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Bootstrapping a SaaS Startup from Scratch

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Re: Bootstrapping a SaaS Startup from Scratch 

#81

Post by misterhtmlcss »

realstuff wrote: post #76
cyberferret wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. When I started writing my SaaS app, I thought the 25000+ lines of code and 80+ database tables would be the hardest work, and that the marketing would be a breeze afterwards. How wrong I was! The marketing aspect proved to be just as difficult and brain taxing as the coding. In fact, I found it almost impossible to move ahead until I decided to bring on board a co-founder with a marketing background (after a…

I wonder where I can find such marketing partner and what's the expected compensation in term of equity and whatnot?

No idea how many are out there, but there are quite a few I'm sure. I was looking for years to partner with someone and found a couple nibbles, but ultimately no one was as serious as myself about being an entrepreneur. Let's be honest most are talkers.

Re: Bootstrapping a SaaS Startup from Scratch 

#82

Post by radicalbyte »

misterhtmlcss wrote: post #80
cyberferret wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. When I started writing my SaaS app, I thought the 25000+ lines of code and 80+ database tables would be the hardest work, and that the marketing would be a breeze afterwards. How wrong I was! The marketing aspect proved to be just as difficult and brain taxing as the coding. In fact, I found it almost impossible to move ahead until I decided to bring on board a co-founder with a marketing background (after a…

If only I ever had found people that valued my work, I may have stayed in marketing. Now I'm a former strategist that is converting to programming.

The problem is that there are a lot of s*s who go into marketing because it's easy to get away with being a bullshitter.

Unfortunately those are the types who are most vocal and up front, who you as technical founder always seem to meet.

I'd kill to meet a marketer whose skills of marketing (and selling) matched mine as an Developer.

Re: Bootstrapping a SaaS Startup from Scratch 

#83

Post by wiradikusuma »

Shameless plug, I want to share an online course I'll be teaching mid-Jan 2017: http://wiradikusuma.com/

It's more like "an opinionated step-by-step guide to bootstrapping a startup, so i can use it myself", with "study case" of actually building one (as the course progresses).

Re: Bootstrapping a SaaS Startup from Scratch 

#84

Post by nappy »

radicalbyte wrote: post #82
misterhtmlcss wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If only I ever had found people that valued my work, I may have stayed in marketing. Now I'm a former strategist that is converting to programming.

The problem is that there are a lot of s *s who go into marketing because it's easy to get away with being a bullshitter. Unfortunately those are the types who are most vocal and up front, who you as technical founder always seem to meet. I'd kill to meet a marketer whose skills of marketing (and selling) matched mine as an Developer.

Two sided matching is hard, and even more so in dating. Starting a company is both :/

Re: Bootstrapping a SaaS Startup from Scratch 

#85

Post by wastedhours »

realstuff wrote: post #76
cyberferret wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. When I started writing my SaaS app, I thought the 25000+ lines of code and 80+ database tables would be the hardest work, and that the marketing would be a breeze afterwards. How wrong I was! The marketing aspect proved to be just as difficult and brain taxing as the coding. In fact, I found it almost impossible to move ahead until I decided to bring on board a co-founder with a marketing background (after a…

I wonder where I can find such marketing partner and what's the expected compensation in term of equity and whatnot?

I got into marketing through reading about the startup world (I think some of the people on HN would be surprised at how much of it is a discipline once you get passed the BS-ers), and come more from a hacker perspective.

If you're bringing them on as a co-founder, then they're a co-founder, equity and all. It's a valuable skill as much as programming and sales are (if you're actually building a business, that is).

The issue you'll find is that most of the places to find them will be full of aforementioned BS-ers, or self-titled growth hackers. Have a small LinkedIn hunt at marketers who work in-house at a semi-large organisation - in a lot of places there's a lot of hunger to do more, but large orgs tie your hands and often see marketing as a "support" function over and above a business driving one.

It might also be easier to find a part timer who doesn't want to give up the above security, but wants to exercise their creative muscles, depending on what stage/size biz you've got and your reqs.

Re: Bootstrapping a SaaS Startup from Scratch 

#86

Post by chrisan »

In Part 3 of the series[0] he hits home pretty hard. Often when I have an idea for something I also take that "opportunity" to learn something new or interesting, something I don't do at my day job

> Use Java/.NET/PHP/Rails/Perl/VB in your day job? Then Java/.NET/PHP/Rails/Perl/VB it is.

> I don’t care if you don’t know ASP.NET MVC and only know WebForms. Just use WebForms. Does that suck? Yes, it does. But do it anyways.

