Am I wrong to think that this post needs a couple of revisions? It feels like it is all over the place. I don't know if it's just me but the structure and organization feels so off... The tone of the article makes it seem like the maker is not interested in solving the problem, but more interested in getting paid and that's all that matters. It's also hard for the reader to contextualize anything if the author leaves…
Exactly! Folding after hitting the first crash or first review is not a SaaS product, it's a programming assignment!
"I was literally saying to people: “I’m looking to build an X app would you find that useful”."
What app is he writing about? Is the article fake? How can you write like 10 paragraphs about your failed app without namedropping it or tell what it tried to do.
Maybe this isn't helpful advice, but don't take product failures so personally. They are experiments and learning exercises, and most companies fail by default. Of course it depends greatly on your life situation, i.e. do you have a job that can support you while working on stuff as a side-project? Or are you attempting to launch something as your full-time day job with limited savings or income? (10x more stressful)…
I agree that perseverance is being ignored by the author. Not that he should keep throwing good money after bad, but keep costs low, keep talking to customers, don’t be afraid to throw things away, and you might be surprised where your product ends up.
It was extremely distracting to not know what the SAAS services were. Wasted reading time - too abstract.
I have a feeling the write-up is fiction and should be read as a novel. Which is funny since:
"Soon I started getting feedback on forums along the lines of “The product looks interesting but I don’t really want to sign up for it without seeing the product first.” Again this was a free product at the time and all the user had to do was click the Google or Facebook OAuth button to log in, or enter their email but they refused to do so. They didn’t trust me."
Much of this seems like useful lessons learned, but this particular section jumped out at me: > To my credit at this time I would learn and do anything to get more users to my site, to the point where I was getting banned from multiple forums for posting after people told me to get lost. How is this "to your credit"? If, as you say, the success of your product depends on getting niche users to buy in and trust that y…
This is how a spammer is born. They think they have "good intentions" themselves, failing to realize they are just obsessed about getting rich/famous and no longer care about anything else, seeing spamming behaviour as acceptable if it gives them 2 new users for each forum that bans them.
I'm not sure in which areas the author released SaaS products but what's mind-boggling to me is how fast successful SaaS businesses get copied these days, especially if they are rather "simple" (in the sense of being reproducible by a small team without large investment). Privacy-friendly website analytics is maybe a good example. There are literally thousands of companies with almost the same USPs (GDPR-compliant, cookie-less, privacy-first), almost every day a new one tries to launch on Product Hunt. And since everyone is prying for attention it gets more and more difficult to build something that gets noticed at all in those areas. I mean try entering a search term like "GDPR compliant analytics" into Google and you'll be presented with thousands of SEO articles from different analytics companies. I've heard the same thing happens on the app store: As soon as there's something successful, copycats show up in a manner of weeks, trying to capitalize on the successful app. So on one hand the addressable market for SaaS products gets larger every year, but at the same time more and more companies are pushing into that market.
I think one of the important lessons that the author is yet to learn is that people don't give a shit about your product. You have to realize that even if someone gives you a 1 star review saying "product does not work", they still probably don't give a shit. Even people who use your product more than likely aren't going to give you any feedback. The fact the author is focused on things like SEO and is overly emotion…
>It also sounds like they're trying to build generic B2C products, which I think is the complete opposite of what you should be building as a solo bootstrapper What would be your recommendation then regarding this point? Niche b2b?
I would avoid going into areas with lots of existing hype (e.g. privacy-friendly website analytics) where you'll compete with literally thousands of companies from all over the world and where you'll have very few ways to truly stand out.
Business models that are more defensible are those that require bigger investments and deeper expertise to build, as that will make it more difficult to copy for incumbents.
I have been building and failing multiple websites/mobile apps since 2006. To this day, I don't think I could ever be in that situation of creating something that somehow takes off. Theres gotta be a place for failed web/mobile app developers to get together and figure out a way to make it, anyone know of such a place?
By the nature of it, only a few apps/products will ever be successful. The number of people/companies trying to create such apps/producs is very large today as software has the lowest possible initial investment of any kind of business (essentially zero if you have the skills already). But the number of people/companies willing to pay for some new product they don't already have is tiny. It is extremely difficult for someone to be successful in this area.
In summary: most will not make it, no matter how hard they try and even how good they are, because there's simply no room for everybody.