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The Business of SaaS

stripe.com

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Re: The Business of SaaS

#51

Post by nomel »

graeme wrote: post #30

The free trial section gave me an idea. I have a product (a course) which can be used in 2-4 weeks. This isn't exactly SAAS, but there's some overlap. Has anyone ever seen (or tried) a full free trial which lasts 2-3 days? I currently just have some demo videos, but it occurs to me I might increase conversion if I just let people into the full thing, let them have a taste, and then ask them to pay if they want to kee…

2-3 days probably means your'e a sales company, and it will continue to be a hostile relationship. I much prefer buying from product companies, trying to show me why I need their software.

It's just downright ridiculous/shady.

Ridiculous since there's no way I'll be able to make an informed decision in 2-3 days, especially since there's no chance I'll dedicate 100% of my time to those 2-3 days. When I'm done looking at the several options available, I'll have a meeting showing my findings and running through a guess which software isn't going to have a live demo.

Shady, because I know I'm not going to get a full picture in 2-3 days, but more importantly, they know I'm not going to get a full picture in 2-3 days. My assumption will always be (and is usually correct) that on the surface things are fine, but if you try to use any of the more advanced features/integration/whatever actual use, you'll run into trouble.

If you actually have a good product, why fear letting people see how good it is? Let them try it out, integrate it into their workflows enough and see enough of an improvement that they don't want to go back.

Re: The Business of SaaS

#52

Post by dayjah »

While running Heysan (YC W-07) we were having a hard time hiring; startups were a hard sell back then, and given we were building a product aimed at feature phones it was harder still to convince folks to join. We faced a meaningful decision: whether to buy a subscription to a product or build it ourselves. The notion of SaaS clearly existed back then, but it had not yet developed into what it is now; it was more akin to buying software licenses per CPU than the sort of products and pricing that we have now. Also, pertinently, I was a young and inexperienced CTO who had no real framework for how to approach this problem, so I took it to the board, the answer was resounding: pay for it.

In 2011, while deeply ingrained in converting justin.tv -> twitch.tv, the same sort of decision came up: should we build our analytics or should we buy it (mixpanel in this case). This time it was obvious: buy it.

In the time from that first decision and the later decision at Twitch I was able to fully appreciate why you buy, and Patrick nails it in the first few sentences:

> Unfortunately, many entrepreneurs discover this body of practice the hard way, by making mistakes that have been made before, rather than by spending their mistake budget on newer, better mistakes.

also:

> Customers love SaaS because it “just works.” There is typically nothing to install to access it. Hardware failures and operational errors, which are extraordinarily common among machines which are not maintained by professionals, do not result in meaningful data loss.

I've often retaught these points to folks: "Our job is to deliver a product to our users, they don't care about the ancillary product we use to deliver them our primary product. Buying Saas is like hiring pro's to do a job at the fraction of the cost of hiring pro's to do that job".

Or as Matt Brezina (Xobni & Sincerely) likes to say: Hire via API ( http://www.mattbrezina.com/blog/2011/08/hiring-via-api/ )

Re: The Business of SaaS

#53

Post by lettergram »

Well.. after reading those conversion rates - I feel pretty happy with my conversions :D

I've been using Stripe and Stripe Atlas since 2016, and it's helped me grow my business well. Slowly iterating. My particular tactic is to give users a full refund - every month - they give me feedback via a survey:

https://projectpiglet.com/

It's actually been super nice because people are super willing to pay after I build out the system the way they want. They then tell their friends and so on.

Then there are websites I built like:

https://easy-a.net/

Which only has a 3% conversion rate form registered users to paid users. Apparently, that's pretty good as well... People love it and I haven't touched the website in 18 months -_-

It's clear why SaaS is superior in that aspect, because it's 100% automated, makes money, and I don't even touch it. Updates are nearly completely automated on Easy A, and https://projectpiglet.com (being completely in development) requires a bit more, but also completely automated.

Re: The Business of SaaS

#55

Post by jccooper »

nomel wrote: post #51
graeme wrote: post #30

The free trial section gave me an idea. I have a product (a course) which can be used in 2-4 weeks. This isn't exactly SAAS, but there's some overlap. Has anyone ever seen (or tried) a full free trial which lasts 2-3 days? I currently just have some demo videos, but it occurs to me I might increase conversion if I just let people into the full thing, let them have a taste, and then ask them to pay if they want to kee…

2-3 days probably means your'e a sales company, and it will continue to be a hostile relationship. I much prefer buying from product companies, trying to show me why I need their software. It's just downright ridiculous/shady. Ridiculous since there's no way I'll be able to make an informed decision in 2-3 days, especially since there's no chance I'll dedicate 100% of my time to those 2-3 days. When I'm done looking…

I suspect you did not actually read the parent. It's an online course. Nobody's going to "integrate it into their workflows".

