[HN Gopher] Tell HN: 19yo, bootstrapped SaaS, 250k ARR after 10 ...
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Tell HN: 19yo, bootstrapped SaaS, 250k ARR after 10 months
Hi, I'm 19yo. I bootstrapped a SaaS in March last year together
with a friend (he does sales, I do engineering). Currently we are
at 250k ARR and growing fast. (Based in Netherlands). I'm sharing
this because I'm looking for people who went through a similar
situation. I went from "coding in my bedroom next to my university
study" to "doing technical interviews with senior engineers" and
"enterprise sales to c-level people" within a year. I do like to
push myself way beyond my comfort zone (it's my go-to strategy for
learning new stuff) but sometimes it is quite overwhelming.
Sometimes, when I can take a step back, I realize how insane this
situation is. Luckily I have supporting parents and peers, who try
to advise where they can, but none of them have experience running
a fast growing company. Anyway. If anyone has had a similar
experience, please share. If you know a community/network with
similar people, please share.
Author : snerual
Score : 153 points
Date : 2021-01-23 16:57 UTC (6 hours ago)
| nugget wrote:
| You're already in one of the best communities there is: Hacker
| News. Don't underestimate what you can learn just by carefully
| reading the threads here.
|
| I went from "idea in my dorm room" to interviewing and hiring
| executives in their 40s and 50s within 24 months. The best lesson
| I learned is that there are way fewer "rules" than you think, and
| smart, disciplined, focused entrepreneurs can accomplish way more
| than they assume. It's reasonable to reflect on your inexperience
| in order to prevent mistakes, but you should never feel
| intimidated by it, or let other people intimidate you. The world
| (and YC's portfolio) is full of "inexperienced" people like you
| who have built billion dollar companies that disrupted industries
| and became pillars of the economy.
|
| If you post contact information in your profile, I'm sure at
| least a few people with relevant experience would reach out and
| offer to be a resource for more specific advice. I've done that a
| few times here with mostly successful results.
| jamiequint wrote:
| HN is pretty relentlessly negative, and compared to the market
| in general overindexes on technology/security/privacy and
| underindexes on distribution/marketing. Some of the top upvoted
| advice on certain threads (not all) is just bad, usually
| because it's not pragmatic enough, and should be taken with a
| large grain of salt.
| snerual wrote:
| Thanks, yeah I discovered HN about a year ago and it is a
| wonderful source of entertainment and valuable information
| sjg007 wrote:
| One thing I noticed is that the YC batch tend not to post or
| comment much here. Except for hiring and show posts. My guess
| is that they are heads down working!
| redis_mlc wrote:
| > One thing I noticed is that the YC batch tend not to post
| or comment much here.
|
| They're on BookFace, YC's private forums.
|
| HN is just YC's public ad server.
| dang wrote:
| That's not accurate. BF is great but it's not a parallel
| HN where a secret world of similar discussion is going
| on. To overgeneralize a bit, topics there tend to be
| narrower and oriented around specific concrete
| situations. A lot of it is about hiring, offices, things
| like that. There are a lot of Launch posts, especially by
| startups in the current batch who don't feel ready to go
| to a bigger format yet.
|
| Actually I think YC would probably like BF to become more
| HN-like and may find ways to encourage intellectually
| richer discussion (I've been asked a few times to advise
| about that). But if YC founders aren't posting to HN,
| it's not because they're busy participating in an
| alternative-universe HN. It's more likely as the GP said,
| that they're busy working--as they should be.
| tensor wrote:
| I would caution that Hacker News is both fairly biased towards
| a developers view of the world, and also often unrealistic when
| it comes to things outside of technology. As the technical
| founder the best thing you can do to grow is actually to spend
| time learning about management and also the non-technical
| aspects of running a business. I wouldn't rely on Hacker News
| for these things. Instead look for local entrepreneur round
| tables or social groups and hang out with the non-technical
| roles.
