Bootstrapping a SaaS Startup from Scratch • Hacker News Board

Re: Bootstrapping a SaaS Startup from Scratch

#61

Post by matwood » Tue, Dec 20, 2016, 1:05 AM UTC

codegeek wrote: post #27

"Instead of coding, the vast majority of your time is going to be spent marketing, selling, optimizing funnels, and providing support. Those are the things that get (and keep) customers. Those are the things that you do when you run a business. Not writing code." This is the best part of this article for me. A lot of solo bootstrappers don't get it. They struggle. But the fact is that you have to market and sell. Tal…

It is interesting to think about this story contrasted with the one from earlier where the guy was unemployed because he didn't want to do a job he felt was below him. You have to get out and hustle and work on shit sometimes even if you're not starting your own company.

The important part is to focus on the goal. If the goal is to learn a new JS framework, that's fine. But if the goal is to bootstrap and start a company don't get stuck doing mental masturbation picking a new framework every weekend. And when doing the shit work, remembering the goal helps to push through.

Re: Bootstrapping a SaaS Startup from Scratch

#62

Post by ssharp » Tue, Dec 20, 2016, 1:05 AM UTC

codegeek wrote: post #27

"Instead of coding, the vast majority of your time is going to be spent marketing, selling, optimizing funnels, and providing support. Those are the things that get (and keep) customers. Those are the things that you do when you run a business. Not writing code." This is the best part of this article for me. A lot of solo bootstrappers don't get it. They struggle. But the fact is that you have to market and sell. Tal…

This really struck a chord with me. I spent the early career parts of my career as a developer and slowly transitioned completely to the marketing side of things.

When I start thinking about side projects of business ideas, the roadblock for me is actually getting myself onboard to code the thing so I can get to the point where I can start optimizing funnels.

Re: Bootstrapping a SaaS Startup from Scratch

#63

Post by encoderer » Tue, Dec 20, 2016, 1:12 AM UTC

codegeek wrote: post #27

"Instead of coding, the vast majority of your time is going to be spent marketing, selling, optimizing funnels, and providing support. Those are the things that get (and keep) customers. Those are the things that you do when you run a business. Not writing code." This is the best part of this article for me. A lot of solo bootstrappers don't get it. They struggle. But the fact is that you have to market and sell. Tal…

My experience running a bootstrapped monitoring service (Cronitor) is that sure, very early on, code quality, test coverage, etc, is unimportant. We didn't write our first tests for 5 months after launch.

But low churn is a powerful lever for growing the value of your SaaS business. For the benefit of people who haven't spent time learning about this stuff: for any SaaS business there is a natural limit to it's size. Eventually your churn equals your growth and you stop growing. This is the struggle.

Ensuring that our product is highly available and relatively free of defects is an investment in low churn. Users are unhappy when things don't work, and unhappy users stop paying you every month. When you have a very small user base this isn't worth optimizing for, but I personally disagree that quality is not important and that test coverage does not have positive ROI. Like all things in a startup, the idea is not to neglect it, but to work on it just enough that it's no longer the most important thing to work on.

Re: Bootstrapping a SaaS Startup from Scratch

#64

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Dec 20, 2016, 1:12 AM UTC

codegeek wrote: post #27

"Instead of coding, the vast majority of your time is going to be spent marketing, selling, optimizing funnels, and providing support. Those are the things that get (and keep) customers. Those are the things that you do when you run a business. Not writing code." This is the best part of this article for me. A lot of solo bootstrappers don't get it. They struggle. But the fact is that you have to market and sell. Tal…

[deleted]

Re: Bootstrapping a SaaS Startup from Scratch

#65

Post by orasis » Tue, Dec 20, 2016, 1:12 AM UTC

throwawaylalala wrote: post #56

cloudwizard wrote: post #55

I agree with almost everything except advertising on FB and Twitter. I have worked at several startups that had ZERO return on thousands of advertising on FB. Our Google ads cost more but had an actual return. There is a reason that they cost more.