Re: The Business of SaaS

#56

Post by drharby »

bitL wrote: post #15
alex_hitchins wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give some info on your SaaS? Any tips/hints/tricks? I'm always looking to hear stories from people who have shipped a product. Keen to make this year the year I create something small.

Try to take "The Build a SaaS app with Flask" course on Udemy: https://www.udemy.com/the-build-a-saas-app-with-flask-course... I found it very well made and you might ship a simple SaaS within a week, including Stripe subscription. You'd also learn about Docker deployment there. Themeable using Twitter's Bootstrap as well. Now just get an idea for a profitable offering and you are golden! ;-)

Oh wow the timing of this info.

Purchasing this for a saas idea of mine.

Funny i was meaning to learn flask the right way

Re: The Business of SaaS

#57

Post by graeme »

nomel wrote: post #51
graeme wrote: post #30

The free trial section gave me an idea. I have a product (a course) which can be used in 2-4 weeks. This isn't exactly SAAS, but there's some overlap. Has anyone ever seen (or tried) a full free trial which lasts 2-3 days? I currently just have some demo videos, but it occurs to me I might increase conversion if I just let people into the full thing, let them have a taste, and then ask them to pay if they want to kee…

2-3 days probably means your'e a sales company, and it will continue to be a hostile relationship. I much prefer buying from product companies, trying to show me why I need their software. It's just downright ridiculous/shady. Ridiculous since there's no way I'll be able to make an informed decision in 2-3 days, especially since there's no chance I'll dedicate 100% of my time to those 2-3 days. When I'm done looking…

Please actually read comments before replying.

I sell 5-24 hour long online courses. A two week trial would let someone see everything, and would leave the user with no reason to purchase.

This is why I haven't done full free trial yet. Because 2-3 days seems short. But I'm wondering if it counterintuively might be optimal, by removing friction to trying the course.

Re: The Business of SaaS

#58

Post by alex_hitchins »

bitL wrote: post #15
alex_hitchins wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give some info on your SaaS? Any tips/hints/tricks? I'm always looking to hear stories from people who have shipped a product. Keen to make this year the year I create something small.

Try to take "The Build a SaaS app with Flask" course on Udemy: https://www.udemy.com/the-build-a-saas-app-with-flask-course... I found it very well made and you might ship a simple SaaS within a week, including Stripe subscription. You'd also learn about Docker deployment there. Themeable using Twitter's Bootstrap as well. Now just get an idea for a profitable offering and you are golden! ;-)

Thanks for the link to that course. I'm a seasoned .Net developer and would like to explore .Net core more, but this would add another skill set and a different approach to solutioneering.

Re: The Business of SaaS

#59

Post by alex_hitchins »

nickjj wrote: post #31
bitL wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try to take "The Build a SaaS app with Flask" course on Udemy: https://www.udemy.com/the-build-a-saas-app-with-flask-course... I found it very well made and you might ship a simple SaaS within a week, including Stripe subscription. You'd also learn about Docker deployment there. Themeable using Twitter's Bootstrap as well. Now just get an idea for a profitable offering and you are golden! ;-)

Hi, Course author here. Thanks a lot for posting this (and for signing up). But, it's worth noting that if you buy the course on my platform at https://buildasaasappwithflask.com/ there are additional perks you won't get on Udemy. For example I'm in the process of adding a new bonus section to the course that goes over building RESTful APIs with Flask. I've already released the source code and 1 video for it on my ow…

Thank you very much for taking the time to reply and also in giving that link - very much appreciated. I'll look at your site and the Udemy one and weigh up what's best for me at the moment.

Also interesting to hear a creators side of Udemy. I've used Pluralsight before where you have a set fee for everything. I wonder if something like that might work better for you as someone authoring these courses?

Re: The Business of SaaS

#60

Post by icebraining »

statictype wrote: post #13

What are some examples Of high touch SaaS (besides Salesforce)? And any that have successfully deployed both low touch and high touch?

There are a lot of small companies offering that - a mix of SaaS and custom development.

In a previous company, we built a SaaS platform (based on Odoo, a kind of semi-open-source web version of SAP) which allowed clients to purchase changes to any part of the application. Unlike in a typical SaaS, each client had its isolated copy of the app/database/etc (though all running on our cloud), so they could change anything. Some changed nothing, others have whole new components and business flows.

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