| nugget wrote:
| Maybe there's been a positive drift in that aspect of the
| community over the last couple years. Take this thread from
| last week about GlacierMD:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25825917
|
| IMO the discussion was at least as insightful as I'd expect
| from a top level MBA classroom.
| RicoElectrico wrote:
| > The best lesson I learned is that there are way fewer "rules"
| than you think, and smart, disciplined, focused entrepreneurs
| can accomplish way more than they assume.
|
| Isn't it like this?
|
| * A great idea can succeed despite mediocre execution
|
| * A mediocre idea can succeed if executed great
|
| * A bad idea can succeed (for a while) if you're a con artist
| (WeWork, Solar Roadways etc.)
| apexalpha wrote:
| Lekker bezig hoor!
|
| Not a founder myself, so no tips on that. Not super clear what
| your website does (if it's the one in your profile).
|
| If you're ever looking to security / pentest your platform reach
| out to me. For the rest good luck and keep it up!
| j4yav wrote:
| Hey there, I'm founding a SaaS in the Netherlands also. Congrats
| on your success! Would love to chat sometime and build a
| community, you can DM me on Twitter (@j4yav).
| christiansakai wrote:
| I find that amazing that in a crowded SaaS market you can still
| find opportunity everywhere, yet alone making a SaaS that makes
| money a $250kARR.
|
| Where do these people find ideas?
| snerual wrote:
| sheer dumb luck. Any business canvas drawing hipster telling
| you otherwise, is BSing you (I think)
| danielharan wrote:
| You are far wiser at 19 than most founders I've met in their
| 40's.
|
| Some of the best business advice I got was from pitching VCs.
| Even if pitching is not what you want to do now, it might be
| useful to open lines of communication and suss out who you
| may want to work with in the future.
| christiansakai wrote:
| Haha thanks for the reply. And congratulations!
| encoderer wrote:
| Pay attention to real problems, even small problems, that
| businesses have.
|
| A real problem is something that costs them money or prevents
| them from earning money.
| fapi1974 wrote:
| If you would like some advice I am more than happy to connect.
| I've written books on SaaS selling and SaaS customer success, and
| if nothing else know a lot of folks in the space.
| calcsam wrote:
| Talk to Ives and Bas at CodeSandbox. Very similar situation --
| Dutch college students whose side project took off. They raised
| venture funding.
| sjaak wrote:
| For those requesting a link to the company of OP, it's this:
| https://schoolyear.nl/
|
| I assume it's ok that I post this, it was easy to find (2 clicks
| from your profile snerual)!
|
| Good job, I think it's cool what you're doing! If I may ask: how
| do you prevent students from cheating on a test by using their
| phone for example? Or is your service for in-class tests where
| phones are forbidden?
| MH15 wrote:
| Anti-cheating software is a fundamentally flawed approach. As
| remote education becomes more common educators should leave the
| concept of an "exam" behind and embrace project-based and open
| book curriculum.
| [deleted]
| nugget wrote:
| Art school is a series of project-based classes that
| culminate in a portfolio of original work that the student
| can showcase, and that system seems to make perfect sense to
| everybody.
|
| I don't know why other disciplines have been so resistant
| (forget textbook publishers, I mean the professors, deans,
| and other administrators themselves.) It's not clear to me
| there are any reasons to be against it, so perhaps it's
| simply the inertia of large, bureaucratic, conformist
| institutions.
| nexthash wrote:
| Wow, this is really inspiring! As a college student under
| lockdown, building something like this would be my dream. I have
| so many questions: How do you manage to juggle the
| responsibilities of school and running your business? What kind
| of technical expertise do you need? How did you find your idea
| and gain traction? Do you have employees?
| snerual wrote:
| Balancing study and work is REALLY hard (and source of struggle
| with my parents, which I totally understand :) . We managed to
| get an office on campus, so it's literally a 3min walk from the
| lecture hall to the office. Besides that, I was never big on
| "planning", but now I'm usually planning a month ahead on the
| uni assignments.