> Learn something else once you’re making money and you can afford to pay yourself the time to learn something else.

> I once spent three months learning production-grade Scala for a project I thought it would be awesome for. That project never got off the ground, and now I make $0.00 a year from having learned Scala.

...

> Take a lesson. Use whatever you know.

> The same thing goes for architectural concerns.

> Microservices? STOP.

> Crazy ass front-end stuff with ReactJS or Angular2 with TypeScript? STOP.

> How about some hot new NoSQL platform? STOP.

> What about going cloud with AWS or Heroku? STOP.

I've learned a lot, made little, and most of my extracurricular activities/skills have basically been funneled back into my day job.

[0]: https://hackernoon.com/make-it-rain-building-an-mvp-for-fun-...

Re: Bootstrapping a SaaS Startup from Scratch 

#87

Post by reversefungi »

Good article on the dangers of starting a business without actually knowing anything about how to do business. I've been reading "The E-Myth Revisited" and it's been really incredibly helpful in showing all the common pitfalls that folks fall into when trying to start up their own business, usually using the same logic of "These jokers don't know what they're doing, I'm gonna start my own thing and do it the RIGHT way!"

Highly recommend everyone check it out before starting a new business. I've been helping my father with his own small business, which is a bit of a total mess. Some of the advice in this book has been incredibly illuminating, regarding why so many small businesses are structured to fail, rather than aiming for success from day 1. Between that and a book like "The Personal MBA", I think that would be a solid background before getting anything off the ground.

I don't work for any of these folks or the authors, they've just made a big positive impact in the way I think about business.

Re: Bootstrapping a SaaS Startup from Scratch 

#88

Post by pc86 »

chrisan wrote: post #86

In Part 3 of the series[0] he hits home pretty hard. Often when I have an idea for something I also take that "opportunity" to learn something new or interesting, something I don't do at my day job > Use Java/.NET/PHP/Rails/Perl/VB in your day job? Then Java/.NET/PHP/Rails/Perl/VB it is. > I don’t care if you don’t know ASP.NET MVC and only know WebForms. Just use WebForms. Does that suck? Yes, it does. But do it any…

> Use Java/.NET/PHP/Rails/Perl/VB in your day job? Then Java/.NET/PHP/Rails/Perl/VB it is.

Another way to put this (that I've seen on HN a handful of times so bear with me) is that it depends what the product is for?

If you only know C# but want to learn Go:

- Do you want to make money? Write it in C# - Do you want to learn a new language, struggle, (most likely) produce little value, and scrap the whole thing a half dozen times in two months? Write it in Go

Re: Bootstrapping a SaaS Startup from Scratch 

#89

Post by ThomPete »

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…

As someone who is running not a Saas startup but a sideproject sell a fairly popular productivity app which I am making good money on I couldn't agree more.

I would even go as far as to say that your customer support is one of the key differentiators when it comes to establishing your product as a high quality one.

The difference between me helping someone right away and then being a little delayed (it is a side project after all) is huge.

People can have serious issues with the app but as long as you support them they will thank you for your great product.

Other can have less serious problems and if you ignore them too long they can turn really sour.

One thing I also do is ask people I interact with to go write a review about the app if they are happy with the support. That's something most are happy to do as long as you provided them with support and acknowledged their problems.

Re: Bootstrapping a SaaS Startup from Scratch 

#90

Post by vanderreeah »

rsp1984 wrote: post #54
Fomite wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because I read it far more as "This is going to be fucking hard, it sucks. Welcome to the trenches." That's considerably different than "I just did this simple thing and then money fell from the sky." That, and the rest of the article goes on to focus on validating why your idea might not suck, or can at least be refined.

Your point is valid but if you read my comment I'm not arguing why the author is better or worse than the people he criticizes. My point is that the author is using questionable rhetoric and is not being honest with his audience at best (and manipulative at worst) in his article. He could have easily made his point while not being any of that.

Disagree. His rhetoric is a necessary antidote to the rhetoric of the real snake-oil salesmen who speak from an assumed position of authority and present their entrepreneurship as a matter of blind will and charisma, when in fact - as he openly says has happened to himself - the real process is much much harder. You seem not to be able to read tonal nuances: he is clearly not placing himself in a position of greater success than his readers in order to sh*t on their ideas; he is deploying a generalised "reality-check" rhetoric to try to disperse the stench of nonsense emitted by the other "entrepreneurs". For you to take it personally kinda makes me chuckle.
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