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The Business of SaaS

stripe.com

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Re: The Business of SaaS

#61

Post by alex_hitchins »

jgable wrote: post #12
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.

I'm taking 30x500 from Amy Hoy and Alex Hillman. They are in patio11's orbit. It's an expensive class and would only be worth it if you are really willing to commit. They have some other less expensive products (Year of Hustle, Just F$&*% Ship) that you can use to dip your toe into their methodology. Look up their blog "Stacking the Bricks". Not affiliated in any way, just a fan and appreciative customer.

As someone who has looked at the course also, I'd be really interested in hearing your thoughts on the class. I'm quite sure it's all good stuff, but like all things only really hear about the success stories. A genuine appraisal of the coaching, course materials and time involvement would be really, really interesting.

Re: The Business of SaaS

#62

Post by philip1209 »

geordilaforge wrote: post #8
m12k wrote: post #3

I've been following patio11's blog posts since way back in the Bingo Card Creator days, and he's part of what inspired me to start my own SaaS. I hope his gig at Stripe is good for him, because I think he's supremely well suited to the role of 'teacher' and I think posts like these are great (even if they are part of a content marketing strategy for Stripe)

100%. Stripe Atlas and Increment are some of the best examples of content marketing I know of.

Atlas is starting to create a really vibrant community. Matt Richman joined the team recently and is spearheading events, a Slack channel, Q&As, a weekly newsletter highlighting the community, and more.

Re: The Business of SaaS

#63

Post by enraged_camel »

geordilaforge wrote: post #8
m12k wrote: post #3

I've been following patio11's blog posts since way back in the Bingo Card Creator days, and he's part of what inspired me to start my own SaaS. I hope his gig at Stripe is good for him, because I think he's supremely well suited to the role of 'teacher' and I think posts like these are great (even if they are part of a content marketing strategy for Stripe)

100%. Stripe Atlas and Increment are some of the best examples of content marketing I know of.

Do your know if Atlas supports LLCs yet? I think when they launched they only did C-Corp.

Re: The Business of SaaS

#64

Post by nickjj »

alex_hitchins wrote: post #59
nickjj wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It's worth noting that the course description page on my platform doesn't mention the new bonus RESTful API section yet. I was going to update that once all of the videos are recorded. That's on my short term radar and it's what I'm working on for a few hours a day as we speak.

Pluralsight is ok but they are only interested in very short courses in a tech space that isn't already crowded with content. That makes sense because they are a membership site where the perceived value of individual sales isn't that important. Where as on Udemy, longer courses are considered "better" because each course is an individual transaction and a course with more content is perceived as more valuable (even though I don't technically agree with that, that's what their data shows).

This Flask course is about 10 hours of video for reference. Some of my other courses are in the 3-5 hour range.

Re: The Business of SaaS

#65

Post by jwr »

Fantastic article. I wish I had access to that sort of knowledge before I started my own SaaS [1].

I'd like to underline two points, in case anyone reading this is thinking about starting their own bootstrapped SaaS (I guess many HN readers are):

* The long slow SaaS ramp of death is true. SaaS businesses, especially bootstrapped (and cash-starved) ones do not grow quickly. It takes years, as in more than one, and possibly several years.

* Apart from product-market fit, the biggest problem is marketing. Contrary to what one might expect, it is extremely difficult to get one's product in front of customers.

So, set your expectations accordingly.

[1] https://partsbox.io/

Re: The Business of SaaS

#66

Post by ci5er »

alex_hitchins wrote: post #6
m12k wrote: post #3

I've been following patio11's blog posts since way back in the Bingo Card Creator days, and he's part of what inspired me to start my own SaaS. I hope his gig at Stripe is good for him, because I think he's supremely well suited to the role of 'teacher' and I think posts like these are great (even if they are part of a content marketing strategy for Stripe)

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.

Can I ask what you are looking for in terms of stories? Sector?

