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Going full time on my SaaS after 13 years
191–200 of 233 posts
Re: Going full time on my SaaS after 13 years
#192Earlier quoted context omitted.
> you can get users / customers for free on social media Mostly you can't, especially if you're a b2b SaaS.
If you're b2b, you only need one client to be profitable. Or so they say.
You only need one special client to be profitable. You might need to go through many other clients before you meet them.
Re: Going full time on my SaaS after 13 years
#193I don't want to spread negativity here but such success stories from indie hackers or side projects always remind me that most of them don't make any money: https://scrapingfish.com/blog/indie-hackers-revenue
Re: Going full time on my SaaS after 13 years
#194Hi Matt,
Congrats on making it! I'd never heard of your projects but will give them a serious look now.
How did you go about managing work/side-work/life balance with 4 kids? I really struggle with just 1 and a half.
Re: Going full time on my SaaS after 13 years
#195Earlier quoted context omitted.
I was lucky to find someone who can both design well and implement the changes in the codebase (using Tailwind CSS which I'd highly recommend). You can obviously have two separate people (one to design, one to implement), but if you can find someone who can do both it will simplify things. For Preceden, we kind of just went page by page converting the old design over to Tailwind, making improvements along the way, an…
It sounds like selecting Tailwind helped to make clear the specific skills you were looking to hire for and at what level you'd be working together. Good to know. Thanks for sharing.
The Precedent’s designer here. When I wrote my “for hire” ads, my bullet points were these:
· Typography-based design system with Figma · Robust CSS with Tailwind CSS · Straightforward JavaScript with Alpine.js or Stimulus
I also noted that my preferred back-end language and framework were Ruby and Rails (on which Preceden is built).
So being clear, specific, and knowing some solid technologies and design/code tactics helped me find someone like Matt, who has been a very good collaborator these past few years.
It was posted on Haker News (Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer?), Reddit (r/forhire r/DesignJobs r/freelance_forhire), and Tailwind Discord.
Re: Going full time on my SaaS after 13 years
#196Hi 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.
> PS for any aspiring entrepreneurs: don't offer lifetime plans, and definitely not for $19, lol.
To be fair though, the chances of your service still being around and GP still getting value from it 13y later were pretty slim weren't they? After all, you listed some other SaaS products shutdown in the interim in OP, did any of those have lifetime [of the product] plans?
Of course, I do realise non-recurring sales (coupled with the non-recurring sales not continuing, growth in users slowing) hurts those chances itself.
Re: Going full time on my SaaS after 13 years
#197Hi Matt, Congrats on making it! I'd never heard of your projects but will give them a serious look now. How did you go about managing work/side-work/life balance with 4 kids? I really struggle with just 1 and a half.
Not Matt, but I have a similar situation (3 kids, FT job, side project). My side project has been running for a few years now, but I am able to be pretty productive on it.
First, I wake up early, and make sure the side project is the first thing I do every day. There's a book "the richest man in Babylon" and one of the ideas is "pay yourself first". I take that principle to my side project. I work on the side project first thing in the morning, to ensure I give it my best. I still want to learn and deliver good work at my FT job, but I've always ensured that from a time perspective I've paid into the side project first, because I believe thats the best long term career investment. Unfortunately, yes, this means that you need to set an alarm, but I enjoy the work, so I don't feel like I'm dragging myself out of bed.
That leads me to my second point which is make sure you enjoy the side project. I've worked on multiple and the biggest mistake I've made is building something I didn't need or want. I built a few projects because they were technically interesting, not because I really needed them. For SAAS you might not necessarily directly need or enjoy the tool you build, but you better enjoy building it, and enabling others to use it! If not, it will be difficult to keep up motivation when things get tough.
GL!
Re: Going full time on my SaaS after 13 years
#198I don't want to spread negativity here but such success stories from indie hackers or side projects always remind me that most of them don't make any money: https://scrapingfish.com/blog/indie-hackers-revenue
Marketing is a VERY different skill from building, and can take years to master. As someone who has built several side projects that landed in the "didn't make any money" bucket, it's easy to fall for the "build it and they will come" mental trap. I am starting the journey of learning marketing now, but I have a lot of optimism, as I am learning all sorts of things that don't work, and looking forward to trying the things that people say do work.
Re: Going full time on my SaaS after 13 years
#199This 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…
> Even if my thing never takes off, it's a tool I've wanted for a long time, so I'm motivated to keep going even if it never makes a penny.
This is what motivates me! Humorously, I keep getting pulled back to building the features I want instead of actually getting the thing in front of people :)
Re: Going full time on my SaaS after 13 years
#200Earlier 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…
> you can get users / customers for free on social media Mostly you can't, especially if you're a b2b SaaS.
LinkedIn has been wonderful for me.