Ask HN: I need advice on my first B2B SaaS startup

Hi.

$10/month for a B2B product is very very low and companies don't sell $10/month products with sales people. It won't cover the cost of a sales person's time, or ads for that matter. If it costs $100 to get a client, you need them to stick for 10 months before you make anything. With an 8 month runway, your math won't work. It only works if you have great "free" inbound marketing and the time to wait. That's Netflix level pricing, where they have millions of clients and had the funding to cover initial losses while growing the user base.

My first advice is to raise your price! Either that or you need millions in funding to build a marketing campaign and to have the runway to wait until the CAC is covered. I would 10x your price at least, and then offer early adopter discounts to clients who pay for a year now, not when the product is ready, with extra off if they prepay for two years. Then each sale pays you enough to do some development and get the next sale, as opposed to paying you enough to eat at McDonalds once a month.

Also, list yourself on Sploda.com (no association) and update your profile every time something happens, so they start seeing progress.

John

It's usually much more difficult to increase prices later after you've gathered more data. The Web is a much bigger, diverse place today than it was 10 years ago. Start at higher prices as a rule for [esp for non-technical audiences], measure, tweak and repeat.

I read it as $10/user/month, not $10/month. Presumably they are trying to sell to businesses with many users.

I too would recommend consulting until your product can pay the bills. If you can find consulting clients who can potentially benefit from your app so much the better.

Clients who commit to pilots or trials without committing cash are not worth anything. You can offer fully refundable trials, but always take some sort of deposit.

Yes - friends and family rounds are a good source and I'd imagine common source of funds for early stage startups. It's as much a part of your network as the clients and employers you work with over the years. It almost goes without saying that you should only ask those who can afford to lose their investment. Awkward family functions can ensue if you lost Uncle Joe's much needed $10k savings pot.

Cold email can be useful (look at Steli Efti's e-books and tips on this subject). This was helpful to me when starting out and helped me find customers before committing to build my product: https://youtu.be/H0f0o5-liyM

Everyone you pitch - especially in enterprise - is time poor. Also when they commit to buying from a new startup they are putting their reputation at their firm on the line. Their natural inclination will be to defer the decision if they're interested. So if they gave any kind of indication that your product might be useful keep pinging them politely and semi-regularly - preferably with useful product updates which could meet their needs - until you get either a yes or a no. Introductions, warm referrals or partnering with a bigger vendor who can vouch for you can shorten the sales cycle significantly for enterprise.

Avoid falling prey to potential customers saying they'll bite if you give them 'feature X'. Do make a note of the conversations and feature requests though - sometimes if the use case crops up more than once it might be useful to consider adding to your backlog.

Consider blogging about what you guys do, how you do it, why you do it - this will help build social proof for not just the product but you. If the product itself doesn't work out all these articles are a nice thing to fall back on if you have to go back to full-time work.

See everything as a learning opportunity but know when to delegate. As a coder I wasn't very good at cold emailing or prospecting so I put everything into learning that skill. I now try and delegate it when possible. Similarly if you're not great at understanding Google Analytics etc. learn it - but know when to get a specialist in to help do a few days work for you.

Upwork is great for finding skilled freelancers to parachute in and do some work. Keep a list of all the top notch talent you work with, it's quite possible the best thing to come out of your venture is the network you build.

Finally take care of yourself. Mentally and physically. Know that even if this goes belly-up you are not your product - your product didn't work out - you however showed a lot of initiative, courage and smarts to get something new, that didn't exist before out the door and onto the market.

Good luck!

Thanks for the feedback, but this is $10/user/month. Many Saas companies charge similar amounts and they seem to be doing fine. I appreciate your feedback though!