I'm a B2B guy - so I never build anything until I have ~1M~2M/year in soft commitments. Then as I build it, I try to get the soft commitments to sign-off on early purchases (at a discount).

Usually - where it gets hard - is customer support if the "B"s you are selling into have a lot of employees that need a lot of handholding. That is a 24x7 hell that you don't want to deal with (but that I don't know how to avoid).

Re: The Business of SaaS

#67

Post by repple »

biot wrote: post #49
gfodor wrote: post #28

patio11 refers to subscription based software as a "financialization" of it, but I'd argue it runs deeper: it turns software from a single, large "opt-in" transaction, to a small "opt-in" transaction followed by a series of "opt-out" decision points for customers, putting more of the burden on the customer to disengage vs the business to sell the customer on the latest version every couple of months. This runs into s…

Slack does this via their Fair Billing Policy [0] and it’s completely automatic. You only pay for active users, so those who go inactive are free. [0] https://get.slack.help/hc/en-us/articles/218915077-Fair-Bill...

I love this about Slack. It puts me into a different mindset. I'm less defensive and therefore more creative, productive, and happy. Most other services put me on a constant lookout. How are they going to "get me"?

Re: The Business of SaaS

#68

Post by alex_hitchins »

ci5er wrote: post #66
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.

Can I ask what you are looking for in terms of stories? Sector? I'm a B2B guy - so I never build anything until I have ~1M~2M/year in soft commitments. Then as I build it, I try to get the soft commitments to sign-off on early purchases (at a discount). Usually - where it gets hard - is customer support if the "B"s you are selling into have a lot of employees that need a lot of handholding. That is a 24x7 hell that y…

At the moment I'm leaving myself open to any good oportuity that comes along. I have a feeling B2B would be easier however this is only based on my assumptions.

I'll not be in the position of getting anywhere near those figures you shoot for and considering this will be my first, I'm keeping my feet firmly on the ground. I've just spent all my career to date (15 years +) building products for other people that I feel I know enough to do my own. Again, it all comes down to finding that need. This is where physical networking and schmoozing pay off, sadly not my forte!

Re: The Business of SaaS

#69

Post by alex_hitchins »

nickjj wrote: post #64
alex_hitchins wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It's worth noting that the course description page on my platform doesn't mention the new bonus RESTful API section yet. I was going to update that once all of the videos are recorded. That's on my short term radar and it's what I'm working on for a few hours a day as we speak. Pluralsight is ok but they are only interested in very short courses in a tech space that isn't already crowded with content. That makes sens…

Interesting, I think PS have at least a few long courses. I'm sure I've seen a few in the 10 hour region. It's been a while since I browsed about looking for something interesting though.

I'm thinking I could do 10 hours as an hour or two a day over a few weeks. I need to decide if it's the tooling holding me back or the MVP. Easy to focus on technology, pitting this against that when really, anything up and working is key!

Re: The Business of SaaS

#70

Post by gnode »

jacquesm wrote: post #36
gfodor wrote: post #28

patio11 refers to subscription based software as a "financialization" of it, but I'd argue it runs deeper: it turns software from a single, large "opt-in" transaction, to a small "opt-in" transaction followed by a series of "opt-out" decision points for customers, putting more of the burden on the customer to disengage vs the business to sell the customer on the latest version every couple of months. This runs into s…

> Given the difference between "existential risk" and "profitable enterprise" is a 5% change in churn rate, these customers may make all the difference! That's exactly how it works. > How does a company balance reducing churn with ensuring that customers who (perhaps temporarily) have dis-engaged can easily turn off the software? The ideal model in my opinion (but that one is obviously not going to maximize profits/r…

I can imagine this driving providers to work around that, structuring their service such that they can argue the user is still engaging with the service passively. For example, having data stored on their servers is use (as I may later want to use it, and incurs them a cost to store it). Or, perhaps being emailed updates about my credit score could be regarded as engagement as they can't necessarily tell whether I am reading their emails.
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