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

Going full time on my SaaS after 13 years

mattmazur.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 233 posts

Re: Going full time on my SaaS after 13 years

#141

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

didgetmaster wrote: post #133
waprin wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah it’s interesting reading the old pg essays where he says, VCs suck but they are a necessary evil. After all, racking reliable servers will cost at least 20k, paying a PR firm so that there’s a chance anyone will hear about your site will cost at least 20k etc etc Now basically every PaaS has a free or cheap ( It’s not strictly true because some projects use GPUs for ML , sometimes there’s some technical rot if y…

It has gotten much cheaper to host stuff, but I really wonder if marketing costs have fallen as well. You can certainly find cheap or free avenues (like HN) to tell people about your product, but it can be lost in the sea of information. Good marketing to the best subset of potential customers is essential in getting anything off the ground. That can be expensive especially if you are an engineer with very little mar…

My take is that marketing now can have very little out-of-pocket cost, but a massively increased time cost because you are now constantly engaging with people, making new posts, answering questions, exploring new avenues, etc.

Re: Going full time on my SaaS after 13 years

#142

Post by matt1 »

encoderer wrote: post #140
matt1 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was my life the last few years :D. Eventually just had to go for it and give up the extra income. It's not clear it was the best decision financially (though it may wind up being so), but it felt like the best decision for my soul, if that makes sense.

Oh yeah you bet. Same here. For me, it was doubly true because I made the leap during the Pandemic lock-down and it was an enormous relief to get out of the zoom-meeting hellscape that my life had became. (I was a middle-manager). It is hard because I also did not ask my wife/family to take a big hit and instead figured I would burn through cash for 2-3 years while I either grew the business or, eventually, did somet…

Thanks for sharing and best of luck with your business's growth in 2023!

Also, regarding FullCalendar, if you need an actual calendar then Preceden won't be a good fit for you. But if you're OK with a horizontal timeline, it might work well. Worth checking out IMHO.

Re: Going full time on my SaaS after 13 years

#144

Post by hermitcrab »

matt1 wrote: post #120
noname123 wrote: post #118

Hi Matt, thanks for sharing. Just a proof of my staying power, I saw your Preceden post on HN; and paid for a license 13 years ago promptly your v0.1 and I am still here. https://i.imgur.com/ejUm3Gh.png I had bought a license purely on a whim as I was browsing HN on company-time. I was in 20's, bored and ambitious with no concrete plans and I proceeded to play on company-time in my cubicle the rest of the day and pla…

Wow, you got on one of those $19 for life plans that I initially offered, that's wild! It's great to hear you got some use out of the tool and hopefully continue to do so. I look forward to your next life update in 13 years when Preceden makes the HackerNews homepage again :). PS for any aspiring entrepreneurs: don't offer lifetime plans, and definitely not for $19, lol.

Congrats on 13 years. I started selling my (desktop) software in 2005 and am still going.

>don't offer lifetime plans

Yep! https://successfulsoftware.net/2008/09/08/should-i-give-free...

Re: Going full time on my SaaS after 13 years

#145

Post by encoderer »

matt1 wrote: post #142
encoderer wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh yeah you bet. Same here. For me, it was doubly true because I made the leap during the Pandemic lock-down and it was an enormous relief to get out of the zoom-meeting hellscape that my life had became. (I was a middle-manager). It is hard because I also did not ask my wife/family to take a big hit and instead figured I would burn through cash for 2-3 years while I either grew the business or, eventually, did somet…

Thanks for sharing and best of luck with your business's growth in 2023! Also, regarding FullCalendar, if you need an actual calendar then Preceden won't be a good fit for you. But if you're OK with a horizontal timeline, it might work well. Worth checking out IMHO.

Yeah they have a timeline component that we use. It’s nice but a bit sluggish when there are too many rows.

