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Ask HN: When is it time to give up on a side project SaaS?

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Ask HN: When is it time to give up on a side project SaaS?

#1

Post by 9967d2cad_askhn »

I started a SaaS business official in May 2019. (Although I spent about 8 months developing the application). I didn't officially acquire my first customer until May 2019. Fast forward to May 2020, and I've got about 8 paying customers. I'm really proud and impressed by this accomplishment.

Growth is, however, slow. I have a good understanding of who my target customer is now, 1 year later, after talking to them and noticing common patterns in terms of their needs.

This is my first real business. I would really love to hear from someone experienced in building a SaaS business from scratch. Your insight would be appreciated. What should I expect in terms of growth? How fast did businesses grow in the beginning (BaseCamp, for example, Digital Ocean, MailChimp)?

Thanks

Re: Ask HN: When is it time to give up on a side project SaaS?

#6

Post by gingahbread31 »

I'm gonna repeat what has been said but yes it really depends on your vertical. For example if we look at the companies that you quoted, they probably have had (and still have) completely different growth strategy. Moreover, it doesn't take as much time to build the MVP of Digital Ocean from scratch than it would take to build the Mailchimp's one. If you have customers you can talk to and if they are happy with your actual product, they might give you advices on what they're expecting in the future and you can turn that in features that a lot more people may want right now.

In my very personal opinion, having 8 customers shouldn't give you the sensation that your product is finished and that you can scale (although I really don't know what you do so I may b wrong), so you must figure out what is missing to acquire more customers before thinking in terms of "Growth"

Re: Ask HN: When is it time to give up on a side project SaaS?

#7

Post by arcturus17 »

mvind wrote: post #5
anoncareer0212 wrote: post #4

if you're building a point of sale for $1000 flat, keep at it if you're building a notifier for recent job postings for $9/month, stop

I'm sorry - I don't understand what you mean, can you expand?

I think they mean if after a year of operations OP has only sold eight $9 subscriptions, the business might not be considered validated.

Re: Ask HN: When is it time to give up on a side project SaaS?

#9

Post by drchiu »

Beyond the question of whether it’s your marketing, is it also a problem of the size of your addressable market? How novel is your solution compared to the ways (Ie. how well) existing solutions work?

I’ve been in projects before where things grew very easily due to no effort simply because people wanted that product. And then in other projects where the solution is elegant but people were already satisfied with existing solutions. And so the few who wanted it simply meant the product was niche.

Zapier is one that comes to mind where I could see the solution, before its successes, could have gone either way. Either people were happy with their existing workflows and ignore what Zapier could do, or it would change their lives. If your product is defining a new segment, this could be the problem.

Re: Ask HN: When is it time to give up on a side project SaaS?

#10

Post by econcon »

Without seeing your product it's very hard to give any advise.

Maybe you've not done marketing correct, maybe your product has steep learning curve. Maybe too many alternatives exist at lower price point.

There are lots of maybes, so send me an email I'll take a look zerocorebeta@gmail.com and offer some feedback.

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