[HN Gopher] My experience releasing failed SaaS products
___________________________________________________________________
My experience releasing failed SaaS products
Author : defnmacro
Score : 207 points
Date : 2021-04-04 02:10 UTC (20 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (mmartinfahy.medium.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (mmartinfahy.medium.com)
| pototo666 wrote:
| What a great reading.
|
| I am in my 4th mounth as a bootstrapper. You experience is giving
| me a lot of thoughts.
| 02020202 wrote:
| Fuck SaaS. Biggest waste of my life :D
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| I am just wondering how someone can build something that people
| actively hate? And then for people to create a thread where
| people are tearing the app and the person apart? This just
| gobsmacks me. Especially since, I'm building things and no one
| really seems to care enough to do anything. So they've obivously
| manage to stroke enough emotion that people care enough to write
| about him and his products.
| lelanthran wrote:
| > I am just wondering how someone can build something that
| people actively hate? And then for people to create a thread
| where people are tearing the app and the person apart?
|
| Maybe you didn't get to the part where he said this:
|
| > at this time I would learn and do anything to get more users
| to my site, to the point where I was getting banned from
| multiple forums for posting after people told me to get lost
| for promoting content.
|
| My takeaway is that he came across as a scammer and as a result
| a few users warned about his product on the forums he was
| spamming.
| tnolet wrote:
| I'm all of these types of write ups I always miss two things:
|
| 1. Being an expert in your area and focusing hard on solving the
| problem.
|
| 2. Patience and time. Things take much longer than you think.
| dschuetz wrote:
| It might sound silly, but anyone reading his self-reflection
| should watch the show Silicon Valley. Some of his "failures"
| actually failed the same way as the products of "Pied Piper".
| adav wrote:
| That's what made Silicon Valley so good. I think a lot of us
| technical wannabe entrepreneurs go through this learning
| experience. It made the show really resonate.
| efnx wrote:
| > If you want to actually create a business you need to realize
| coding is both the easiest of all the things that needs to be
| done and also the least important.
|
| I don't agree. I understand the sentiment, though. In my
| experience "the importance" of coding depends on the business.
|
| Like the author says, if you just want to code - go do it, you
| don't have to have a business! But what they are missing is the
| compliment: if you just want to business, you don't have to code!
| redis_mlc wrote:
| If you're an experienced, motivated, results-oriented
| developer, then "coding" is an easy but still time-consuming
| thing.
|
| But that's a very, very small percentage of the population.
|
| When I talk to non-programming founders, they're insanely
| jealous that I can write a product and support it myself -
| because they can't. You can tell because they keep asking over
| and over, "You wrote that yourself?"
|
| And a couple years later, their runway is spent on eng.
| salaries and they shut down.
| teraflop wrote:
| Much of this seems like useful lessons learned, but this
| particular section jumped out at me:
|
| > To my credit at this time I would learn and do anything to get
| more users to my site, to the point where I was getting banned
| from multiple forums for posting after people told me to get
| lost.
|
| How is this "to your credit"? If, as you say, the success of your
| product depends on getting niche users to buy in and trust that
| you can provide value, maybe it's a bad idea to antagonize those
| same users by behaving in ways that violate their community
| norms.
| brabel wrote:
| This is how a spammer is born. They think they have "good
| intentions" themselves, failing to realize they are just
| obsessed about getting rich/famous and no longer care about
| anything else, seeing spamming behaviour as acceptable if it
| gives them 2 new users for each forum that bans them.
| melomal wrote:
| This is growth hacking at it's finest. Eeking out .5% gains
| anywhere just to get some form of validation. Most think that
| they are able to infiltrate niche forums/sites and act the part
| but ultimately the 2nd message is always 'wow, I've just been
| using this tool for X and I got Y!'.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| I knew a company that did this (their marketing person would
| constantly make accounts on Reddit, get banned, and then try
| again all day) and asked them about it.
|
| They said that only the regulars who post and comment get mad,
| not the lurkers. It might only be the mods getting mad if posts
| only lasted 15 minutes or so. So in their view it didn't matter
| that the mods were seething with rage as that didn't get passed
| on to most of the community as they removed the posts. Only the
| mods saw it as a flood of spam.
| lumost wrote:
| This seems like the product of a person who shouldn't be in a
| marketing position and a ceo who can't hire marketers.
|
| Barring a direct measurement to the contrary it's highly
| likely this marketer was damaging the companies brand. The
| comments and bans from moderators are surely now the top
| results on google when one searches <product name> reviews.
| If this was a viable marketing strategy every forum on the
| internet would be full of such posts driven by automated
| bots.
| davidpolberger wrote:
| I wrote about my experience creating a SaaS product in 2018:
|
| https://medium.com/@david_39141/after-15-years-im-finally-re...
