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Going full time on my SaaS after 13 years

mattmazur.com

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Re: Going full time on my SaaS after 13 years

#161

Post by matt1 »

charles_f wrote: post #157

That's awesome! Very inspiring Out of curiosity, I see that the $16 pack gets you your own logo and branding. Is that kind of vanity something people actually ask for? Always sound weird to me :)

The free plans include Preceden branding on some export formats (like PDFs) which serves as a marketing channel because anyone they share the PDF with will see the timeline is created with Preceden and some will go on to check it out and become customers. Both paid plans remove the Preceden branding, which is one reason users might choose to upgrade.

Regarding adding a custom logo, that's mostly a need of professionals in larger businesses (think project managers at Fortune 500 companies), so having that on the top paid plan encourages those type of users to upgrade to that plan vs the cheaper one.

Re: Going full time on my SaaS after 13 years

#162

Post by yamazakiwi »

AussieWog93 wrote: post #107

Congrats on making it, Matt. I quit my job to focus on the side hustle full-time back at the start of 2020 (back when we all thought it was going to be like any other year). The hardest and most stressful part by far was renegotiating boundaries with my wife. Being physically around one another all the time , and having no set hours is a recipe for relationship woes. Having our first kid during the lockdowns (we're i…

I haven't been able to work remotely so I'm genuinely curious how that has affected you. Can you provide any examples out of curiosity... I'm assuming they're quite innocuous.

Re: Going full time on my SaaS after 13 years

#164

Post by matt1 »

shanecleveland wrote: post #155

I find stories like yours much more inspiring that the overnight successes. Thanks for sharing and I wish you well going forward. Over this time, what have your most successful marketing/customer acquisition strategies been? How has this changed?

Content marketing and SEO have proved the most successful. For example, this list of timeline makers ranks well for various search terms and brings in a lot of new users: https://www.preceden.com/timeline-makers.

I've tried a lot of other things like paid spend, but could never get the economics to work. Maybe one day!

Re: Going full time on my SaaS after 13 years

#168

Post by huhtenberg »

matt1 wrote: post #21
sasha_fishter wrote: post #14

Great to see success stories from SaaS. Can you just share how did you attract first visitors, and subscribers when you first launched the web?

I'm not sure I'm the best person to ask about this as I was very naive at that point in my journey. Launching Preceden was literally posting on HackerNews and hoping for the best. I would encourage you to join Microconf Connect, a Slack community of software entrepreneurs, where topics like this are discussed often: https://microconf.com/connect . Many of the old Microconf conference presentations are also on YouTube…

If I read it correctly, Microconf Connect is for _SaaS_ founders only.

This excludes all small software shops and single-man ops that do conventional desktop software. The community would easily grow 2x if the SaaS restriction is removed.

Re: Going full time on my SaaS after 13 years

#169

Post by holler »

> I made a lot of rookie mistakes over the years that limited Preceden’s growth including not focusing on a specific niche, not spending enough time marketing, not talking to enough customers, trying to do too much myself, and just in general picking a difficult product and business to build (something I didn’t give any thought to initially).

This really resonates with me. I've been building a new social app, that's taken awhile to build, and I've faced the same challenges along the way.

It'd be real easy to give up on a project before it's really found pmf. To keep going, to believe in it and not give up is encouraging. Great to hear your story!

Re: Going full time on my SaaS after 13 years

#170

Post by rwalling »

huhtenberg wrote: post #168
matt1 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I'm the best person to ask about this as I was very naive at that point in my journey. Launching Preceden was literally posting on HackerNews and hoping for the best. I would encourage you to join Microconf Connect, a Slack community of software entrepreneurs, where topics like this are discussed often: https://microconf.com/connect . Many of the old Microconf conference presentations are also on YouTube…

If I read it correctly, Microconf Connect is for _SaaS_ founders only. This excludes all small software shops and single-man ops that do conventional desktop software. The community would easily grow 2x if the SaaS restriction is removed.

We wouldn’t “easily grow 2x” if we served every type of software entrepreneur.

We used to cater to all software: mobile apps, desktop, WordPress, etc. and we still have many folks in the community who are non-SaaS. But the focus on SaaS was a spark that dramatically increased growth as it allowed us to optimize everything we offer (content, community, masterminds) on the specific problems SaaS folks face.

We don’t restrict folks who can join based on the type of software, so “restriction” is not the right word to use there. It’s just a focus.

And it was a great choice, allowing us to be the best in the world at what we do (rather than serving a broader market, poorly).

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