|
| Mainly struggling with expanding the technical team. We have
| some freelancers, but developers in NL are harder to find than
| diamond.
|
| How did we find the idea: actually came up with the idea during
| a meeting with teachers in high-school. They were complaining
| about the chaos the newly introduced laptops caused during
| classes. Then I learned the hard way that people that put money
| were their mouth is are your only real customers (yes, I got
| screwed over by my high school). Luckily, higher education is
| more willing to pay.
| nexthash wrote:
| Not surprising to hear that the work-study part of the
| equation is one of the more difficult ones - but good job on
| getting it down! May I suggest hiring college students to do
| the technical heavy-lifting? In my limited experience, I've
| seen motivated college students routinely hammer out high-
| quality work in tasks such as code maintenance, testing, etc
| for half the pay of a full-time software engineer.
| sebmellen wrote:
| Email in profile if you'd like help finding developers --
| I've worked with devs on a number of different projects from
| places like Ukraine, Serbia, India, and China. Depending on
| what you're looking for, pay is in the range of $17-$40/hr
| for most common stacks, at a junior to mid-range level of
| expertise (I assume you're mostly working in a web-based
| stack like Javascript, Ruby, or PHP).
|
| LinkedIn recruiting is your friend here, especially in places
| like India, as you can post jobs for very low INR prices as
| compared to recruiting in the West or in more affluent
| countries.
| IG_Semmelweiss wrote:
| Here is a piece of actionable advice.
|
| Join a supoort community in your area. You are looking for
| something for entrepeneurs in holland ideally. These usually have
| a price of admission like $300/yr but can be worth every cent
|
| For example, ecommercefuel is fantastic for ecomm sites.
| Mastermind may have something to offer for your geography. Its
| going to boil down to reputation and how much you put in too.
|
| You need a forum of entrepeneurs for people that are dealing with
| the same issues as you: payroll issues, VAT issues, engineering
| best practices, accounting advice, dealing with fraud,
| chargebacks, churn prevention, sales , banking contacts, brand
| registration and protection, outsourcing copy, and most
| importantly, advice on how to hire key staff
|
| As you can see, its a lot. You need a whole village to figure
| that out. I am not sure whats out there for EU virtual "villages"
| for SaaS, but HN may be able to help.
|
| From one entrepr3neur to other: if you dont have a crm already
| for sales leads, and your sales cycle is not self serviced, try
| the streak plugin for gsuite.
|
| Good luck.
| snerual wrote:
| Thanks for the advice.
|
| Not really familiar with "villages"
|
| About the Sales, here is our "stack": Hubspot free + LinkedIn
| sales navigator + unlimited minutes on your phone
| iamacyborg wrote:
| If you're looking to grow your sales function you've got a
| good base already. What's important is ensuring that calls
| and emails you send to leads and prospects are tracked in
| your CRM. This'll help during the sales process and will be
| beneficial for post-sales support too.
| dfee wrote:
| Interesting advice. I wonder if those groups are uniquely an EU
| thing.
|
| I moved out to the Bay Area about 4 months before the lockdown
| and have been quite underwhelmed by the lack of community
| around entrepreneurship. I'm not sure if it's the lockdown
| itself, the FAANG companies dominating the talent pools, or me
| just not understanding the dynamics out here.
| IG_Semmelweiss wrote:
| Forgot the number 1 rule.
|
| Whatever is that you do, make sure you will always have your
| company to go back to, the following day.
|
| In other words, always search for risks that can wipe you out,
| and be paranoid about them, work aggressively to mitigate them,
| even if the risk is borderline zero that it could happen.
| oisino wrote:
| My current sass startup I bootstrap to 20 million arr in 4 years
| before raising money. This my third software company
| bootstrapping to millions in arr. Shoot me a message down to give
| you whatever advice I can and intro you to other people who have
| been on this journey. Gmail account is Oconnoroisin
| notyourday wrote:
| Here's a counter-advise ( take it as you will ) :
|
| Do not join any communities. You are a 19 year old who is at 250k
| ARR at 10 months. You are Bella Hadid. You don't have peers here,
| among IG influencers pretending to be important at 12K followers.
