I struggle to find anything "frontpage material" on that page.
ExSaaSperated: A blog about the struggle to start a sustainable SaaS
11–20 of 44 posts
Re: ExSaaSperated: A blog about the struggle to start a sustainable SaaS
#12I actually feel like I've been hearing a ton about failures, though they're all preceded by "you never hear about failures", and proceeded by, "and then I took what I learned and succeeded". What I actually never hear about is stories of trying to build a SaaS, failing, and then just giving up and going back to being a salaryman and retiring after a few decades. It's either that these stories are rare -- which signal…
Maybe not exactly what you're looking for before I haven't retired, but I had a successful side project, quit my job to try to make a living off it, failed to make enough money off it, and went back to a traditional development job. I'm overall happy working for a steady paycheck and benefits again, although there is part of me that is always itching to try again someday. I don't think I will, though. Maybe I'll write about it at some point.
Re: ExSaaSperated: A blog about the struggle to start a sustainable SaaS
#13Hello -
this is a post I wrote about scaling to 50k users without a marketing budget
https://medium.com/rezi-resume/0-to-50-000-users-a-candid-lo...
It might be interesting for your blog?
Re: ExSaaSperated: A blog about the struggle to start a sustainable SaaS
#14I actually feel like I've been hearing a ton about failures, though they're all preceded by "you never hear about failures", and proceeded by, "and then I took what I learned and succeeded". What I actually never hear about is stories of trying to build a SaaS, failing, and then just giving up and going back to being a salaryman and retiring after a few decades. It's either that these stories are rare -- which signal…
“But I learned something” Is an extremely low bar for evaluating an outcome.
“But I learned something and applied it to make the next effort a success” is the natural valuable contribution...that we (quite tellingly) almost never hear about.
Re: ExSaaSperated: A blog about the struggle to start a sustainable SaaS
#15I actually feel like I've been hearing a ton about failures, though they're all preceded by "you never hear about failures", and proceeded by, "and then I took what I learned and succeeded". What I actually never hear about is stories of trying to build a SaaS, failing, and then just giving up and going back to being a salaryman and retiring after a few decades. It's either that these stories are rare -- which signal…
Maybe not exactly what you're looking for before I haven't retired, but I had a successful side project, quit my job to try to make a living off it, failed to make enough money off it, and went back to a traditional development job. I'm overall happy working for a steady paycheck and benefits again, although there is part of me that is always itching to try again someday. I don't think I will, though. Maybe I'll writ…
You definitely should, your experience would be valuable to learn from and interesting to read.
Re: ExSaaSperated: A blog about the struggle to start a sustainable SaaS
#16I actually feel like I've been hearing a ton about failures, though they're all preceded by "you never hear about failures", and proceeded by, "and then I took what I learned and succeeded". What I actually never hear about is stories of trying to build a SaaS, failing, and then just giving up and going back to being a salaryman and retiring after a few decades. It's either that these stories are rare -- which signal…
I did that in 2010/11. Made all the mistakes you read about (not talking enough to customers, launching too late, not iterating, not doing effective customer development...), a year later went and got a job.
Haven't made more than £1k on the side since (not for lack of thinking about trying). Will potentially launch something soon, but am almost certain I won't ever want it to be my "main thing" again.
Re: ExSaaSperated: A blog about the struggle to start a sustainable SaaS
#17I actually feel like I've been hearing a ton about failures, though they're all preceded by "you never hear about failures", and proceeded by, "and then I took what I learned and succeeded". What I actually never hear about is stories of trying to build a SaaS, failing, and then just giving up and going back to being a salaryman and retiring after a few decades. It's either that these stories are rare -- which signal…
I was planning to write something along the same lines, if I make it.
I guess the reason of this happening is this - after you fail, you are too busy picking up the pieces, and trying to survive.
I have written so much about small wins at my previous startup. And when it shut down, I was just trying to avoid falling.
In the current one, we built and failed with 5 products. And then got more traction in 10 days than we'd ever had ! When I put it this way, it sound like the story of success (in the making).
But it isn't. It is (if I write it), the story of how we got it wrong, and what not to do. The bonus is that we make it.
--
Check out LightCat.io to see what got traction eventually.
You guys are smart - yes, this is a shameless plug. I am poor and cheap, and this is all I've got.
Re: ExSaaSperated: A blog about the struggle to start a sustainable SaaS
#18I actually feel like I've been hearing a ton about failures, though they're all preceded by "you never hear about failures", and proceeded by, "and then I took what I learned and succeeded". What I actually never hear about is stories of trying to build a SaaS, failing, and then just giving up and going back to being a salaryman and retiring after a few decades. It's either that these stories are rare -- which signal…
At least in the EU (in my experience ofcourse), people won't openly talk about that. It's still a shameful thing if you went properly bankrupt (not just quit, but with actual declaring bankruptcy legally; 3 times for me out of 20something companies).
If people went 'big' announcing their 'thing' so everyone knows about it and it failed (bankrupt or just quit), they downplay it as 'sabbatical', 'helping out a mate with his weird dream' or 'over the top hobby' or something like that. Almost all my friends tried the entrepreneur path and all of them found that it was not worth it; 16-18 hour days on their own dream with no guaranteed pay vs 6-8 hours/day for a boss with guaranteed pay mostly got them to go for the latter eventually. They never mention it, ever.
I don't give up though and just keep building things. They usually make enough money to live even if they fail.
Re: ExSaaSperated: A blog about the struggle to start a sustainable SaaS
#19I'm trying to get into it but don't know what to make. I follow Indie Hackers/Entrepreneur podcasts/wip.chat/etc... now I'm looking into Shopify stuff, make some niche API connector or something... but it will be a time sink to learn their docs/how stuff works on the Shopify aspect. Possible oversaturated market, etc... but I figure if I cruise through the forums/see recurring problems, maybe I can find something to build.
Recently I had a friend who runs a shipping business have me make him a PayPal button generator built into an email template that was mailed out so they could specify a price/tax/name/etc... That was cool, but I would not have come up with that problem on my own as I don't run the particular shipping business he does.
Re: ExSaaSperated: A blog about the struggle to start a sustainable SaaS
#20I'm trying to get into it but don't know what to make. I follow Indie Hackers/Entrepreneur podcasts/wip.chat/etc... now I'm looking into Shopify stuff, make some niche API connector or something... but it will be a time sink to learn their docs/how stuff works on the Shopify aspect. Possible oversaturated market, etc... but I figure if I cruise through the forums/see recurring problems, maybe I can find something to…
This is a pretty interesting place to be. Since you have not yet committed yourself - so you sort of have a superpower that many of us crave for.
There are at least a few ways of thinking about this.
The well documented ones 1. Think about problems you've faced. Solve it. 2. Research online, find problems, fix them (what you seem to be doing).
Less Documented ones: 1. Pick a product you like - as a customer / user. Deep dive. See what they got right and what they didn't. Who they serve well, and who isn't happy. Then build something similar in a 'different' market (what Notion did to Evernote and Roam is doing to Notion, Freshdesk to Zendesk).
2. Think of 3-5 skills you've got as an individual. Forget products for a moment. Think about people - who can you help with a combination of those skills, better than most (or cheaper than most). Talk to these people. Offer your service. Later build a product around this (Close.com, and if I remember correctly, even Kissmetrics.)