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After 3 Years, I Failed. Here's All My Startup's Code

dylanhuang.com

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Re: After 3 Years, I Failed. Here's All My Startup's Code

#41

Post by SOLAR_FIELDS »

afro88 wrote: post #21
ltbarcly3 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying AI can't rescue a bad product idea by automating things? Like more efficiently doing something nobody wants done isn't a business?

Not OP, but this isn't what Konfig did. They didn't try and rescue a bad idea by automating things. They attempted an AI focussed pivot. Using AI to automate things to rescue a failing product idea is kind of treating AI as a tool. But AI won't fix a bad product idea.

The problem is, people do want the product that the author was originally selling. A high quality SDK from OpenAPI spec is specifically a product that well funded YC startup I used to work for paid for. So I would contest the characterization that it was a bad idea.

Re: After 3 Years, I Failed. Here's All My Startup's Code

#42

Post by boplicity »

Sytten wrote: post #30
gortok wrote: post #25

> While we gained some traction with some startups, we ultimately weren't able to build a hyper-growth business. >"We then decided to pivot into a vertical B2B SaaS AI product because we felt we could use the breakthroughs in Gen AI to solve previously unsolvable problems, but after going through user interviews and the sales cycle for many different ideas, we haven't been able to find enough traction to make us beli…

People say that but as someone trying to actually do that, it is freaking hard to commit to 3-5 years of virtually no salary to maybe get to the same outcome you would have had with a funded business. You need to sell a lot of 10$/month licenses for it to even viable to a 2-3 people startup in a developed country. There is also the cost of opportunity to consider in that.

Pricing really is key here. $10/month is very hard for most businesses. Depending on your situation, you need to find the "sweet spot" that matches your markets budget, while also making the math work in terms of your revenue needs.

For example, you could try to find 100 customers paying you $500 per month, and do OK with a small team. The alternative, of $10 a month, means you would need 5,000 customers, which could be impossible, depending on the circumstances.

Small businesses focused on bootstrapping should also be aiming for revenue within months, and not 3-5 years. But that's another topic entirely

Re: After 3 Years, I Failed. Here's All My Startup's Code

#43

Post by joeld42 »

akoboldfrying wrote: post #39
tptacek wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you need funding to cover your monthly nut, you need a plausible path to hyper-growth; the portfolio math doesn't work for investors otherwise. If you set out to build a small-scale sustainable business, and you succeed , you can avoid funding. But if you're pivoting to something entirely new mid-to-late-ways through your company, you've probably burned down most of your reserves.

>your monthly nut That means... something different where I come from. Are you using it to mean "monthly fixed costs"? I haven't come across that meaning before.

It's a gambling term, it means the amount you have to win to break even.

Re: After 3 Years, I Failed. Here's All My Startup's Code

#45

Post by x0x0 »

TechDebtDevin wrote: post #38
mediaman wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why people even think about selling $10/mo licenses. Just go sell $2-4k/mo SaaS to a medium sized traditional industry that has ancient, crummy software with a target customer employee size of 50 - 1,000 people. Customer problem discovery is easier, you get reputation network effects within the vertical, you gain trust because you learn the industry lingo, you can actually solve peoples' problems b…

Cool, says everyone... Have you done it?

Done that with $25k saas.

The one point where gp is wrong is you really can't sell $4k things; $10k min and $25k is better. eg a good to great salesperson closes 25% of deals, so you have the cost of 4 mqls per one close, and then the salesperson gets 20%ish of the deal.

Re: After 3 Years, I Failed. Here's All My Startup's Code

#46

Post by x0x0 »

NetOpWibby wrote: post #33
tptacek wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you need funding to cover your monthly nut, you need a plausible path to hyper-growth; the portfolio math doesn't work for investors otherwise. If you set out to build a small-scale sustainable business, and you succeed , you can avoid funding. But if you're pivoting to something entirely new mid-to-late-ways through your company, you've probably burned down most of your reserves.

> If you need funding to cover your monthly nut You can get funding for that?!

Yes. Most of what early vc practically pays for is salaries (and a lot of that is really just a passthrough to landlords because California is an incompetent state run by incompetent people.)

Re: After 3 Years, I Failed. Here's All My Startup's Code

#47

Post by cj »

mediaman wrote: post #31
Sytten wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People say that but as someone trying to actually do that, it is freaking hard to commit to 3-5 years of virtually no salary to maybe get to the same outcome you would have had with a funded business. You need to sell a lot of 10$/month licenses for it to even viable to a 2-3 people startup in a developed country. There is also the cost of opportunity to consider in that.

I don't understand why people even think about selling $10/mo licenses. Just go sell $2-4k/mo SaaS to a medium sized traditional industry that has ancient, crummy software with a target customer employee size of 50 - 1,000 people. Customer problem discovery is easier, you get reputation network effects within the vertical, you gain trust because you learn the industry lingo, you can actually solve peoples' problems b…

> Just go sell $2-4k/mo SaaS to a medium sized traditional industry that has ancient, crummy software with a target customer employee size of 50 - 1,000 people.

I’ve successfully done exactly this.

Except in order to get there, we had to spend 3-4 years selling cheap $29/mo self-serve plans at volume to iron out all of the kinks in the product and UX. Only after that were we able to go upmarket selling $40-90k/yr contracts.

It all boils down to the fact that customers paying $20k/yr or more have extremely high expectations across the board. It’s extremely difficult to just pop into a completely new market with a brand new product untested by anyone, and expect large companies to trust and buy from you.

Re: After 3 Years, I Failed. Here's All My Startup's Code

#49

Post by gkoberger »

Oh, it looks like we were competitors! I'm the founder of ReadMe.com, and we do API docs (as well as SDKs and more).

I don't really know why, specifically, we ended up being successful. I know I also had a lot of false starts – slightly iterating on the core idea until I hit something people were visibly excited about. I also knew it was a hard market, so I put a lot of my time and effort into non-engineering things. Hacker News was always good to us, especially as I was more vulnerable.

I'd love to hear more! I'm going to reach out privately :)

Overall, though, congrats on all the work you put in. It's incredibly hard to start a company and believe in yourself, and you should be proud!

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