Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

SaaS We Happily Pay For

francescodilorenzo.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 229 posts

Re: SaaS We Happily Pay For

#101

Post by Misdicorl »

bamazizi wrote: post #9

While I think it's great you're thinking of tools to optimize your time BUT a team of 3 at early stage project/startup level should be a bit more frugal and look for clever ways to save the ~$200/month you're spending right now! I understand you have your own SAAS and want to justify subscription and this is a good promo method. I've written on HN before that I'm TIRED of subscription apps, specially per user subs, f…

> BUT a team of 3 at early stage project/startup level should be a bit more frugal and look for clever ways to save the ~$200/month

I think this is backwards. Instead the relevant question is how much can a team of three (x) achieve by aggressively outsourcing everything that isn't their expertise/value add

Re: SaaS We Happily Pay For

#102

Post by wolco2 »

zwayhowder wrote: post #50
maccard wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it's worth waiting until you've scaled your revenue before committing to those outgoings? As someone else mentionrd, 10% of that is for scheduling meetings, with a team of 3!

If you have a lot of meetings with external parties (it's not about scheduling between the 3 internal) a good calendar scheduling tool is worth it in my opinion. When I was a sales engineer at a software startup we probably spent 10-15 minutes per lead sorting calendar times out. Considering only 1 in 10 leads turn into sales this was 2.5-3 hours per converted lead. By having a self service scheduling tool we already…

Might be offtopic but adding friction might seem like a good time balancing matrix but what you are doing is filtering not the worst leads but probably the easiest ones to convert. Those willing to go back and forth on time will build muscle memory and make a deal easier. The others are still cold.. they will take additional effort during the sales calls.

Re: SaaS We Happily Pay For

#103

Post by Closi »

eikenberry wrote: post #43
system2 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sir, where do you pay $15k for a startup developer salary?!

I've always heard that, for the US, when thinking about salary you want to about double what the employee makes when considering the employers cost.

This is overkill, add 35% to the top and you will be closer (depending on absence/sick levels).

Statutory allowances in the UK are higher than in the US, and in the UK for instance you would add:

- 12.5% national insurance + apprentice levy

- 3-4% pension

- 10% of days as holidays

- 5% of days as sick / other leave (dependent on amount taken in reality)

- 2% payroll fees / other

Note, this excludes training and equipment/office space.

Re: SaaS We Happily Pay For

#104

Post by mooreds »

systemvoltage wrote: post #77
qeternity wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shhh...you can do most things with some other less perfect tool. Just because you can doesn’t mean you should. For Gmail, docs and drive, G Suite is an absolute bargain. The user experience you describe above (committing Libre office files to git? have you used Libre office) makes me shudder.

Now that I think of it and other comment said - yea, GSuite + Email for $5/month is a bargain. > Shhh...you can do most things with some other less perfect tool. Just because you can doesn’t mean you should. My intent was to encourage others from not thinking "Yeah, I need all this to start a company".

> My intent was to encourage others from not thinking "Yeah, I need all this to start a company".

Definitely! when I was first consulting I created all my invoices in OpenOffice doc files, and then emailed them out. I kept track of everything I'd sent out to clients on a spreadsheet. It was worth it because it was free. I didn't have many clients and was just starting out. Wanted to keep my expenses down.

However, after a few years I used FreshBooks, which automatically built an invoice for me. I could run reports easily. I could send the invoice. I could even accept payment via credit card.

It cost me something (I don't remember what it was, but it was under $50/month) and saved me so much time. (There are many competitors to FreshBooks and I'm sure each of them would have done the same.)

That's the tradeoff. Most things can be done for "free" if you count your time as having zero value. That is very rarely the case. It may be a good idea to minimize $$ out the door as much as possible when you are starting, but in a while (even if it takes you years, like it did for me) you'll learn to trade money for time using specialized tools.

Re: SaaS We Happily Pay For

#105

Post by mooreds »

ymolodtsov wrote: post #84
slow_donkey wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah g-suite is a dam bargain especially since it also gets you conferencing, SSO and is one of the few SaaS you'd truly want to buy and retain.