Re: Going full time on my SaaS after 13 years

#146

Post by hermitcrab »

didgetmaster wrote: post #133
waprin wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah it’s interesting reading the old pg essays where he says, VCs suck but they are a necessary evil. After all, racking reliable servers will cost at least 20k, paying a PR firm so that there’s a chance anyone will hear about your site will cost at least 20k etc etc Now basically every PaaS has a free or cheap ( It’s not strictly true because some projects use GPUs for ML , sometimes there’s some technical rot if y…

It has gotten much cheaper to host stuff, but I really wonder if marketing costs have fallen as well. You can certainly find cheap or free avenues (like HN) to tell people about your product, but it can be lost in the sea of information. Good marketing to the best subset of potential customers is essential in getting anything off the ground. That can be expensive especially if you are an engineer with very little mar…

getting noticed by the right people cost-effectively is hard. Anything that makes it easier for you to get attention will also potentially make it easier for everyone else. So it will always be hard.

Re: Going full time on my SaaS after 13 years

#147

Post by kilroy123 »

ricksunny wrote: post #55

Good on you; We need more examples highlighted of entrepreneurs leading the slow-burn (in a good way) types of ventures. Not every business activity fits the go-big-or-go-home Zuckerberg-esque meteoric rise archetype that the Techcrunch-led hype media attracts eyeballs for portraying.

It's tough though. I've been slow-burning on a side project for two years.

I'm unsure if I need to be patient and keep working on it. Or cut my losses and put my time and effort into something else.

Re: Going full time on my SaaS after 13 years

#148

Post by sirsinsalot »

kilroy123 wrote: post #147
ricksunny wrote: post #55

Good on you; We need more examples highlighted of entrepreneurs leading the slow-burn (in a good way) types of ventures. Not every business activity fits the go-big-or-go-home Zuckerberg-esque meteoric rise archetype that the Techcrunch-led hype media attracts eyeballs for portraying.

It's tough though. I've been slow-burning on a side project for two years. I'm unsure if I need to be patient and keep working on it. Or cut my losses and put my time and effort into something else.

Do you enjoy it?

Re: Going full time on my SaaS after 13 years

#149

Post by Alex3917 »

didgetmaster wrote: post #133
waprin wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah it’s interesting reading the old pg essays where he says, VCs suck but they are a necessary evil. After all, racking reliable servers will cost at least 20k, paying a PR firm so that there’s a chance anyone will hear about your site will cost at least 20k etc etc Now basically every PaaS has a free or cheap ( It’s not strictly true because some projects use GPUs for ML , sometimes there’s some technical rot if y…

It has gotten much cheaper to host stuff, but I really wonder if marketing costs have fallen as well. You can certainly find cheap or free avenues (like HN) to tell people about your product, but it can be lost in the sea of information. Good marketing to the best subset of potential customers is essential in getting anything off the ground. That can be expensive especially if you are an engineer with very little mar…

> I really wonder if marketing costs have fallen as well

The overall cost of building a product and getting a product to PMF is higher, but the main cost is time. That's why it can be advantageous to just work on something for ten years rather than going out, raising a bunch of money, and shutting down two years later.

Re: Going full time on my SaaS after 13 years

#150

Post by agentwiggles »

matt1 wrote: post #124
agentwiggles wrote: post #119

This is super inspiring. I just started working on a side project that I hope can one day be worth something. I'm also the sole breadwinner of a household with 2 (soon to be 3) kids and a wife depending on me, so it's really inspiring to see that the dream really can happen, even if it takes a decade plus to realize. Even if my thing never takes off, it's a tool I've wanted for a long time, so I'm motivated to keep g…

I should have said this in the post, but even if your startup doesn't take off, the skills you learn along the way are very valuable and will make you better at all of your future jobs. I hope things work out for you and that they don't take as long as they did for me :).

Calling it a "startup" at this point feels like a wild exaggeration, I have a user account system and a landing page so far.

My current goal is to dedicate the same amount of time to the idea that I spent playing Factorio last year (about 160 hours by Steam's reckoning). At the end of that I will, if nothing else, have learned a lot about Phoenix, which feels like a good bet regardless of any wild dreams of sustaining an income from the other.

Either way though, thanks for the encouragement!

Post reply on HN