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Tell HN: 19yo, bootstrapped SaaS, 250k ARR after 10 months

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Re: Tell HN: 19yo, bootstrapped SaaS, 250k ARR after 10 months

#21

Post by dfee »

IG_Semmelweiss wrote: post #15

Here is a piece of actionable advice. Join a supoort community in your area. You are looking for something for entrepeneurs in holland ideally. These usually have a price of admission like $300/yr but can be worth every cent For example, ecommercefuel is fantastic for ecomm sites. Mastermind may have something to offer for your geography. Its going to boil down to reputation and how much you put in too. You need a fo…

Interesting advice. I wonder if those groups are uniquely an EU thing.

I moved out to the Bay Area about 4 months before the lockdown and have been quite underwhelmed by the lack of community around entrepreneurship. I’m not sure if it’s the lockdown itself, the FAANG companies dominating the talent pools, or me just not understanding the dynamics out here.

Re: Tell HN: 19yo, bootstrapped SaaS, 250k ARR after 10 months

#22

Post by IG_Semmelweiss »

IG_Semmelweiss wrote: post #15

Here is a piece of actionable advice. Join a supoort community in your area. You are looking for something for entrepeneurs in holland ideally. These usually have a price of admission like $300/yr but can be worth every cent For example, ecommercefuel is fantastic for ecomm sites. Mastermind may have something to offer for your geography. Its going to boil down to reputation and how much you put in too. You need a fo…

Forgot the number 1 rule.

Whatever is that you do, make sure you will always have your company to go back to, the following day.

In other words, always search for risks that can wipe you out, and be paranoid about them, work aggressively to mitigate them, even if the risk is borderline zero that it could happen.

Re: Tell HN: 19yo, bootstrapped SaaS, 250k ARR after 10 months

#24

Post by belzebalex »

Hey there!

I'm from France, 18yo and founded a SaaS with a friend when I was 16 (https://kaktana.com). It's been doing ~$800/month for the last 1.5 years as I had to stop working on it for a very intensive school program (la prépa for the Frenchs). Currently thinking of building a v2 next year when I have more time.

Would love chatting with you, see my page: https://alextoussaint.com

Re: Tell HN: 19yo, bootstrapped SaaS, 250k ARR after 10 months

#25

Post by snerual »

jwr wrote: post #4

As a bootstrapped SaaS founder myself: congratulations! This is an unbelievable growth rate for a bootstrapped SaaS. It usually takes many years to reach these numbers. Very happy to see people build sustainable businesses this way — venture funding is not the only way to go! I'd be very interested to learn more, things like: is it a B2B or B2C SaaS? What is your ARPU and LTV, are you spending on marketing, and if so…

Thanks, I had a lot of discussion with my founder about funding. Until now, I'm happy we did it bootstrap.

To answer your questions: Model: B2B, mostly public educational institutes with 10k+ students. ARPU: would be dumb to shared, but just under the EU tender limit, so sales cycles are reduced to minimum. LTV: That's a hard one when you sell yearly contracts and less than 10months old. But from what we see, schools are very loyal customers. Marketing: Lol, we have a website that we made with a 20$ template. It's all word of mouth and cold calling

Re: Tell HN: 19yo, bootstrapped SaaS, 250k ARR after 10 months

#26

Post by nugget »

tensor wrote: post #20
nugget wrote: post #10

You're already in one of the best communities there is: Hacker News. Don't underestimate what you can learn just by carefully reading the threads here. I went from "idea in my dorm room" to interviewing and hiring executives in their 40s and 50s within 24 months. The best lesson I learned is that there are way fewer "rules" than you think, and smart, disciplined, focused entrepreneurs can accomplish way more than the…

I would caution that Hacker News is both fairly biased towards a developers view of the world, and also often unrealistic when it comes to things outside of technology. As the technical founder the best thing you can do to grow is actually to spend time learning about management and also the non-technical aspects of running a business. I wouldn't rely on Hacker News for these things. Instead look for local entreprene…

Maybe there's been a positive drift in that aspect of the community over the last couple years. Take this thread from last week about GlacierMD:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25825917

IMO the discussion was at least as insightful as I'd expect from a top level MBA classroom.

Re: Tell HN: 19yo, bootstrapped SaaS, 250k ARR after 10 months

#28

Post by iamacyborg »

snerual wrote: post #18
IG_Semmelweiss wrote: post #15

Here is a piece of actionable advice. Join a supoort community in your area. You are looking for something for entrepeneurs in holland ideally. These usually have a price of admission like $300/yr but can be worth every cent For example, ecommercefuel is fantastic for ecomm sites. Mastermind may have something to offer for your geography. Its going to boil down to reputation and how much you put in too. You need a fo…

Thanks for the advice. Not really familiar with "villages" About the Sales, here is our "stack": Hubspot free + LinkedIn sales navigator + unlimited minutes on your phone

If you’re looking to grow your sales function you’ve got a good base already. What’s important is ensuring that calls and emails you send to leads and prospects are tracked in your CRM. This’ll help during the sales process and will be beneficial for post-sales support too.

Re: Tell HN: 19yo, bootstrapped SaaS, 250k ARR after 10 months

#29

Post by nexthash »

snerual wrote: post #17
nexthash wrote: post #13

Wow, this is really inspiring! As a college student under lockdown, building something like this would be my dream. I have so many questions: How do you manage to juggle the responsibilities of school and running your business? What kind of technical expertise do you need? How did you find your idea and gain traction? Do you have employees?

Balancing study and work is REALLY hard (and source of struggle with my parents, which I totally understand :) . We managed to get an office on campus, so it's literally a 3min walk from the lecture hall to the office. Besides that, I was never big on "planning", but now I'm usually planning a month ahead on the uni assignments. Mainly struggling with expanding the technical team. We have some freelancers, but develo…

Not surprising to hear that the work-study part of the equation is one of the more difficult ones - but good job on getting it down! May I suggest hiring college students to do the technical heavy-lifting? In my limited experience, I've seen motivated college students routinely hammer out high-quality work in tasks such as code maintenance, testing, etc for half the pay of a full-time software engineer.

Re: Tell HN: 19yo, bootstrapped SaaS, 250k ARR after 10 months

#30

Post by stedaniels »

snerual wrote: post #25
jwr wrote: post #4

As a bootstrapped SaaS founder myself: congratulations! This is an unbelievable growth rate for a bootstrapped SaaS. It usually takes many years to reach these numbers. Very happy to see people build sustainable businesses this way — venture funding is not the only way to go! I'd be very interested to learn more, things like: is it a B2B or B2C SaaS? What is your ARPU and LTV, are you spending on marketing, and if so…

Thanks, I had a lot of discussion with my founder about funding. Until now, I'm happy we did it bootstrap. To answer your questions: Model: B2B, mostly public educational institutes with 10k+ students. ARPU: would be dumb to shared, but just under the EU tender limit, so sales cycles are reduced to minimum. LTV: That's a hard one when you sell yearly contracts and less than 10months old. But from what we see, schools…

I work at a university, drop me a line, details in my profile.
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