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

How I’ve Attracted the First 500 Paid Users for My SaaS

blog.inkdrop.info

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 140 posts

Re: How I’ve Attracted the First 500 Paid Users for My SaaS

#31

Post by diminoten »

_kxbd wrote: post #22

> "You don’t have to care about competitors. It’s a waste of time. Because you know where to go. You can ignore even if they stole features your product has. Because you are the person who most understands your product, how it works and why it works." I enjoyed this article, but this bit I'm not entirely convinced by. The saying does go that competition leads to innovation. Instagram Stories were a great business mov…

I don't think they're saying "You don't have to care about your competitors." I think they're saying, "You don't have to care about your competitors [to attract the first 500 paid users for your SaaS]."

Re: How I’ve Attracted the First 500 Paid Users for My SaaS

#32

Post by gleenn »

zawerf wrote: post #16
bttf wrote: post #14

This is an interesting perspective on running a SaaS and pricing it for slower paced growth. On the Inkdrop pricing page, it reads: >We would like to provide good, quick and warm user support. If we got a lot of users, we won't be able to support them all. Frankly admitting that they want to pace user growth for better quality service is both brutally honest, and enticing. I hope more bootstrapped SaaS companies achi…

Maybe a little bit too paced? According to the first graph, it's $30,000 in total sales over the last 2 years which forced him to continue freelancing as his main income. This post is basically announcing ramen profitability. (Of course it's still a great achievement to turn any profit on a side project, let alone supplant his main income)

While you're right that $30K isn't hugely profitable, his growth curve looks good, especially at the very end. He could probably either reduce his focus and cash $1300 in profit extra a month or continue and it appears that his product could keep trending up for a while. That's a really sweet position to be in IMHO

Re: How I’ve Attracted the First 500 Paid Users for My SaaS

#33

Post by bdcravens »

_kxbd wrote: post #22

> "You don’t have to care about competitors. It’s a waste of time. Because you know where to go. You can ignore even if they stole features your product has. Because you are the person who most understands your product, how it works and why it works." I enjoyed this article, but this bit I'm not entirely convinced by. The saying does go that competition leads to innovation. Instagram Stories were a great business mov…

Instagram can experiment in a way that a single-founder with $3k MRR cannot.

Re: How I’ve Attracted the First 500 Paid Users for My SaaS

#34

Post by xmly »

_kxbd wrote: post #22

> "You don’t have to care about competitors. It’s a waste of time. Because you know where to go. You can ignore even if they stole features your product has. Because you are the person who most understands your product, how it works and why it works." I enjoyed this article, but this bit I'm not entirely convinced by. The saying does go that competition leads to innovation. Instagram Stories were a great business mov…

Ignore the competitions, does not mean you do not know the competitions.

Follow them and know what they are doing. But do not adjust your plan easily for just what your competitors are doing.

Re: How I’ve Attracted the First 500 Paid Users for My SaaS

#35

Post by keeptrying »

_kxbd wrote: post #22

> "You don’t have to care about competitors. It’s a waste of time. Because you know where to go. You can ignore even if they stole features your product has. Because you are the person who most understands your product, how it works and why it works." I enjoyed this article, but this bit I'm not entirely convinced by. The saying does go that competition leads to innovation. Instagram Stories were a great business mov…

Competition is a huge distraction because the market is usually big enough for both companies. Ie customer isn’t looking for feature comparison at this point, but for the best service.

And you can provide that only if you’re focused on present customers.

Took me a very long time to understand this ... PG mentions this as a big failure mode :-/

Re: How I’ve Attracted the First 500 Paid Users for My SaaS

#36

Post by movedx »

xmly wrote: post #34
_kxbd wrote: post #22

> "You don’t have to care about competitors. It’s a waste of time. Because you know where to go. You can ignore even if they stole features your product has. Because you are the person who most understands your product, how it works and why it works." I enjoyed this article, but this bit I'm not entirely convinced by. The saying does go that competition leads to innovation. Instagram Stories were a great business mov…

Ignore the competitions, does not mean you do not know the competitions. Follow them and know what they are doing. But do not adjust your plan easily for just what your competitors are doing.

I think this is the spirit of the advice.

Re: How I’ve Attracted the First 500 Paid Users for My SaaS

#38

Post by devoply »

happy-go-lucky wrote: post #28
chrisweekly wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unclear whether you're joking. OP is charging $5/mo to those 5000 users.

OP says they have 600 users now, not 5000.

Imagine if he continues to grow he will have 5k users and would be making 250k.

Re: How I’ve Attracted the First 500 Paid Users for My SaaS

#39

Post by winrid »

_kxbd wrote: post #22

> "You don’t have to care about competitors. It’s a waste of time. Because you know where to go. You can ignore even if they stole features your product has. Because you are the person who most understands your product, how it works and why it works." I enjoyed this article, but this bit I'm not entirely convinced by. The saying does go that competition leads to innovation. Instagram Stories were a great business mov…

The way I have always thought of things was along the line of - I can spend all my time worrying about my competition, my competition spends all their time worrying about me, and neither gets anything done.

So my philosophy is to be aware of the competition but listen to my customers and the industry.

Instagram stories - examples like this are where I struggle. At least they copied it fairly well if that's the case :)

Re: How I’ve Attracted the First 500 Paid Users for My SaaS

#40

Post by enraged_camel »

Roadmaps are really important to me. When I'm evaluating a new service, I first look for a published roadmap. Specifically:

* When the next version will be released (specific date, not just bullshit stuff like "Q1 2019") * What new features it will have

If I can't find anything like this, I'm less likely to sign up.

Post reply on HN