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The Business of SaaS

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Re: The Business of SaaS

#91

Post by ericb »

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…

Not the op, but any chance I could ping you for some advice on this soft commitments stage and your approach?

edit: My details are also in my bio if you want to shoot me an email.

Re: The Business of SaaS

#92

Post by goatherders »

jwr wrote: post #65

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 po…

Very cool - thanks for posting a link to Partsbox. Will be looking at it more deeply as soon as I get to my machine. I just launched a quasi-near service myself (https://www.agentotto.com) and am also finding that the marketing is tough. Ours is more service than SaaS with a high price point and sales based on preexisting industry relationships, but it's still hard to get people to stroke the checkbook for a service that has clear utility and value (as yours does as well)

Re: The Business of SaaS

#93

Post by abalone »

a13n wrote: post #74

Yikes, that was the best article on SaaS that I've read all year. So much great information. A few things jumped out to me as off: > Conversion rates of low-touch SaaS trials with credit card not required: > 2%+: extremely good Really? 2% seems awful. If a company signs up for your trial, they must have a problem they're trying to solve. If you don't solve 98% of peoples' problems, it seems like you have a problem ge…

> If you don't solve 98% of peoples' problems, it seems like you have a problem

Nah, great products are about focus. You definitely don't want to scope your focus as "98% of peoples' problems."

Re: The Business of SaaS

#94

Post by a13n »

abalone wrote: post #93
a13n wrote: post #74

Yikes, that was the best article on SaaS that I've read all year. So much great information. A few things jumped out to me as off: > Conversion rates of low-touch SaaS trials with credit card not required: > 2%+: extremely good Really? 2% seems awful. If a company signs up for your trial, they must have a problem they're trying to solve. If you don't solve 98% of peoples' problems, it seems like you have a problem ge…

> If you don't solve 98% of peoples' problems, it seems like you have a problem Nah, great products are about focus. You definitely don't want to scope your focus as "98% of peoples' problems."

Not 98% of people... 98% of people who had a problem that they felt signing up for your trial would solve. It's not like trial signups are coming from random people across the globe.

Re: The Business of SaaS

#95

Post by amitmathew »

a13n wrote: post #74

Yikes, that was the best article on SaaS that I've read all year. So much great information. A few things jumped out to me as off: > Conversion rates of low-touch SaaS trials with credit card not required: > 2%+: extremely good Really? 2% seems awful. If a company signs up for your trial, they must have a problem they're trying to solve. If you don't solve 98% of peoples' problems, it seems like you have a problem ge…

I think the 2% metric refers to all users from top of the funnel to paying customer. I've always found the metrics in this deck helpful: https://www.slideshare.net/totango/2012-saa-s-conversions-be....

Re: The Business of SaaS

#96

Post by ci5er »

alex_hitchins wrote: post #85
ci5er wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear you. I had a pretty amazing job at Motorola (remember them? :-) ) when I moved back to the US from Japan. They wanted me to run around the world (on their credit card) to figure out what business they needed to be next. I found one. They didn't get it. I ended up quitting: "Fine - I will do it myself". I remember the first meetings I had a 6.30am or 7.00am at breakfast places with VCs... They would listen and…

Thanks for your posts, very encouraging and all good advice. I'm going to booststrap for the first one. As you say, try > fail, try again > fail, try yet again > modicum of interest. Really is good to hear your words of encouragement.

Seriously - good luck.

IF I knew then, what I know now - I would be too afraid to start. But all progress is made by people who are not too afraid to start. I wish you all the luck and fortune in the world.

Re: The Business of SaaS

#97

Post by ultrasounder »

jwr wrote: post #83
ultrasounder wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technical details, for those so inclined: the software is written in ClojureScript (compiled to highly optimized JavaScript) on the client side, using React.js for user interface updates, and Clojure on the server side, running in a JVM (Java Virtual Machine). It uses the RethinkDB distributed database for data storage. Interesting choice of Tech stack. Care to explain why you went with Clojure backend and ClojureScr…

Those are very pragmatic choices. I don't think I could a) tackle the complexity and b) achieve the performance I wanted without Clojure and ClojureScript. RethinkDB is used for two reasons: 1. It's the only database that provides changefeeds that I need to implement real-time updates for users. Complete changefeeds, as in: get an initial state and then updates. 2. I wanted to easily solve replication, fault-toleranc…

Great answers!. Thanks to You I learnt a new tech-stack today and cant wait to try it out. I also am an EE Btw, and I wish my Purchasing person had tools like these available to them to do better production planning back in the days which was like 5 years ago !

Re: The Business of SaaS

#98

Post by a13n »

amitmathew wrote: post #95
a13n wrote: post #74

Yikes, that was the best article on SaaS that I've read all year. So much great information. A few things jumped out to me as off: > Conversion rates of low-touch SaaS trials with credit card not required: > 2%+: extremely good Really? 2% seems awful. If a company signs up for your trial, they must have a problem they're trying to solve. If you don't solve 98% of peoples' problems, it seems like you have a problem ge…

I think the 2% metric refers to all users from top of the funnel to paying customer. I've always found the metrics in this deck helpful: https://www.slideshare.net/totango/2012-saa-s-conversions-be... .

That would make more sense. But then it's weird that for credit-card-required the conversion rate is 40-60%. That's definitely trial -> paid, not visitor -> paid.

Re: The Business of SaaS

#99

Post by PeterisP »

a13n wrote: post #74

Yikes, that was the best article on SaaS that I've read all year. So much great information. A few things jumped out to me as off: > Conversion rates of low-touch SaaS trials with credit card not required: > 2%+: extremely good Really? 2% seems awful. If a company signs up for your trial, they must have a problem they're trying to solve. If you don't solve 98% of peoples' problems, it seems like you have a problem ge…

There's a big gap between someone at a company signing up for a trial and them getting enough convincing leverage to get the company to consider that seriously.

All too often someone at the company is getting their problem solved (possibly by the free/trial plan), but they aren't at a position where they are able to drive any purchases whatsoever for that company.

Re: The Business of SaaS

#100

Post by alex_hitchins »

nickjj wrote: post #81
alex_hitchins wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm not too close with PS but the last time I talked to their content director they mentioned wanting to focus on shorter courses and much preferred a bunch of short courses that are loosely coupled but still related vs. 1 longer course. Maybe that's something they are pushing for moving forward. For something like this Flask course, I've had people tell me they cranked through it in 1 day at 1.5x speed, and others h…

Just used your link to get the course. It can't hurt to get exposure to alternatives and broaden my horizon.

Thanks again for your comments and you discount link!

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