|
| Like the OP, the first version of my service launched to crickets
| (though I had spent almost two full years building that beta
| version). The 3,500 people who had signed up for e-mail updates
| took a quick look, and then left, never to return, when they
| realized that the service was very bare-bones.
|
| The solution in my case was actually to add features, because
| that first version wasn't very useful. I spent another three
| years adding features before launching paid plans, two years ago.
| I made sure to have thousands of conversations with users to make
| sure that I was on the right track.
|
| Today, I derive my income fully from this service (Calcapp, an
| app builder for people needing formula support mostly on par with
| Excel). I haven't gotten rich, and I would have made more money
| as a consultant, but the income is passive, I still enjoy working
| on the product and interacting with customers, and I'm confident
| that our best days lie ahead of us, with a major update on the
| cusp of being released
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25389963).
|
| Launching a SaaS business is the hardest thing I have ever done,
| but getting people to derive real value from something I have
| built is immensely satisfying. I wouldn't trade it for anything.
| davidpolberger wrote:
| If you don't like Medium, here's a version of that write-up
| hosted on our blog:
|
| https://www.calcapp.net/blog/2018/04/09/launching-after-15-y...
| djsavvy wrote:
| Thank you for sharing! I enjoyed this write-up. (And thank
| you for sharing a non-Medium link too).
| davidpolberger wrote:
| Thanks for your kind words. :-)
| davidpolberger wrote:
| As a result of this HN post, 158 people visited the blog post
| I linked to, and only 112 people visited the Medium story.
| This is despite the fact that the blog link is buried in a
| child post, and only appeared later.
|
| Moral of the story: when posting to HN, avoid Medium links.
| Pandabob wrote:
| A little off-topic, but how should one go about incorporating
| their side project/saas? Is it ok to start off as a sole
| proprietorship and later set up a LLC? I'm sure a lot also
| depends on local laws etc.
| xiwenc wrote:
| It depends. If you are doing a side project next to your
| regular employment, i would avoid creating any legal entity
| unless strictly necessary. Why? You add legal obligations to
| yourself. When you are starting up as solo-entrepreneur, try to
| minimize distractions and put all efforts in validating the
| product idea and ship it to your first customers. Sometimes
| these customers require you to have the legal papers, you take
| care of these when it is needed to seal the deal.
|
| There could be other reasons. Take for instance my own case. I
| started freelancing and do side projects. In this case I
| approached it with a reason. Namely my revenue as freelancer is
| funneled into my side projects. This means expenses i make like
| purchasing other services, SaaS or tooling to support my side
| projects are written off my revenue. Im re-investing my revenue
| into other venues.
|
| As my side projects are maturing i'm switching now to a limited
| liable legal entity from self-proprietary.
|
| Hope this gives you some ideas.
| llaolleh wrote:
| Am I wrong to think that this post needs a couple of revisions?
| It feels like it is all over the place. I don't know if it's just
| me but the structure and organization feels so off...
|
| The tone of the article makes it seem like the maker is not
| interested in solving the problem, but more interested in getting
| paid and that's all that matters.
|
| It's also hard for the reader to contextualize anything if the
| author leaves out the details of his 3 failed SaaS projects.
| IncRnd wrote:
| No. You are not wrong. A few revisions would have made all the
| difference. Build it _properly_ and they will come.
| kumarharsh wrote:
| Exactly! Folding after hitting the first crash or first review
| is not a SaaS product, it's a programming assignment!
| haltingproblem wrote:
| This is a great writeup and thank you for sharing with so much
| candor. You are light years ahead of everyone who has ideas and
| has not tried them and learnt the lessons.
|
| You learnt experientially what most either never learn or a rare
| few learn from books like The Mom Test. Even compared those who
| read the book and get it, I fear it does not translate to a
| _lived earned experience_.
|
| Take some time to rest, recuperate, recharge and go build #4!!
| lloydatkinson wrote:
| I don't understand why when people talk about startups and side
| projects they almost never describe the actual product
| [deleted]
| withinboredom wrote:
| As someone who's created a few mildly successful products in my
| life, I noticed a few things missing.
|
| - dogfooding isn't that important, but if you're not you need to
| test. Even just a few smoke tests on multiple devices will go a
| long way.
|
| - allow customers to leave you feedback in the app and make it
| easy, don't even look at your reviews except to respond with
| "this has been fixed." It should be easy to communicate with your
| customers and have a conversation. I've always had a few good
| customers that will email me about things and leave suggestions
| as I go. These people are valuable to your success.
|
| - negative feedback is positive feedback by people who don't
| care. In the post, they mentioned a lack of trust. That's some
| good feedback! Make it so a sign up isn't required until it's
| actually necessary. Demos, trials, etc can go a long way here.
| Crazyontap wrote:
| DHH posted this in 2009 on "Learning from failure is overrated"
|
| His main point being You might know what won't work, but you
| still don't know what will work. That's not much of a lesson.
