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Tips for Developers Who Want to Build a SaaS Startup

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Tips for Developers Who Want to Build a SaaS Startup

#11

Post by wongarsu »

paradite wrote: post #9

> Don’t pick something that needs a pretty UI For frontend engineers, should the advice be the opposite: "Pick something that needs good UI/UX"?

If you're a designer, pick something that needs to look good

If you're a UX person and have access to a pool of people to do user testing with: pick something that needs good UX

Those two are somewhat at odds with each other, and neither is really the job description of a typical frontend engineer (though of course some frontend engineers are good at one or both)

Re: Tips for Developers Who Want to Build a SaaS Startup

#12

Post by swyx »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #2

Nice work! Judging be your price that is at lease $2300/m which is impressive. It is also a great idea and good site. I like your guidelines alot. Definitely I tried cold calling once and it was a horrid experience. Mostly because any who wanted to talk wanted freebies only. :-(. Sales is it's own profession, it is hard to do as a hobby, and especially if not that way inclined. I suggest adding your site link to your…

probably an overestimate: first users are usually free or cheap, the price is raised later. but still impressive.

Re: Tips for Developers Who Want to Build a SaaS Startup

#14

Post by blaydator »

TekMol wrote: post #7
catnip09 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can use a MoR payment provider such as paddle or spring which handle tax compliance for you globally. They will pay tax and take liability on behalf of you. They charge 5% per transaction.

Do you use Paddle or Spring? I would expect that MoR's have their own set of issues. As they become the seller. So they are liable for the product quality, safety etc. So I don't think signing up and working with them will be very easy. Especially if your product is not as standardized as an ebook or something. So if you use those, I would love to hear about your experiences. What you sell, how the signup was and how…

I have recently used Paddle for a small saas. I am selling a Pro plan that give access to a restricted feature of the web app. As the Pro plan was introduced as a later stage, Paddle verification team accepted to review a "staging" version of the web app before I post it to production. I definitely talk to real humans, but I took time to express my situation. Paddle integration not too painful (good but not perfect documentation) considered it was my first saas. I might write about it if some of you are interested.

Re: Tips for Developers Who Want to Build a SaaS Startup

#15

Post by cweill »

Congratulations on getting your first 100 paying users. Most startups never make a single dollar.

How long did it take you to hit that number? Many of us devs want to do SAAS but don't understand what's a reasonable amount of time to expect until we can get "ramen profitable".

Re: Tips for Developers Who Want to Build a SaaS Startup

#16

Post by jakabia »

melvinmelih wrote: post #8
gnicholas wrote: post #3

If you're posting an article, you should post the link instead of the full text, FYI. If you want to do a Tell HN that works too, but then there would be no need to include the link at the bottom.

I actually appreciated to read this article in full on HN. People should do that more often…

Yes, no pictures, no ads, I liked this format as well.

Re: Tips for Developers Who Want to Build a SaaS Startup

#17

Post by gabereiser »

swyx wrote: post #12
quickthrower2 wrote: post #2

Nice work! Judging be your price that is at lease $2300/m which is impressive. It is also a great idea and good site. I like your guidelines alot. Definitely I tried cold calling once and it was a horrid experience. Mostly because any who wanted to talk wanted freebies only. :-(. Sales is it's own profession, it is hard to do as a hobby, and especially if not that way inclined. I suggest adding your site link to your…

probably an overestimate: first users are usually free or cheap, the price is raised later. but still impressive.

Stickiness is more valuable early on than that $10/mo or whatever you charge. Make sure you measure how often a user returns, uses, consumes, etc to see if what you are building (or built) is actually used like you want. Often people forget this and it leads to hostile user behavior and payment traps.

You - being the future SaaS startup developer.

Re: Tips for Developers Who Want to Build a SaaS Startup

#18

Post by TekMol »

blaydator wrote: post #14
TekMol wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you use Paddle or Spring? I would expect that MoR's have their own set of issues. As they become the seller. So they are liable for the product quality, safety etc. So I don't think signing up and working with them will be very easy. Especially if your product is not as standardized as an ebook or something. So if you use those, I would love to hear about your experiences. What you sell, how the signup was and how…

I have recently used Paddle for a small saas. I am selling a Pro plan that give access to a restricted feature of the web app. As the Pro plan was introduced as a later stage, Paddle verification team accepted to review a "staging" version of the web app before I post it to production. I definitely talk to real humans, but I took time to express my situation. Paddle integration not too painful (good but not perfect d…

How did you give them access to the staging version? Via a secret url? Or with login and password?

Re: Tips for Developers Who Want to Build a SaaS Startup

#19

Post by lelanthran »

gnicholas wrote: post #3

If you're posting an article, you should post the link instead of the full text, FYI. If you want to do a Tell HN that works too, but then there would be no need to include the link at the bottom.

FWIW, for this sort of thing I prefer the fulltext on HN, rather than clicking through to some ad-filled, slow and bloated destination that fingerprints my browser and tracks me forever.
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