B2B SaaS marketplaces with opportunities for indie hackers • Hacker News Board

Re: B2B SaaS marketplaces with opportunities for indie hackers

#71

Post by mattmanser » Fri, Jan 22, 2021, 4:19 PM UTC

melomal wrote: post #25

dstick wrote: post #2

Correct me if I'm wrong but unless you're already an established brand that people actively seek out, or part of the first X listings in a category of a thing everyone wants (i.e. SEO, Ads, accounting for webshops), wouldn't you already be too late on these market places?

This is the definition of an indie hacker. They take established products/tools and then strip them to improve one area and sell it onto other indie hackers at an 'affordable' price which requires you to sell your soul for $8 per month. Imagine having 10 paying customers giving you $80 per month. You need to provide some level of support, deal with charge backs which can get you MATCH banned so payment processing bec…

The point is to have a few hundred, or thousand. If it's so niche it only appeals to 10 customers, then see if you can charge $800 p/m or move on.

Re: B2B SaaS marketplaces with opportunities for indie hackers

#72

Post by gbourne » Fri, Jan 22, 2021, 4:42 PM UTC

I've found for my business marketplaces are key to get exposure to your potential users.

A few more you might add are package managers, such as NPM. If you have a dev focused company and provide SDKs, those are great places where your users can find you.

Re: B2B SaaS marketplaces with opportunities for indie hackers

#73

Post by melomal » Fri, Jan 22, 2021, 4:59 PM UTC

mattmanser wrote: post #71

melomal wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the definition of an indie hacker. They take established products/tools and then strip them to improve one area and sell it onto other indie hackers at an 'affordable' price which requires you to sell your soul for $8 per month. Imagine having 10 paying customers giving you $80 per month. You need to provide some level of support, deal with charge backs which can get you MATCH banned so payment processing bec…

The point is to have a few hundred, or thousand. If it's so niche it only appeals to 10 customers, then see if you can charge $800 p/m or move on.

The trouble with a few hundred customers is the customer service side of operations. Indie hackers are lean machines and having to support a large customer base requires more tasks. Managing churn is also another problem area as you grow which generally requires product development. You quickly lose the indie hacker feels once you get to 50 customers I would say.

Re: B2B SaaS marketplaces with opportunities for indie hackers

#74

Post by kbos87 » Fri, Jan 22, 2021, 5:30 PM UTC

khuknows wrote: post #12

dstick wrote: post #2

Correct me if I'm wrong but unless you're already an established brand that people actively seek out, or part of the first X listings in a category of a thing everyone wants (i.e. SEO, Ads, accounting for webshops), wouldn't you already be too late on these market places?

There could be categories of things people want without many solutions in some marketplaces. For example, in the Hubspot marketplace, there are many WhatsApp widgets in their marketplace. Someone made one for the Pipedrive marketplace and it’s doing very well. There would be similar missing apps for Pipedrive, or there would be other platforms where a WhatsApp widget could do well.

This! It isn't hard to look at what is successful in, say, the Salesforce App Exchange and apply that concept for HubSpot. Huge opportunity there.

Re: B2B SaaS marketplaces with opportunities for indie hackers

#75

Post by shostack » Fri, Jan 22, 2021, 5:46 PM UTC

davidjgraph wrote: post #21

The "indie hacker" part is underselling the value of hooking into these marketplaces. The Atlassian marketplace is how we're able to make draw.io/diagrams.net free everywhere else. We don't have to handle any licensing or billing and it's a commercial market where users expect to pay. We generate 8 digits annually there with 5FTE people, you can build a medium sized company around just one of these marketplaces.

How do you feel about the platform risk factor?

Ie. Building this thing where your platform gets essentially free product research data and can decide you are a feature they will build themselves at any time?

Are there agreements in place that provide meaningful protection against this?

Re: B2B SaaS marketplaces with opportunities for indie hackers

#76

Post by aj_nikhil » Fri, Jan 22, 2021, 5:47 PM UTC

krm01 wrote: post #7

I work directly with founders of B2B SaaS (run a design a [1] UI/UX design company with a focus on dev teams) which gives me a good idea of the landscape. The biggest opportunities seem to be in the edtech space, remote working and any other type of category which facilitates remote work. If you are looking for opportunities, try to map out where your skills and interest can contribute in a remote / wfh economy. I’ve…

Hi I'm really interested in edtech, can you share some opportunities that exist in that space ?

Re: B2B SaaS marketplaces with opportunities for indie hackers

#77

Post by exdeve » Fri, Jan 22, 2021, 5:49 PM UTC

I heard that Wordpress and Atlassian are the most lucrative. After these, there is Slack and Pipedrive

Re: B2B SaaS marketplaces with opportunities for indie hackers

#78

Post by pc86 » Fri, Jan 22, 2021, 5:59 PM UTC

juliendc wrote: post #35

krm01 wrote: post #7

I work directly with founders of B2B SaaS (run a design a [1] UI/UX design company with a focus on dev teams) which gives me a good idea of the landscape. The biggest opportunities seem to be in the edtech space, remote working and any other type of category which facilitates remote work. If you are looking for opportunities, try to map out where your skills and interest can contribute in a remote / wfh economy. I’ve…

FYI there is a typo in the CTAs. It should be "Request Availability" instead of "Request Availibility". I'd fix that because it doesn't look very professional. Otherwise the concept is nice, makes a lot of sense.

Especially for $6k/mo starting

Re: B2B SaaS marketplaces with opportunities for indie hackers

#79

Post by csa » Fri, Jan 22, 2021, 6:33 PM UTC

bilekas wrote: post #18

Can someone please tell me what is an 'indie hacker' ?

Generally speaking, someone who is starting a tech business with no intention of taking investment (esp. VC).

Many indie hackers are trying to avoid having a boss and/or trying to avoid selling time for money (as others have said), but some do want to grow relatively large businesses. I believe that DHH and Base Camp in general in its early days would have been considered “indie hackers”.

Re: B2B SaaS marketplaces with opportunities for indie hackers

#80

Post by ArturT » Fri, Jan 22, 2021, 6:39 PM UTC

I posted my add-on in Heroku Marketplace over a year ago https://elements.heroku.com/addons/knapsack-pro and did not see much organic leads from the marketplace itself.

Anyone using Heroku Marketplace as well? Any ideas how did you approach promoting your add-on? Thanks.