|
| (1) https://signalvnoise.com/posts/1555-learning-from-failure-
| is...
| shaicoleman wrote:
| I've come across recently the JTBD Framework, and I'm wondering
| if applying it would have prevented some of these failures
|
| https://review.firstround.com/build-products-that-solve-real...
| jasfi wrote:
| It seems that there is a product/market fit problem that the
| author keeps hitting. Or simply, building something that the
| people who would find it useful actually want.
|
| I have had the same problem. One way of overcoming this is to
| have a co-founder that has experience in a particular market, and
| knows the problems that need solving and the people who are
| affected by the problem. Another way is to do more thorough
| market research.
|
| It seems to be a common problem for technical (only) founders.
| achillesheels wrote:
| From what I can perceive, he has a poor habit of not sticking to
| something. Yes, there are ups and downs in all entrepreneurial
| journeys. Focusing and persevering as opposed to becoming
| emotional (both in the ups and downs) paves success.
|
| "If you can dream--and not make dreams your master; If you can
| think--and not make thoughts your aim; If you can meet with
| Triumph and Disaster And treat those two impostors just the same;
| If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken Twisted by knaves
| to make a trap for fools, Or watch the things you gave your life
| to, broken, And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:"
|
| -'If' by Rudyard Kipling
| ThePhysicist wrote:
| I'm not sure in which areas the author released SaaS products but
| what's mind-boggling to me is how fast successful SaaS businesses
| get copied these days, especially if they are rather "simple" (in
| the sense of being reproducible by a small team without large
| investment). Privacy-friendly website analytics is maybe a good
| example. There are literally thousands of companies with almost
| the same USPs (GDPR-compliant, cookie-less, privacy-first),
| almost every day a new one tries to launch on Product Hunt. And
| since everyone is prying for attention it gets more and more
| difficult to build something that gets noticed at all in those
| areas. I mean try entering a search term like "GDPR compliant
| analytics" into Google and you'll be presented with thousands of
| SEO articles from different analytics companies. I've heard the
| same thing happens on the app store: As soon as there's something
| successful, copycats show up in a manner of weeks, trying to
| capitalize on the successful app. So on one hand the addressable
| market for SaaS products gets larger every year, but at the same
| time more and more companies are pushing into that market.
| schnebbau wrote:
| This is true.
|
| If you are building a crud application (todo list/trello,
| social media scheduling, and analytics are all examples of
| simple crud applications), the moment you see success it will
| be cloned by people in eastern Europe, India, or SE Asia, and
| priced at 10% of yours.
|
| A moat or barrier to entry is a must now. Solve hard problems.
| tluyben2 wrote:
| Depends what you want to achieve of course; there are many
| copies of most services around which, in certain regions of
| the world, do well. There are a lot of SaaS products, notably
| all kinds of project or task management applications, of
| which there are 100s of 1000s around, where the owner(s)
| makes enough profit to have a nice, comfortable life even
| though there should be crippling competition. I had two of
| those (in the task management/PM space; I had many more in
| other spaces) which I both sold, but they made me a very
| comfortable year income for the years I had them, without any
| work besides the initial investment of building them (which
| was not very hard as they are crud apps).
|
| If you are not interested in becoming a (global) market
| leader, there are a lot of opportunities up for grabs. In the
| EU (and I guess that goes for other regions in the same way),
| a lot of companies buy local; the company I currently work
| for is Dutch and, although we have many competitors globally
| which might be cheaper or better, there is simply enough
| income to be made for a company with an office, employees,
| better than market pay and steady growth only from Dutch
| clients who rather do business with other Dutch people and
| inside the EU. GDPR and other EU guidelines and rules rather
| worked in favour of many companies here; Govs and many other
| institutions for instance demand all data to be inside the EU
| and signed contracts that they will never share data outside
| the EU; many US/Asia SaaS products simply do not offer that
| with guarantees acceptable (or to be trusted) to companies
| here.
| jerrygoyal wrote:
| (most) SaaS businesses have no moat. So, distribution is the
| key.
| antoineMoPa wrote:
| Why pay tens of dollars per month on AWS for side projects? A 5$
| linode is the max I'll pay for any side project - especially if
| it does not make money.
