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Reselling Software: Don’t Start a SaaS – White Label Someone Else’s Instead

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Re: Reselling Software: Don’t Start a SaaS – White Label Someone Else’s Instead

#101

Post by lupire »

kenbolton wrote: post #58
mgbmtl wrote: post #12

Or see it the other way around: if you have a SaaS, don't underestimate resellers. My company has its own product, but we also provide white-label services to other companies. We're terrible at marketing, and some of our partners operate in certain very specific niches, with their pool of clients. It's a mutually beneficial relationship. (With the caveat that, if your aim is to build a pool of clients to then sell th…

My business does exactly this. We have a very small sales team, but the firms white-labelling us have tens-to-hundreds of folks in sales and marketing, and sometimes provide a SaaS into which they bundle our white-labelled product. Our ("our"?) sales funnel is in the triple digits, and we have largely migrated away from sales towards fulfilling orders. It is a wonderful place to be!

Why white-label instead of affiliate-selling without the brand dishonesty?

Re: Reselling Software: Don’t Start a SaaS – White Label Someone Else’s Instead

#102

Post by Mo3 »

kappuchino wrote: post #82

Honestly, I'm confused. This is at #13 at my time of writing. Never seen such low quality post (from my point of view) that high up and discussed like it adds value top ... what? whom?. Is this the eternal september Moment of hacker news?

I agree. This is pretty horrible and I’m surprised to see the sentiment is as good as it apparently is. This is just bragging about how to create a 100% parasitic middleman venture that contributes absolutely no value to anything. One might suspect there is more behind this posting and comments

Re: Reselling Software: Don’t Start a SaaS – White Label Someone Else’s Instead

#103

Post by Mo3 »

a4isms wrote: post #25

Meta-comment: The author is relating second-hand information. That’s useful, it’s good to have people who have a skill of curating business advice and pointing us in good directions. But my first-hand advice is to recognize the difference between: Alice: “I’m making five figures a month for five hours a week reselling five products.” And Bob: “People like Alice make as much as five figures a month for five hours a we…

That was such a good comment, I took a screenshot.

Re: Reselling Software: Don’t Start a SaaS – White Label Someone Else’s Instead

#104

Post by jollofricepeas »

mickael-kerjean wrote: post #7
jollofricepeas wrote: post #6

The biggest unlock that most HNers will miss in this article is what the guy did for lead generation.

"He would sit in his car at lunch and cold call roofers, plumbers, dentists, and other small businesses he saw as potential customers."

The calling isn’t the unlock. It’s what he asked them to do first.

An interview is much easier then asking them for a sale upfront. Everyone wants recognition.

Re: Reselling Software: Don’t Start a SaaS – White Label Someone Else’s Instead

#105

Post by smashah »

ako wrote: post #68
smashah wrote: post #64

Most of my revenue comes from companies that basically resell my product with some cherry on top specializations for their local markets. I have managed to develop a mechanism (also just the nature of the product) that charge per end user so it's protected against exploitation. No marketing/landing page required on my end, my clients end up making avg. 6x on top. win win.

Is it saas? How do you enable your customers to specialize your software?

It's open source and designed to be built on top of and to easily deploy at scale.

Every instance is linked to an end users number, licenses are sold per number per month. Self-hosted SaaS.

Re: Reselling Software: Don’t Start a SaaS – White Label Someone Else’s Instead

#107

Post by kenbolton »

lupire wrote: post #101
kenbolton wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My business does exactly this. We have a very small sales team, but the firms white-labelling us have tens-to-hundreds of folks in sales and marketing, and sometimes provide a SaaS into which they bundle our white-labelled product. Our ("our"?) sales funnel is in the triple digits, and we have largely migrated away from sales towards fulfilling orders. It is a wonderful place to be!

Why white-label instead of affiliate-selling without the brand dishonesty?

In our case, there is no "brand dishonesty". In some cases, the front-end is co-branded, in others the front-end is white-label while the resulting product, if used, has our branding. And sometimes the end-user gets the raw data without a need for our branded artifact. In the absolute best-case, the customer automates their interactions and never sees any branding. (I know the marketing people on here blanched when they read that.) Our concern is utility for the customer, growing that utility, retaining existing customers regardless of how we acquired them and who got the generous sales commission, while growing the number of customers and the volume of product used year-over-year.

Affiliate sales have always seemed more dishonest to me than working with a vendor who adds value to our product for our shared customers.

Re: Reselling Software: Don’t Start a SaaS – White Label Someone Else’s Instead

#108

Post by stuven »

hinkley wrote: post #97
stuven wrote: post #66

A startup (series A-B) I worked for was basically a thin wrapper providing physical goods around the core features of a delivery SaaS (series A) - our core features were so entwined with theirs that when they went belly-up, we panicked and bought their source code for an ungodly sum. Then we took over hosting their product for just ourselves, and so had to learn how to run _their_ software too. It was written in a di…

Did you end up making money off that product line? I’ve worked at a couple places where the business folk sold our product below cost, and some of our customers built their whole roadmap around us, while we quietly ran out of money. Without the middleman, you maybe pulled it off.

We eventually straightened things out enough that the product ran on its own, but when I left there were plans on the backburner to replace it. Not sure how the financials worked out there in the end!
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