[HN Gopher] How to Create a SaaS and Compete with the Big Player...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       How to Create a SaaS and Compete with the Big Players as a Solo
       Founder
        
       Author : hnjobaccount
       Score  : 195 points
       Date   : 2021-10-19 12:04 UTC (10 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.mikealche.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.mikealche.com)
        
       | moneywoes wrote:
       | How big is the risk of some competitor just copying with business
       | with 10x the engineers and taking your customers?
        
         | count wrote:
         | For every company that will buy from them, there's a company
         | that won't buy from them for 'religious' reasons. Deals are
         | complicated, it's not always an 'engineering' decision.
        
         | MangoCoffee wrote:
         | low? lets use Zoom as an example. its competitors already doing
         | exactly what Zoom does and yet they lost customers given they
         | were in the market much much longer than Zoom.
        
         | marcos100 wrote:
         | You're small enough that they don't care. If you grow big, then
         | they buy your or copy your business and when that happens
         | you'll have earned a lot of money, hopefully.
        
         | Kaotique wrote:
         | 10+ engineers is also 3 designers, 2 online marketeer, 2
         | managers, etc. They would need so much more revenue than a solo
         | dev.
        
         | dwrowe wrote:
         | They typically move more slowly - have more layers of design by
         | committee than you will. They've already built a large ship
         | that requires movement, you're in a speedboat. Sure, they can
         | crush you, if you move at the same speed and in the same
         | direction - use your agility to move.
        
       | 256DEV wrote:
       | I hate to be the stereotype of skeptical HN reader but I think
       | this headline oversells the article.
       | 
       | Specifically for me it doesn't speak at all to the differences
       | between starting a SaaS like this as a team of founders versus as
       | a solo founder. As a committed solo founder all I can say is that
       | choosing solo founding is not something to be undertaken lightly!
       | 
       | My startup CV is now roughly an equal length of being on a team
       | of 4 founders and the current solo founder situation so I see the
       | differences all the time. There are a lot of positives to both
       | options but to write an article like this and not blend an
       | awareness of the trade-offs between the two makes it much less
       | interesting.
       | 
       | I've really struggled with being a solo founder despite it being
       | a strong preference and learning to face _every_ aspect of the
       | running the business with a _very_ conscious awareness that you
       | 're +1 in certain things and -1 in others is the only way I've
       | found to make it work.
       | 
       | The idea you choose is a big part of this. I've seen thinking
       | about your idea & solo founding preference described on twitter
       | by @warikoo like this:
       | 
       | 2x2 matrix
       | 
       | X-axis: Do you have the core skill reqd for the startup? Y-axis:
       | Are you a control freak?
       | 
       | Y,Y: DON'T have a cofounder
       | 
       | Y,N: Could get one, but with complementary skills
       | 
       | N,Y: Hire people, might make them cofounders later
       | 
       | N,N: You have to have one!
        
       | intrasight wrote:
       | Honestly, I think this fails at the first bullet point: "Pick a
       | niche that is already validated". My first bullet would be "Build
       | a product that your existing customer says they need and they
       | can't find." That's how all my SaaS as a solo have come to be.
        
         | CodingPanda42 wrote:
         | In a way that is the same point, just in your case you have
         | already existing customers. But if you don't have a look at
         | what other companies customer are doing and optimize for a
         | segment of those can certainly be a good approach IMHO
        
           | intrasight wrote:
           | Sort of but not really. The article is mostly about
           | differentiation. But if there's no existing solution to a
           | customer problem, then you don't have to differentiate.
        
         | cvhashim wrote:
         | Before that, how do I find customers and clients?
        
           | candiodari wrote:
           | Start on a job board. Get a freelance gig with your skills.
           | Anything.
        
       | matchagaucho wrote:
       | "Solo Founder" seems like a proxy that just acknowledges that
       | Software Development is now a Profession.
       | 
       | We don't refer to Doctors, Lawyers, and Accountants as "Solo
       | Doctors", etc...
       | 
       | They are simply people who have studied their area of expertise
       | for years, are disciplined and principled in their approach,
       | likely carry some form of E&O insurance to warrant their work,
       | and are perfectly capable forming their own legal entity and
       | opening their own "office".
       | 
       | Broadly speaking, these professionals belong to networks of other
       | professionals, who occasionally collaborate on projects.
       | 
       | Reading the article in this context then, focusing on a niche
       | makes perfect sense for any Professional.
        