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| I think one of the important lessons that the author is yet to
| learn is that people don't give a shit about your product.
|
| You have to realize that even if someone gives you a 1 star
| review saying "product does not work", they still probably don't
| give a shit. Even people who use your product more than likely
| aren't going to give you any feedback.
|
| The fact the author is focused on things like SEO and is overly
| emotional about people's reactions to their product shows they
| don't understand this.
|
| Who cares about SEO if your content doesn't make people give a
| shit, and having people take time out of their day to tell you
| how shit your product is isn't the worst outcome. I would rather
| people tear me and my shit apart than them not react at all.
|
| The fact someone organically posted about your product and it got
| engagement is actually interesting. Maybe none of their feedback
| is actionable, but I would still count that as a win.
|
| It also sounds like they're trying to build generic B2C products,
| which I think is the complete opposite of what you should be
| building as a solo bootstrapper.
| ackbar03 wrote:
| >It also sounds like they're trying to build generic B2C
| products, which I think is the complete opposite of what you
| should be building as a solo bootstrapper
|
| What would be your recommendation then regarding this point?
| Niche b2b?
| ThePhysicist wrote:
| I would avoid going into areas with lots of existing hype
| (e.g. privacy-friendly website analytics) where you'll
| compete with literally thousands of companies from all over
| the world and where you'll have very few ways to truly stand
| out.
|
| Business models that are more defensible are those that
| require bigger investments and deeper expertise to build, as
| that will make it more difficult to copy for incumbents.
| yoshyosh wrote:
| This talk is the holy grail on this topic
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otbnC2zE2rw niche b2b, w/
| natural recurring cycles, $99 price point at a minimum, and
| not needing to be on call is most ideal
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| Yes, niche B2B seems to be the winning play from what I have
| seen and heard from successful indie hackers.
| jbman223 wrote:
| I've had great success building B2C apps as side projects.
| It's more about matching your passions to solving issues.
| Otherwise you'll burn out and produce crap before you ever
| make anything people use.
| adav wrote:
| Success by which measure? I fear that a solo entrepreneur
| making a B2C product that also alights with their passion
| is firmly in the danger zone - you'll want to keep making
| crap that's no one will use while your passion
| clouds/hides any signs to stop.
|
| Would love to hear ideas for dealing with overcoming this
| potential major issue. Perhaps if it's only a side
| project that's safer?
| jbman223 wrote:
| My most successful side project - by traffic volume and
| by usage - is a viral site idea which consistently
| generates over 1 million users in July of every year,
| those users generate about 20k in revenue yearly. It
| solves a problem I had in high school, and lots of other
| students have too. The project revolves around seeing
| location locked test scores up to 2 days early.
|
| I think the important aspect that keeps the project
| useful is by using the same metrics that you would use to
| evaluate any business. I'm able to run this company
| completely in my spare time, and it's reached a point
| where only a week of work is needed per year to keep it
| stable. Traditional metrics, front end analytics and some
| anonymized data collection, as well as social media
| sentiment review show extremely positive user feedback.
| As well as continued growth every year.
|
| It's important to remember that it's your baby and your
| idea still has to follow traditional success metrics. And
| also, for a side project, success metrics don't have to
| exclusively be "billion dollar company with VC funding in
| 3 months that is my full time job that I've invested my
| whole life into."
| yuvalr1 wrote:
| Can you recommend resources to help you succeed in
| building B2C products as a solo entrepreneur?
| Alternatively, can you elaborate on your take?
|
| I'm interested in building B2C products, and I find that
| IH is mostly concentrated around B2B (which is logical,
| because B2C entrepreneurs don't have incentives to post
| their story there).
| jbman223 wrote:
| Check my other reply to the sibling of my original post
| for a little more detailed story. I need to check out
| IndyHacker. B2C products have a longer growth cycle if
| you're not full time, as prices are lower but the markets
| are bigger. My main recommendation is to follow a lot of
| the advice given for B2B - just involve users in more of
| the process. I think B2C is traditionally harder for devs
| because it's a lot more personal and human than B2C, and
| requires usually a lot more of the BS work that others
| have diminished in the comments here: finding and
| becoming active in relevant communities to your product,
| creating content and perfecting SEO to use Google to
| drive natural growth, etc.
| yuvalr1 wrote:
| > It also sounds like they're trying to build generic B2C
| products, which I think is the complete opposite of what you
| should be building as a solo bootstrapper
|
| Why do you think solo bootstrappers shouldn't build B2C
| products?
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| Because B2B just makes more sense for small scale businesses.
| And I say this as someone who is building a B2C SaaS product.
|
| Here are a few reasons off the top of my head:
|
| 1) B2B can charge higher prices (Charge More (TM)), which
| means you can afford higher CAC and require less customers to
| reach profitability
|
| 2) Businesses tend to be more sticky than consumers
|
| 3) You can segment the market more effectively with pricing
|
| 4) Customers are more likely to be grateful/appreciative
| because your product directly impacts their business
|
| 5) Support is less likely to be a headache due to a smaller
| number of customers and 4)
| m0llusk wrote:
| One potentially valuable analysis of this issue is Ralph
| Grabowski's Marketing to Engineering ratio. Engineering is
| required to make a product, but marketing is required to
| understand potential customers and how to express the benefits of
| the product. Marketing is like the tires on a vehicle. No matter
| how good the product it is still necessary to know who is going
| to buy the damned thing and how to reach them so they know about
| it. Early on in development successful projects spend put more
| money and focus on marketing than engineering because customers
| needs and vocabulary need to influence development as soon as
| possible.