Most importantly it gets you SSO on basic plans for any SaaS. Big companies using Okta or something have to pay for all those Enterprise plans just for that.

> Most importantly it gets you SSO on basic plans for any SaaS.

Is that because most SaaS offers "sign in with google"? Or is there something else involved?

Re: SaaS We Happily Pay For

#106

Post by fartcannon »

cabraca wrote: post #13
bamazizi wrote: post #9

While I think it's great you're thinking of tools to optimize your time BUT a team of 3 at early stage project/startup level should be a bit more frugal and look for clever ways to save the ~$200/month you're spending right now! I understand you have your own SAAS and want to justify subscription and this is a good promo method. I've written on HN before that I'm TIRED of subscription apps, specially per user subs, f…

~$200/month for a 3 person startup might seem high. now calculate the cost of a server to host that FOSS stuff and the time and energy to maintain it, backups, etc. TBH i would rather put that time and energy in my startup instead of maintaining a FOSS stack for my company.

Do you think FOSS stacks are made of ice? That they would melt if you don't constantly resupply fresh ice from arctic excursions.

Surely you maintain your start-up tech on F/OSS, as most of the internet does, so just use the person who types 'apt-get update && apt-get upgrade' on your service to do the same on your local VM.

Or leave keep it local and literally never update it.

It wont melt.

Re: SaaS We Happily Pay For

#107

Post by keithnz »

really interesting reading the comments where people are trying to cost optimize, and then others justifying the costs by time saved. Seems to me both ways of thinking about this is the wrong mindset. The more important thing is the operational "flow", how your toolsets come together to allow you to operate your business. Trying to micro optimize costs is not terribly useful, one sass offering on it's own may not terribly justify itself, but because they way it connects with other pieces of your operation, the overall flow is better, and therefore justified. It's the difference between an "accountants" way of seeing a business vs systematic thinking. Much important to think about how the "whole" than the parts.

Re: SaaS We Happily Pay For

#108

Post by peter_l_downs »

mchusma wrote: post #93
peter_l_downs wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use Linear and have previously used Asana and Jira. Linear is much, much better. It's much faster, the design is better (easier to understand what i'm looking at, switch between board and list views), and doesn't have infinite complexity. You can create tasks, and subtasks, and projects, and that's it. There are Cycles (sprints) with some neat scheduling tools for it, that may not be useful for you if you don't wor…

I was looking at linear. But we do use kanban (no sprints). Do you know if sprints are basically a required part of using Linear?

I do know —- they are not!

Re: SaaS We Happily Pay For

#109

Post by ryanSrich »

ryanSrich wrote: post #19
paxys wrote: post #6

SavvyCal looks interesting, but for a "lean operation" can you really justify paying $12 per month per user for a service to schedule meetings? All of GSuite starts at $6/mo, and already does this.

You really can’t say if they can justify it or not. Only they can. If I can save 15 minutes per day, that would more than pay for $12/month. Time is your most valuable asset.

I have 0 meetings with anyone that works with me. We’ve essentially eliminated all internal meetings. At least scheduled recurring ones.

I do, however, have roughly 10 meetings per week. These are with potential clients, existing clients (for feedback), external consultants (legal), investors, etc.

We are a startup, and as such, we all wear 10 different hats. Which means doing sales, admin, business, etc.

Re: SaaS We Happily Pay For

#110

Post by cabalos »

jedberg wrote: post #97
mchusma wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually technically this is prohibited by stripe. They explicitly ban testing your app in production. We have offered suggestions many times to them, but still no feature here.

This isn’t really “testing”. It’s just signing up for their own service. They aren’t making stripe transactions and then reversing them. If stripe bans you from buying your own service, they may want to rethink that policy.

I think this is credit card company policy and not specifically Stripe. IIRC, there is some language regarding using your own credit card because it could potentially be used to give yourself a loan. Credit cards have a much higher APR and lower limits for a cash advance. Processing your own cards could be used as an avoidance.
Post reply on HN