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I stopped setting a financial goal for my SaaS

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Re: I stopped setting a financial goal for my SaaS

#81

Post by hinkley »

jamil7 wrote: post #57
mobitar wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Three years is typically just the tip of the iceberg ;) There's probably at least a decade's worth of failures that lead up to finally having a successful product.

Any tips for staying motivated? I want to see my project through but it feels like a real grind after the 1 year mark, every new signup makes me feel some guilt because I feel the product isn't ready yet.

You need perspective.

This is one of the biggest casualties of our industry's hyperfocus on software all day, every day, and nothing else. Everything in the world is two dimensional to us.

How many hobbies do you have?

Three years is only a long time if you are young or have never studied anything longer than the time it took to get your CS degree.

In virtually any other hobby or pursuit, you have only just become interesting to other people around the 3 year mark, and software developers are already daydreaming about the Next Thing. If in fact they aren't already looking at the Old Thing shrinking in the rear view mirror.

Pick something to try to get good at. It'll help reset your concept of 'a long time' and your pain thresholds to something more compatible with the rest of the world. An instrument. Crafting (wood, cloth, leather, beer). A sport. Mushroom hunting. Learn to play Go (particularly good one for developers who are uncomfortable picking up something too out of character). Stick around to get properly good at it instead of simply conversation at parties good.

Slow down, and take a breath for fuck's sake.

Re: I stopped setting a financial goal for my SaaS

#82

Post by saimiam »

lonelycss wrote: post #72
wdewind wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not OP but I've spent a lot of time setting up email sending for SaaS apps. It shouldn't be too difficult, just use a third party provider like sendgrid and make sure your DKIM and SPF records are setup properly and you should be good to go. I've also used stuff like Amazon SES and it's not worth the trouble for side projects (or even medium sized, real businesses, honestly). If you have specific questions feel free…

(Email noob here) I'm writing a very low traffic web app, and I was thinking about SES, mostly because it's free for small volumes. What's wrong with it? Would you recommend sendgrid (or something else) instead?

I recently set up SES for my own projects so some this info is fresh in my mind. I’m not an SES power user so ymmv.

My only real, big issue with SES is with email templates as in I don’t know of any way to view templates in SES.

So, if you create an email template and want to preview it, you’ll have to do it locally/off-SES. If you need to handle hundreds of templates, this can get tedious.

The other minor tech issue is that SES needs you to work out of one of three regions - US east, west, and EU (if I recall correctly).

If, for legal or hygiene purposes you need your data anywhere else in the world, you’re SOL.

Other than these two, SES has been amazing. It costs pennies and I host all my email, both transactional and personal, with them. Worth noting that my transactional email is in the order of a few hundred per month, if that.

Re: I stopped setting a financial goal for my SaaS

#83

Post by [deleted] »

jmduke wrote: post #3

This post resonates a lot with me! I've got a side project that's current bringing in around ~2-3K MRR ( https://buttondown.email ). I spent a long time daydreaming about having it hit four-digits in recurring revenue — it felt like such an accomplishment that if I were able to crack it, it'd be a dream come true. It's certainly not enough to live off of (especially living in Seattle), but it's a non-trivial amount o…

[deleted]

Re: I stopped setting a financial goal for my SaaS

#84

Post by wolco »

naringas wrote: post #43
msvan wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The flip side of the story is that Sublime died. I know they have had some updates recently, but for years it was completely stagnant. The hole that was left by Sublime was filled by VS Code. Maybe Sublime would've survived with a subscription model? When you're paying a subscription you are paying for the maintainer's continued interest in the product over time, which is not to be underestimated. Software rots quick…

did sublime die? I use it everyday. and I am looking forward to sublime merge with plugin capabilities

I went back to it after getting sick of the slowness/bloat of jetbrains and vscode.

Re: I stopped setting a financial goal for my SaaS

#85

Post by rubicon33 »

wdewind wrote: post #31
rubicon33 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can I ask - how do you send emails programmatically? Every time I've done this for personal projects, I run into issues. Whether it's auth blocking from GMail or whatever. Seriously would appreciate even just a nudge in the right direction.

Not OP but I've spent a lot of time setting up email sending for SaaS apps. It shouldn't be too difficult, just use a third party provider like sendgrid and make sure your DKIM and SPF records are setup properly and you should be good to go. I've also used stuff like Amazon SES and it's not worth the trouble for side projects (or even medium sized, real businesses, honestly). If you have specific questions feel free…

Hey there -

How would I setup a "native" email system. I don't want to use some third party that I have to pay for. I'd like to be able to send the "raw" email myself.

So for example my current system uses Java + GMail's SMTP server. I have to pass it a username+password, and I can send basic emails that way. There are at least 2 major problems with this setup:

1) So far, all I have done is send REALLY basic 100% test based emails. It's not exactly clear to me how I would send a fully baked HTML email.