| edoceo wrote:
| This one in /new about SaaS building too.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26687212
| denton-scratch wrote:
| Spamming forums, and requiring people to surrender PII in
| exchange for a trial product, is anti-marketing.
|
| Delivering a product that crashes on install, is anti-marketing.
|
| Writing a blog-post that is hard to read due to lack of critical
| editing and poor grammar and punctuation is anti-marketing.
|
| There's probably a reason this guy hasn't given any information
| about what his failed products were supposed to do: it didn't
| matter to him. "Oh, I'm not top of the hit-parade after 3 months?
| Scrap that one, cry a bit, then start again with a new product".
|
| The crappy, spammy marketing will have annoyed a minority of
| vocal people - people who write bad reviews. Withdrawing a
| product suddenly, after a few months, while that product still
| has users, is not likely to win friends. And if you want a
| "passive business", you'd better have a USP and some IP that is
| hard to replicate, otherwise some other techie is going to come
| along and eat your breakfast.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| I don't disagree with asking for a email in exchange for a
| trial product, but I do disagree with his overall mentality.
| This person never cared about his users. He cared how they made
| him feel, that's a huge difference. Nothing about this leads me
| to believe that he wanted them to succeed, or to help them in
| any way. He wanted his ego stroked and his bank account
| increased.
| rightbyte wrote:
| "I was literally saying to people: "I'm looking to build an X app
| would you find that useful"."
|
| What app is he writing about? Is the article fake? How can you
| write like 10 paragraphs about your failed app without
| namedropping it or tell what it tried to do.
| robocat wrote:
| Great insight - especially the questioning why we do it to
| ourselves. It is tough creating a business.
|
| I wonder how many others are doing the same journey, but not
| leaning from the experience, and instead making the same mistake
| over and over again?
| JCDenton2052 wrote:
| A rather painful reading experience. The author needs to learn
| how to edit their thoughts and use punctuation/grammar properly.
| defnmacro wrote:
| A brief exercise in shipping an MVP and seeing if it gets
| traction before refining the feature set =). Thanks for reading
| my ramblings despite the lack of proofreading hopefully its a
| bit better for others now.
| internetslave wrote:
| Haha I appreciate this response.
| antaviana wrote:
| What came to my mind when reading the unedited copy is that
| you are confusing MVP with prototype. An effective MVP is
| something that does relatively very few things but that does
| them well or very well. Otherwise your churning will be huge.
| In other words, I read your post completely but it was
| somewhat painful because the copy was not polished for
| clarity, so I doubt I read a second one. I churned. To build
| effective MVPs you need to keep an eye on quality. Do fewer
| things that work flawlessly will have much more impact than
| throwing a bunch of things to the wall. You need to make a
| culture change and overweight quality. And I also recommend
| B2B if you happen to be trying B2C.
| lmarcos wrote:
| "I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a
| long one instead".
|
| As a "tech guy", I never understood the notion of MVPs. Sure,
| start small makes sense, but delivering something half baked
| just demonstrates one doesn't care enough for their
| readers/customers. Why would anyone like to put himself in
| such a position?
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| Because people emphasize "minimum", when the important part
| was "viable product".
| flagman555 wrote:
| I have been building and failing multiple websites/mobile apps
| since 2006. To this day, I don't think I could ever be in that
| situation of creating something that somehow takes off.
|
| Theres gotta be a place for failed web/mobile app developers to
| get together and figure out a way to make it, anyone know of such
| a place?
| julienreszka wrote:
| Surround yourself with winners if you want to succeed, not the
| opposite
| gkoberger wrote:
| It's not targeted at failed founders explicitly, however Indie
| Hackers is probably the community you're looking for!
|
| https://www.indiehackers.com/
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| https://www.failory.com/
| adav wrote:
| Twitter?
| brabel wrote:
| By the nature of it, only a few apps/products will ever be
| successful. The number of people/companies trying to create
| such apps/producs is very large today as software has the
| lowest possible initial investment of any kind of business
| (essentially zero if you have the skills already). But the
| number of people/companies willing to pay for some new product
| they don't already have is tiny. It is extremely difficult for
| someone to be successful in this area.
|
| In summary: most will not make it, no matter how hard they try
| and even how good they are, because there's simply no room for
| everybody.
| flagman555 wrote:
| I don't fully subscribe to this train of thought; I believe
| the pie is big enough for everyone. Now I don't have a
| definitive answer on why some make it and some dont,
| obviously, and not sure if anyone does.
| staticassertion wrote:
| Why not simply work at a company?
| scollet wrote:
| Some people aren't made for that.