| It is lonely there, where you are. There's a reason for that.
|
| P.S. You will make it.
| cercatrova wrote:
| Check out Indie Hackers (https://indiehackers.com), it's a great
| community I've found.
| jwr wrote:
| As a bootstrapped SaaS founder myself: congratulations! This is
| an unbelievable growth rate for a bootstrapped SaaS. It usually
| takes many years to reach these numbers. Very happy to see people
| build sustainable businesses this way -- venture funding is not
| the only way to go!
|
| I'd be very interested to learn more, things like: is it a B2B or
| B2C SaaS? What is your ARPU and LTV, are you spending on
| marketing, and if so, what is your CAC? (I do realize you might
| not want to share these numbers, just saying that this is what
| I'd love to know :))
| snerual wrote:
| Thanks, I had a lot of discussion with my founder about
| funding. Until now, I'm happy we did it bootstrap.
|
| To answer your questions: Model: B2B, mostly public educational
| institutes with 10k+ students. ARPU: would be dumb to shared,
| but just under the EU tender limit, so sales cycles are reduced
| to minimum. LTV: That's a hard one when you sell yearly
| contracts and less than 10months old. But from what we see,
| schools are very loyal customers. Marketing: Lol, we have a
| website that we made with a 20$ template. It's all word of
| mouth and cold calling
| stedaniels wrote:
| I work at a university, drop me a line, details in my
| profile.
| ignoramous wrote:
| > _I had a lot of discussion with my founder about funding.
| Until now, I 'm happy we did it bootstrap._
|
| You'd have great luck with rolling seed stage funds like
| https://shl.vc/ and showcase events like
| https://mercury.com/raise
|
| If you plan to not go down the traditional (go big or go
| home) VC route, then, check out these (go slow and go steady)
| funds: https://indie.vc/, https://tinyseed.com/,
| https://earnestcapital.com/
|
| (not an endorsement)
| erdemozg wrote:
| Hi, since someone else mentioned your product's website I looked
| over it and I'm curious.
|
| As far as I understand students need to install your app and the
| app requires users to log out and when they log in, it's launched
| automatically in full screen mode and users cannot escape until
| they submit their answers.
|
| What if I install your app in a sandboxed environment (like a
| windows box in a vmware virtual machine)? While the app is in
| fullscreen mode inside it, I think there would be nothing
| preventing me from using host machine's functions (like accessing
| internet via browsers or opening documents). Have you considered
| these kind of risks?
| faissaloo wrote:
| I've never been in your exact situation but from personal
| experience stop writing "I'm <young>yo and I did <crazy thing for
| my age>", at best you'll get some patronising praise and at worst
| people will disregard what you say because of your age. Your work
| will speak for itself. Let your age be nothing more than a fun
| piece of trivia.
| rkagerer wrote:
| Care to share your website or what your company does?
| Jommi wrote:
| So happy about this thread and the increased presence and support
| of European techies on HN. It's about time.
| iamleppert wrote:
| What is your startup?
| [deleted]
| aristofun wrote:
| Can you please share the link to your saas?
| lucaspanjaard wrote:
| Hi. Knappe prestatie. I'm from Amsterdam, 31. Don't have a Saas
| but a fast growing e-commerce business (EUR660k last year).
| Recognize your feelings. If you feel like it, send me a line at
| info@pedicuremotoren.NL.
| belzebalex wrote:
| Hey there!
|
| I'm from France, 18yo and founded a SaaS with a friend when I was
| 16 (https://kaktana.com). It's been doing ~$800/month for the
| last 1.5 years as I had to stop working on it for a very
| intensive school program (la prepa for the Frenchs). Currently
| thinking of building a v2 next year when I have more time.