It's easy to waste money with Facebook. It's also easy to make money with it when using the right process.

Any tips on what the "right process" entails?

Re: Bootstrapping a SaaS Startup from Scratch

#66

Post by realstuff » Tue, Dec 20, 2016, 1:22 AM UTC

csallen wrote: post #48

realstuff wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How ironic of you showing in the particular post. He's precisely referring to people like you and your illegitimate interviewees at IndieHackers who all claim to be overnight successes.

Nobody on Indie Hackers has ever claimed to be an overnight success, and every interview is transparent about the details so that readers can see exactly how long it took.

Right, like the story from the other day where you claimed the logo site was making huge sum a year... Based on one or two weeks of sales!!!

Re: Bootstrapping a SaaS Startup from Scratch

#67

Post by csallen » Tue, Dec 20, 2016, 1:42 AM UTC

realstuff wrote: post #66

csallen wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody on Indie Hackers has ever claimed to be an overnight success, and every interview is transparent about the details so that readers can see exactly how long it took.

Right, like the story from the other day where you claimed the logo site was making huge sum a year... Based on one or two weeks of sales!!!

There was no claim about yearly revenue. The figure given was $15k/mo based on $7k of sales in one week. Even so, that was a singular oversight on my part[1], not some sort of formula for all the interviews on the site.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13072326

Re: Bootstrapping a SaaS Startup from Scratch

#68

Post by brianwawok » Tue, Dec 20, 2016, 1:53 AM UTC

csallen wrote: post #67

realstuff wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, like the story from the other day where you claimed the logo site was making huge sum a year... Based on one or two weeks of sales!!!

There was no claim about yearly revenue. The figure given was $15k/mo based on $7k of sales in one week. Even so, that was a singular oversight on my part[1], not some sort of formula for all the interviews on the site. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13072326

Keep writing it's good stuff :)

Re: Bootstrapping a SaaS Startup from Scratch

#69

Post by liquidise » Tue, Dec 20, 2016, 2:17 AM UTC

jeffreyrogers wrote: post #43

This is a good read, but I'm a bit concerned by his product Tamboo[1], which lets site owners track exactly what their users do on their sites. I was looking at competitors and found Smartlook[2], whose website asks "Is this super-awesome service even legal?" A better question might be, "is it ethical?" and generally when you're asking is it legal the answer to that question is no. [1]: https://gettamboo.com/ [2]: ht…

I have a hard time with hit myself. Mixpanel is another competitor here and, when properly integrated, it can show some pretty shocking details about app usage. Great for optimization, poor for user privacy.

Re: Bootstrapping a SaaS Startup from Scratch

#70

Post by Radim » Tue, Dec 20, 2016, 3:01 AM UTC

amarghose wrote: post #60

matrix wrote: post #14

The whole series is painfully accurate; glad to see someone telling it like it is. That aside, article is actually not as anti-establishment as the author makes out -- unless your source of prevailing wisdom is from click-baity 4 Hour Work Weak style articles. But I doubt any serious founder puts any stock in that stuff. There's a lot of valuable info to be learned from high quality sources like Steve Blank's article…

I have mixed feelings about this. The 4 Hour Work Week created my "why" for me that's kept me going through thick and thin. I definitely realize that it's a ton more work than it's made out to be (and while Tim Ferriss simplifies what it takes, he doesn't downplay the amount of work involved). My company is also at a point where my business partner and I could reasonably step away and spend 4 hours a week literally r…

In my experience, that "tropical island" trope goes hand in hand with the "4 hour week" BS.

I lived in tropical Thailand for 2 years (wife had a job there; now we live in Korea). And let me tell you, you'll get bored out of your mind sooner rather than later, and find yourself "sitting here on HN" more often than you'd like to admit.

Creative people live for the thrill of being "in the zone", utilizing their potential to the max. Tropical surroundings or "4 hour weeks" have surprisingly little to do with that.