| flagman555 wrote:
| I suspect that most other failed devs are indeed working at a
| 9-5 but looking to get the F U money from a side project and
| enjoy life, at least that is my situation. Also FU money is
| relative, I am not looking for 1B, just a small 3M nest egg
| is enough for me to retire.
| [deleted]
| polote wrote:
| Once again this post follows the usual strategy to make sure to
| fail your startup https://blog.luap.info/how-to-make-sure-to-
| fail-your-startup...
|
| These people are very motivated, are able to start new projects
| and working hard on it. Unfortunately contrary to what the world
| wants to make you think. Succeeding is not only a question of
| working hard, there is a lot of luck involved and also a lot of
| knowledge. But it is not knowledge you learn reading books, it is
| a mindset. Some people are better than others to start companies.
| jerrygoyal wrote:
| Intuitive post that was. Particularly liked this part:
|
| "This is always difficult to make an article to tell people how
| to be successfull. Because for any tips that you may give,
| there are always people who will succeed by doing the opposite.
| People are very different and we have to accept it. Also being
| successfull is all about being yourself and being innovative,
| so really the kind of things which don't follow rules."
| Applejinx wrote:
| Reminds me of the famous viral Cracked motivational article.
|
| Nobody cares about you, who your self is, whether you 'are
| innovative' or 'don't follow rules'. What did you DO?
|
| That's the only part people can see. It's a very tough sell,
| going around like 'I am innovative!' and not doing anything
| significant. Got the cart before the horse there, very
| possibly without a horse.
| choxi wrote:
| This post could be written better, but a lot of it resonates with
| me as a solo technical founder who has gone through dozens of
| failed projects over the last five years.
|
| I do have a strong tendency to start with an interesting concept
| instead of a concrete problem, but I run into a lot of walls
| taking the problem-first approach:
|
| - The problem already has a dozen solutions because the SaaS
| space is at least 10 years old now and hyper competitive, there'a
| almost no good solution you could come up with that hasn't been
| built already.
|
| - If all the good or obvious solutions have been tried already,
| you could try to build something better still. But in my
| experience I could only come up with marginally better solutions
| or I would run into intractable technical challenges (intractable
| for me, at least).
|
| - How do you even find a valuable problem to solve? I tried
| keeping a list of problems I encountered in my day job for a year
| and the solutions for almost all of them required skills well
| outside of my wheel house.
|
| I think this is because, when I try to take a problem-first
| approach I tend to think about the solution space linearly. This
| leads to solutions that are obvious to any reasonably smart
| engineer, but because they're obvious they've been done or are
| intractable.
|
| That's why I think there is some value in starting with
| interesting concepts or solutions, because what you're really
| looking for is a creative solution to a relatively common
| problem. It seems just as hard to start with a problem and back
| into a creative solution as it is to start with a creative
| concept and find a problem you can solve with it.
| matthewolfe wrote:
| > intractable for me, at least
|
| > almost all of them required skills well outside of my wheel
| house.
|
| It seems like you have found good problems to address. Why not
| just try to learn more things that can make the solutions
| within your wheel house. Otherwise, nothing is stopping you
| from finding a partner with the right skill set.
| raverbashing wrote:
| Is it just me or the article is not opening?
|
| (Wonder if it is author regret or something else)
| kristianc wrote:
| The article betrays a complete lack of empathy for the pain
| points of the customer - which is probably why he's having so
| much trouble to get people to pay for them.
|
| He starts out by citing Field of Dreams "if you build it they
| will come" but then seems to completely miss that point by
| building it without validating it was something people actually
| wanted.
|
| "I didn't care so much about creating a product that would
| actually make me money, I just wanted someone to use something I
| built." perhaps sums this piece up best. He's getting into this
| for the wrong reasons - to be an "entrepreneur" or have a
| "passive income" rather than solving a problem anyone wants
| solving.
| lmarcos wrote:
| > He's getting into this for the wrong reasons - to be an
| "entrepreneur" or have a "passive income" rather than solving a
| problem anyone wants solving.
|
| I always thought this was "common sense". I just don't
| understand why people focus so much in "I need to bootstrap a
| saas!", "I need to listen to what other entrepreneurs are
| saying", "I need to put my product on indie hackers!", "I need
| to join an accelerator!", "I need investors!".
|
| Sorry, but imho all of that doesn't make any sense. Build
| something because a) you think it may be useful (for you or for
| others) and b) you actually enjoy building things.
| kristianc wrote:
| It's often either being in love with the idea of being an
| entrepreneur, or they genuinely are trying to build a
| successful product but conflating the Promotional 'P' of
| marketing (posting on Reddit, ProductHunt etc) with the other
| three - product, price, place.
|
| Which is unfortunate, as those kind of people are usually the
| first people to dunk on marketing with Bill Hicks videos,
| calling it a form of deception etc.
| andrewstuart wrote:
| It was extremely distracting to not know what the SAAS services
| were. Wasted reading time - too abstract.
