simple" solution requires knowledge of 5 separate frameworks/services, and having an…

> Your "simple" solution requires knowledge of 5 separate frameworks/services, and having an understanding of the philosophy underpinning them and the alternatives to be confident those tools will be sufficient for your use case.

Yes, spot on.

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