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How we built a $1M ARR SaaS startup

canny.io

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Re: How we built a $1M ARR SaaS startup

#81

Post by 1123581321 »

blueline wrote: post #79
andrewmcwatters wrote: post #77

Why would you write an article about your first fire? How immature can you be? "We really wanted someone who would live and breathe Canny." Delusional owners.

the linked blog post for that gave me some serious raised eyebrows > Within the first week, we had over 100 applicants for our content manager position. We easily passed on 90% of applications that: >Opened with something like: “Dear Hiring Manager” or “Dear Sir/Madam” am i taking crazy pills? why would you pass on someone just for that?

They either didn’t know how to, or didn’t have time to, train for the tone they wanted. So they passed on everyone who didn’t write the way they were looking for out of the gate. It is common at new companies, consciously or not. Just explaining, not defending or accusing.

Re: How we built a $1M ARR SaaS startup

#82

Post by itsmefaz »

a13n wrote: post #68
itsmefaz wrote: post #66

For some reason, I find the writing and decisions to be mature. Shouldn't the early stage product development be messy and full of doubts? I understand the post doesn't capture everything, but it feels the decisions the founders took most of the time had positive outcome. Is this luck or value of product-market fit?

Early-stage definitely was filled with messiness and doubts. We had no idea we were going to get to $1m ARR. When we started we had no idea how to price a SaaS product or make a landing page. There's that quote, "hindsight is 20/20", meaning it's easier to understand what went well/poorly when looking back. It's easy for us to reflect on what went well, and share just that. Doesn't mean it was easy/obvious in the mom…

Got it! I'm currently at the stage of my life where I want to venture out on my own. Few questions that I have are -

a) How relevant was your experience (as engineers) in building and growing startups?

b) Looking back, what skills would you have liked to acquire before starting up?

c) How much of startups is marketing and networking compared to product and growth?

Thanks,

Re: How we built a $1M ARR SaaS startup

#83

Post by a13n »

blueline wrote: post #79
andrewmcwatters wrote: post #77

Why would you write an article about your first fire? How immature can you be? "We really wanted someone who would live and breathe Canny." Delusional owners.

the linked blog post for that gave me some serious raised eyebrows > Within the first week, we had over 100 applicants for our content manager position. We easily passed on 90% of applications that: >Opened with something like: “Dear Hiring Manager” or “Dear Sir/Madam” am i taking crazy pills? why would you pass on someone just for that?

It’s not just the generic intro, but also the copy paste template email that follows. If you don’t have time to spend even 30 seconds researching the company before applying, we just aren’t the right fit for you. The first hires at an early stage startup are so important.

Re: How we built a $1M ARR SaaS startup

#84

Post by a13n »

andrewmcwatters wrote: post #77

Why would you write an article about your first fire? How immature can you be? "We really wanted someone who would live and breathe Canny." Delusional owners.

The topics that other companies aren’t willing to write about make for the best and most helpful articles. We were careful to anonymize the individual.

Re: How we built a $1M ARR SaaS startup

#85

Post by acwan93 »

tiffanyh wrote: post #2

An amazing and massive accomplishment. What should be highlighted here is just how difficult it is to hit $1M in ARR (took them 3.5 years and they have a staff of 9 employees ... which is only ~$110k in revenue per employee)

It's honestly very reassuring knowing that hitting $1M ARR in 3.5 years is considered a massive accomplishment.

This is speaking as someone who's trying to move an older software shop from a one-time on-premise cost to SaaS. Fortunately the current business's revenues are directly being reinvested towards new products that are on the recurring SaaS model.

Re: How we built a $1M ARR SaaS startup

#87

Post by dudul »

dimitrios1 wrote: post #42

Yet again, not a single person over 40+ (probably even 35) in that happy-go-lucky clique team photo. Happy for you all, sad for the ageism that is rife in our industry. For all the talk about representation matters, and tech workers champion social issues, this just seems like a really frustrating and curious massive blind spot. Anyway, again, not to detract from the success, but I just see examples of this weekly he…

In all fairness, people over 40 are probably less likely to dance like puppets for founders who want "someone who would live and breathe Canny."

Re: How we built a $1M ARR SaaS startup

#88

Post by ijidak »

> You’ll notice these tasks are fairly large. You should pay candidates for their time.

Love this comment in the article regarding hiring via a time consuming vetting process.

I think that's what bothers me most about technology hiring these days.

There is more testing and mini-projects than ever.

It's not uncommon to spend half a day just going through first rounds for companies.

I'd love something like: make it to the second round and we will compensate you for your time going through the vetting process.

Then I'd know they value my time and are serious.

Re: How we built a $1M ARR SaaS startup

#89

Post by kiwicopple »

a13n wrote: post #10
ghiculescu wrote: post #7

Congratulations to the Canny team. It's a great product, apparently we've been happy customers since they were 20x smaller :) I found the note about luck in the Zero to One section interesting. I don't know anyone who runs a bootstrapped SaaS that's made it past 1M, who doesn't feel like they got super lucky with their first customer. We did exactly the same thing - a random connection that just happened to work out.…

Thanks so much for being a customer! And yeah, it always feels bad to write that "we got lucky", as it isn't really that repeatable/helpful. But it's true.

This is my favourite article on “Creating Luck”: https://www.swyx.io/create_luck/

The argument is that luck isn’t binary, it’s a lot of doing and telling to create opportunities for yourself. I think this is true for your story at Canny - you had built something and you probably told a lot of people about it. You created the circumstances for this lucky event to occur.

Re: How we built a $1M ARR SaaS startup

#90

Post by H1Supreme »

jnwatson wrote: post #56
skrebbel wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll bite. I'm 37, a tech startup founder. I'm wary of ageism and I've long believed that not being ageist would allow us to hire smarter than competitors. However: - The amount of programmers grows exponentially. I've seen stats claiming it doubles every 5 years. - This means that at any time, 50% of the available workforce has - It also means there are simply way more programmers under 40 than over. If you randomly…

I'll add a few points as an over-40 developer/recruiter currently working for a startup: * By 40, they've probably already done the startup thing once or thrice, and many have been there, done that. They are also less motivated by startup stock options, having seen them evaporate personally. * By 40, they are more likely part of a family unit that values financial stability. * By 40, they are at their salary cap. The…

> Also, many of the folks that are around my age have switched careers away from development

Or switched into it! Got my first development job at 35 after a career in graphic design.

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