| rightbyte wrote:
| I have a feeling the write-up is fiction and should be read as
| a novel. Which is funny since:
|
| "Soon I started getting feedback on forums along the lines of
| "The product looks interesting but I don't really want to sign
| up for it without seeing the product first." Again this was a
| free product at the time and all the user had to do was click
| the Google or Facebook OAuth button to log in, or enter their
| email but they refused to do so. They didn't trust me."
| nikisweeting wrote:
| Maybe this isn't helpful advice, but don't take product failures
| so personally. They are experiments and learning exercises, and
| most companies fail by default. Of course it depends greatly on
| your life situation, i.e. do you have a job that can support you
| while working on stuff as a side-project? Or are you attempting
| to launch something as your full-time day job with limited
| savings or income? (10x more stressful)
|
| People don't have personal investment or insight into your
| particular project. Most people assume there is a huge company
| behind every product they use, and wont hesitate to bash it on
| social media not realizing it may be a solo founder or tiny team
| with limited resources. Extreme reactions also get faster
| responses from big companies, so people have been trained to
| viscerally bash apps when reviewing them rather than posting more
| measured empathetic feedback. I think you will find that chatting
| with users 1:1 yields much higher quality feedback than reading
| reviews.
|
| 3-4 months also strikes me as a very short time to build, launch,
| monetize, and then declare a project a failure. In my experience,
| successful companies take years to build, or at least 5-6 months
| to start iterating on the initial feedback and building a
| reasonable userbase.
|
| Just my 2c.
| j4yav wrote:
| I agree that perseverance is being ignored by the author. Not
| that he should keep throwing good money after bad, but keep
| costs low, keep talking to customers, don't be afraid to throw
| things away, and you might be surprised where your product ends
| up.
| pototo666 wrote:
| My first product takes 6 monthes to monetize. On hind sight I
| could have shortened 6 monthes to 4 monthes. Because users
| donated money from monthes 3 to support me. I postponed
| monetization for fear of user churn.
|
| I would argue that it is possible, even necessary to try
| monetize early (but only after users acutually use the
| product). Maybe charge some small amount. PG may have written
| about it, I am not sure which essay.
| stanislavb wrote:
| The moral of the story - sales and marketing are more important
| than you think. Especially if you are technical.
| system2 wrote:
| We don't know what the SaaS products were, what he is describing,
| how much they were, who was the target...
|
| I am just fascinated by these type of posts which people can sit
| down and write longer than I can tolerate to read. I still don't
| know what the author tried to convey. Impressive this got 99
| votes here.
| Hnrobert42 wrote:
| I actually like that the author didn't describe the products.
| That's beside the point. The point was about the evolution of
| their goals, definition of success, and ways of failing.
| lloydatkinson wrote:
| No it isn't besides the point.
| fauigerzigerk wrote:
| It would be useful to at least know a little bit about the
| type of customer the products were for.
|
| There was a story a while ago from someone who had built
| software for physicians to pick the best drugs for a
| particular diagnosis. They described the problem and how it
| was currently solved. They described how they talked to
| doctors and what response they got. They described what they
| had to do to create a useful and credible product. I found
| that post very enlightening.
|
| With this post I feel like I have absolutely no way to judge
| whether the author's conclusions are relevant to my own
| projects.
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| Sometimes you get lost and you have lots of information to give
| to explain your position. I was writing a blog post aimed at
| non techincal people and 1/3 of the way through I was at 1200
| words. Nope. That needs to be cut down to 600 words.
|
| Once I wrote a blog post that I knew most people would just
| disagree with, so I wrote out a full length explaination. I
| posted it on Reddit, hardly anyone read actually read it and
| every single one of their comments againist my point was
| commented on in my post. Lots of people upvote and downvote
| based on title. Which kind of makes sense since you normally
| have to go to the page and read it before making a decision but
| the upvote and downvote buttons are right next to the link. One
| of the reasons I don't upvote often is I just forget. I've
| clicked the link read it and I'm off to my next post.
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| That was a painful read, sorry.
|
| My advice for the author is to take a moment and look at the
| things they pay actual money for. Goods, services, Etc. And how
| they discriminate between vendors of those goods. (Why buy brand
| X when brand Y is cheaper, when you need a widget how do you find
| where to get one? How do you decide which one to get? Things like
| that.)
|
| It is a big "ask" to ask people for money in exchange for access
| to or to use your app. When is the last time you bought an app
| for your phone? What put you over the edge into buying something?
| What things about that purchase made you feel better about buying
| it, and more importantly what things made you feel worse about
| buying it?
|
| In none of the anecdotes presented, is there a discussion about
| how you played the role of being a customer for your own product.
| How did you feel about the "value" of the product given the price
| asked? How did the installation process go?