2) Consistently GMail BLOCKS my username. It requires me to manually go in at least every few days and enable "Allow less secure applications"

Re: I stopped setting a financial goal for my SaaS

#86

Post by wdewind »

rubicon33 wrote: post #85
wdewind wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not OP but I've spent a lot of time setting up email sending for SaaS apps. It shouldn't be too difficult, just use a third party provider like sendgrid and make sure your DKIM and SPF records are setup properly and you should be good to go. I've also used stuff like Amazon SES and it's not worth the trouble for side projects (or even medium sized, real businesses, honestly). If you have specific questions feel free…

Hey there - How would I setup a "native" email system. I don't want to use some third party that I have to pay for. I'd like to be able to send the "raw" email myself. So for example my current system uses Java + GMail's SMTP server. I have to pass it a username+password, and I can send basic emails that way. There are at least 2 major problems with this setup: 1) So far, all I have done is send REALLY basic 100% tes…

Basically you don't. It's a really big challenge to create a consistently non-blocked email sending service, especially if you host on a big cloud provider like AWS.

Sounds like you are using the Gmail API. To be honest that's not really fit for sending transactional emails, and is increasingly unfit for 3rd party consumption due to API restrictions.

Sendgrid also has a free tier that may work for your use case if the app is for a very limited audience, other than that you're kind of asking "how do I get something really difficult for free?"

Re: I stopped setting a financial goal for my SaaS

#87

Post by juliansimioni »

rabidrat wrote: post #45
juliansimioni wrote: post #29

This is really great, and gives me something to look forward to. Two years ago I started a company with a friend, and we are _nearly_ at the point where our SaaS covers all our expenses. We do consulting to make up the rest, which is not bad at all, but of course it would be nice if it was completely optional. I realized reading this post that I've definitely been focused on financial goals for the last few months. I…

$200/mo is quite a lot for "basic". I could see myself doing 2k or even 20k requests per month, but nowhere near 200k. If there were a $20/mo option (or maybe even $50/mo) I might consider it. But then of course you have to deal with 10x of small-time users like me, who have limited resources and may have problems getting set up. So it may not be worth it for you.

We might add a smaller plan it someday, but you're right. There are enough businesses that need that much geocoding, and it's much less work to support 1 $200/mo customer than 10 $20/mo.

Setting our lowest plan to $200/month was very intentional and has served us well.

Re: I stopped setting a financial goal for my SaaS

#88

Post by rubicon33 »

wdewind wrote: post #86
rubicon33 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey there - How would I setup a "native" email system. I don't want to use some third party that I have to pay for. I'd like to be able to send the "raw" email myself. So for example my current system uses Java + GMail's SMTP server. I have to pass it a username+password, and I can send basic emails that way. There are at least 2 major problems with this setup: 1) So far, all I have done is send REALLY basic 100% tes…

Basically you don't. It's a really big challenge to create a consistently non-blocked email sending service, especially if you host on a big cloud provider like AWS. Sounds like you are using the Gmail API. To be honest that's not really fit for sending transactional emails, and is increasingly unfit for 3rd party consumption due to API restrictions. Sendgrid also has a free tier that may work for your use case if th…

Well, how does Sendgrid do it?

Re: I stopped setting a financial goal for my SaaS

#89

Post by katzgrau »

jmduke wrote: post #3

This post resonates a lot with me! I've got a side project that's current bringing in around ~2-3K MRR ( https://buttondown.email ). I spent a long time daydreaming about having it hit four-digits in recurring revenue — it felt like such an accomplishment that if I were able to crack it, it'd be a dream come true. It's certainly not enough to live off of (especially living in Seattle), but it's a non-trivial amount o…

Consider hiring a virtual personal assistant and delegating the low impact, high (time) cost tasks. There will be an inherent limit to how much money you can make if you try to do it alone.

If you truly want to learn to build a business, realize that you aren't a software developer anymore. You're a businessperson and thats completely different. It's a different field and you can have a lot of fun learning it. It's a reward experience.

I say this from experience. I grew my company from 2-3k MRR and did it all myself. It was only when I realized I needed to hire myself out of low level tasks and focus on the important things did I start to make real strides. It wasn't long before I was well beyond that MRR level (now have 6 employees)

Re: I stopped setting a financial goal for my SaaS

#90

Post by zrail »

rubicon33 wrote: post #88
wdewind wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basically you don't. It's a really big challenge to create a consistently non-blocked email sending service, especially if you host on a big cloud provider like AWS. Sounds like you are using the Gmail API. To be honest that's not really fit for sending transactional emails, and is increasingly unfit for 3rd party consumption due to API restrictions. Sendgrid also has a free tier that may work for your use case if th…

Well, how does Sendgrid do it?

Sendgrid uses a mail transfer agent like Postfix or PowerMTA (I don't actually know what they use but I wouldn't be surprised if it was PowerMTA) to talk to receiving email servers via SMTP.

It's not hard to set up the technical bits to send email. You basically just need to run an MTA that knows how to stamp your outgoing messages with DKIM (a cryptographic signature). Your server has to have an SSL certificate. You also need SPF records set up that accurately reflect what servers are allowed to send on your behalf. DMARC records are helpful as well but not required. If you're only sending as yourself, that's basically it. You should be able to get mail through to the big receivers without much trouble (maybe having to mark "not spam" a few times to start).

The trick to maintaining your sending reputation as an individual is to not send email for anyone else and never send content that you don't control. Sendgrid sends for other people and they have people on staff who's full time job is to fight with the big receivers to maintain their reputation.

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