|
| Would love chatting with you, see my page:
| https://alextoussaint.com
| toshk wrote:
| From Amsterdam, dev and founder before, looking into setting up
| Saas, would love to have coffee
| chondl wrote:
| You might want to check out MicroConf Connect. I'm a founder of a
| bootstrapped startup and find the Slack community pretty
| interesting. https://microconf.com/microconf-connect
| inthewoods wrote:
| I see that most of the posts here do not mention the companies
| that each person founded - I would love to see what everyone has
| created! Please share your companies!
| somid3 wrote:
| I am similar -- I took a small boostraped venture to $1.3m ARR in
| about 3 years. To this day i almost spend $0 marketing. Email me
| so we can connect or whatsapp somid3 /\\-at-*_- gmail ^dot& com
| or +1 five-1-zero 499 5497.
| somid3 wrote:
| Btw, congratulations! my venture is also a saas digital only
| leesalminen wrote:
| First off, congratulations. This is quite the accomplishment for
| anyone of any age.
|
| I started a niche B2B SaaS company with a co-founder when I was
| 23 (www.gingrapp.com). We sold it off when I was 27 and I stuck
| around for 2 years after acquisition. By the time I left there
| were 30+ employees and 8-digit ARR.
|
| I'm currently 30, married with a toddler and semi-retired. The
| last 10 years of my life have been absolutely nuts and like you I
| wish I had someone who'd been through it before to talk to. It
| can be hard to relate with others as a founder. A frequent
| refrain I encountered when trying to talk with friends/family was
| that I had "first-world" problems that weren't worth talking
| about. Ugh.
|
| First off, I don't think age matters per se. I've known founders
| in their 40s and 50s to flounder just as often as founders in
| their 20s, just usually in different ways.
|
| The first piece of advice I'd give is that this whole experience
| will be a roller coaster and you can't always control what
| happens next. It helped me to remember that I'm but a passenger
| on this journey.
|
| I think I'd have a lot more to share with you privately. If you
| ever want to chat, my email is in my bio. Would be happy to talk
| further.
| taylortrusty wrote:
| Entrepreneurs' Organization has been incredibly helpful to me.
| I've been a member for six years now - it changed my life. It's
| not cheap, but well worth it if your local chapter is well run.
|
| https://www.eonetwork.org/
| avipars wrote:
| indiehackers and reddit are also great communities
|
| Best of luck and share some tips with us
| darrenwestall wrote:
| Happy to chat anytime, email is in my profile. We're going to hit
| PS1m ARR this year and I'd love someone to chat with too.
|
| It can be a weirdly lonely place at times.
|
| Im UK based so TZ should work well, plus I'm a frequent visitor
| to NL (Pre CV) so it would be great to chat over a beer when we
| can.
| zuhayeer wrote:
| You're in the right spot - IndieHackers is a pretty great
| community for this kind of stuff too!
| raverbashing wrote:
| I don't have much to say besides Congratulations!
|
| Yes, it's insane (and I've been to less overwhelming situations).
| But hey, if people were perfectly rational and risk-averse nobody
| would start anything.
|
| Interested to know more and see where it ends up, alstublieft.
| qazqazqaz wrote:
| Congrats, thats some impressive growth in a short time.
|
| If you want to know what not to do, I'm happy to chat, email in
| my profile. I've made almost every possible mistake in the last
| 20 years ;-) Despite all the mistakes my current company is a
| couple of stages past the 250k ARR and I'm on the right track.
|
| In the end most advice in this situation is not rocket science,
| like for example:
|
| - reserve time to work on your business, not just in your
| business
|
| - build a team, not a group of individuals
|
| - leadership becomes important in this stage, start reading on
| the subject, there is a ton of information available.
|
| And most important, try to enjoy the ride. There is not one big
| moment you are working towards, it's all the little moments that
| mather.
| log_n wrote:
| I'm probably not understanding something. How is $250k ARR
| enough to build a team with? I would think you would need to be
| a magnitude higher at least to support a team off of that,
| especially if you are bootstrapped and have no cash reserves.
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