|
| It can be hard to step out of your own context sometimes and that
| is where it can be helpful for a trusted friend, who will give
| you honest advice, can be the stand in for the customer and tell
| you the answers to these questions.
|
| Lastly, in all three anecdotes the author is laser focused on
| money, money, money. All of their metrics around success or
| failure are based on money. The problem here is that money is the
| first derivative of customer satisfaction not the metric. Focus
| on delighting customers and they will happily hand over money.
| amzans wrote:
| As someone with a graveyard of failed projects and a few with
| moderate success, I agree with this advice.
|
| I have a day job, and run my SaaS as a side-business, so maybe
| not the OP's aspirations. However, I want to add one point:
|
| > "...happy to be reminded that others have failed many more
| times before finally getting their overnight success."
|
| Don't build optimizing for overnight success, that's
| essentially a casino.
|
| Waiting a few weeks to see what sticks and what doesn't is way
| too short based my experience.
|
| From PG's essays:
|
| "Actually startups take off because the founders make them take
| off. There may be a handful that just grew by themselves, but
| usually it takes some sort of push to get them going."
|
| And while ideally you'd validate the product as quickly as
| possible, most businesses can take years to truly take off.
| Often involving many pivots along the way.
|
| Maybe I misunderstood, but don't make "overnight success" your
| north star.
| dbattaglia wrote:
| > That was a painful read, sorry.
|
| Agreed. The article felt to me like a reaction to the common
| refrain that, in tech, you can either be a founder or you can
| be a wage slave, and the former is clearly better. The product
| itself is secondary; the only important decision is, do you go
| the route of passive income ("lifestyle business"),
| bootstrapped business or VC-backed startup. As someone squarely
| in the latter camp of boring corporate coder, it can be hard to
| muster up much empathy, which I realize is a bit ugly of me.
|
| The part I did find interesting was their discussion towards
| the middle of their free browser extension, and how the joy of
| others using their creation was exhilarating, while at the same
| time the feeling of negative criticism can be crushing. As
| someone who got into professional coding first by uploading
| code-like creations (the Native Instruments Reaktor user
| library) and having the same experience, I can vouch that this
| is the best feeling I've experienced coding and building
| things, and the criticism can actually help you learn to deal
| with such things better. It was unfortunate to me that the
| article then went back into some of the uglier parts about
| chasing money, clicks and SEO.
| tnolet wrote:
| > ... money is the first derivative of customer satisfaction
| not the metric
|
| This is a great sentiment. The product and problem need to come
| first. So besides being a business person, you need to be a
| product person too: design, copy, UX etc.
| daniellarusso wrote:
| I really think you cannot emphasize the last part enough -
| money, money, money.
|
| Only focusing on money as a metric seems to be a lagging
| indicator.
|
| What is the adage? You are what you measure, or, you cannot
| improve what you don't measure.
|
| Yes, server uptime and latency is important, but so is customer
| satisfaction and the metrics of the application.
| lelanthran wrote:
| > That was a painful read, sorry.
|
| For me too, but for different reasons.
|
| > I tried to drum up support in niche subreddits only to have
| people tell me it was basically useless that they wanted a
| desktop version, not a mobile app.
|
| This is valuable feedback - why did author not take the advice
| and give the people what they said they wanted (a desktop app)?
|
| I mean, this is literally the first thing you should know as a
| salesman - sell the people what they are asking for!
|
| It gets worse. Here's what happened on the second attempt:
|
| > It was a summary of the review and it was bad. I forget the
| exact wording but basically, it was like "This app does not
| work as intended 0 stars." It hit like a crash dummy flying
| into a brick wall at a crash site test. I was furious,
| despondent, and sad. I tried everything to get in contact with
| the user, I sent maybe 4 follow-up emails begging for me to
| help him or her fix their problem and _to remove their review_.
|
| His user engagement was partially to fix the product and
| partially to get the user to change their mind about the
| review. The feedback of "This app does not work as intended"
| seems extremely clear to me - the product does not what the
| advertising said it did.
|
| But he learned this lesson, right? Apparently not. On the third
| attempt:
|
| > Soon I started getting feedback on forums along the lines of
| "The product looks interesting but I don't really want to sign
| up for it without seeing the product first." Again this was a
| free product at the time and all the user had to do was click
| the Google or Facebook OAuth button to log in, or enter their
| email but they refused to do so.
|
| Users apparently did not want to sign up with their main email
| or facebook account details. His response?
|
| > at this time I would learn and do anything to get more users
| to my site, to the point where I was getting banned from
| multiple forums for posting after people told me to get lost
| for promoting content.
|
| Three times in a row he ignored what his users were telling
| him; he's lucky he got as far as he did on third third attempt.
|
| (BTW: What's with the stupid copy/paste prevention on that
| site? Copying still works if you hold down shift though, so yay
| for incompetent devs?)
| [deleted]
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