         | paxys wrote:
         | There's a difference between working a job and being an
         | entrepreneur. The solo founder vs partnership debate comes up
         | in every profession you mentioned, e.g. when starting your own
         | law practice or medical clinic from scratch. Particularly for
         | lawyers the standard advice is to at minimum have a group of
         | partners with complementary skills (deep technical knowledge of
         | laws, experience in a courtroom, ability to schmooze clients),
         | not very different from what you'd hear from a tech VC.
        
       | kureikain wrote:
       | If you want to compete with the big players, you have to solve
       | the most important pain point and work upward from that small use
       | base.
       | 
       | My case: I work on https://hanami.run (will soon move to
       | https://mailwip.com due to hanamirb.org conflict) and email
       | forwarding is very competitive. Big and old players are all over
       | the place because at the end of day, setting up email forwarding
       | isn't hard and many open source project did it, heck you can spin
       | up AWS lambda for incoming email in no time.
       | 
       | The pain point is: email will drop sometime, time to time no
       | matter how good an email forwarding service is because they have
       | to scan spam, have false positive, or because of strict DMARC/SPF
       | rule. And I have no tools available to help me out there. So I
       | focus strongly on my maillog features with many level of privacy:
       | 
       | - no log at all: defaut
       | 
       | - only log spam email: give you another chance to read email on
       | our UI
       | 
       | - log meta data
       | 
       | - log meta data + subject
       | 
       | - log whole email
       | 
       | Then, next steps is regex forwarding. Again, I learned this from
       | reddit, forum search of those use base.
       | 
       | Basically I focus on those small features that big player doesn't
       | have.
       | 
       | Then I was able to obtain a very small user base who has issues
       | with big providers. Then I work upward from there to spin out
       | given now that I had a working and good product that people are
       | willing to pay for.
       | 
       | The rest is just iteration.
        
         | codazoda wrote:
         | Hi. Good to see you kicking around. I'm a happy customer that
         | had trouble with those big providers. Lately I haven't even
         | thought about your service (it's just working).
        
       | going_to_800 wrote:
       | that's exactly what we did and doing very well. After trying lots
       | of stuff in the last 12 years and actively participating in the
       | indie communities, that's the easiest way to make it work.
       | 
       | Find a popular product, pick a growing niche that product serves
       | not so well (you can see that in reviews, twitter, etc) and build
       | a specialized version of that product with a friendly and modern
       | UI. When serving different niches, usually products require
       | different configurations for each and get quite heavy and
       | confusing. You can fix that by specializing on one niche.
        
       | 1cvmask wrote:
       | So what's the SaaS that you created and managed to compete with
       | big players as a solo founder?
        
         | keewee7 wrote:
         | In the C++ world there is a dude with funny hair who makes a
         | living by being a C++ expert.
         | 
         | What is his real world C++ experience? Being a C++ expert.
        
           | 1cvmask wrote:
           | Ipso Facto
           | 
           | wikipedia.org/wiki/Ipso_facto
        
         | welder wrote:
         | Here's his portfolio page:
         | 
         | https://www.mikealche.com/portfolio
        
           | 1cvmask wrote:
           | I looked at that page and then I asked the question to see if
           | it was some other startup not listed on the portfolio page.
        
         | corobo wrote:
         | It feels rude to ask, but I wish people asked this more
         | 
         | You see it a lot in the livestreaming/YouTuber circles too, 5
         | viewer channels advising 10 viewer channels how to grow
         | 
         | Theory is great but it should really be marked as such. At
         | least give examples of other companies doing this or something
         | if you're acting solely in a research and present findings
         | capacity
        
       | ChicagoBoy11 wrote:
       | I find it amusing that this article has reached the front page
       | with quite a positive vote count yet just about every comment
       | I've read is quite negative about it.
        
       | artemonster wrote:
       | arrrghhh this "find a niche" stuff again. what if I am a regular
       | 9-5 engineer in a big company. where the hell am I finding those?
       | By using random idea generator and getting "note taking add-in
       | for excel for amputee ballerinas"? aw jeez, they dont have enough
       | money, I must pivot to broker ballerinas
        
         | beaconstudios wrote:
         | yeah, the "find a niche" advice falls flat without an addendum
         | entitled "how to find a niche". I think fundamentally it comes
         | from talking to people rather than theorising in a bubble, but
         | unless you're already talking to people it's tricky to know how
         | to begin.
        
           | lewisjoe wrote:
           | pg has an excellent essay on how to fine niches or startup
           | ideas in general.
           | 
           | My thumbrule: 1. Pick a market that already has money-making
           | companies. If you can beat them by price & quality, even
           | after considering the first-mover advantage - go for it.
           | 
           | 2. [From pg's essay] Just experiene more in life, with
           | different people facing different kinds of problems from
           | different sectors. That's a sure shot way to eventually run
           | into a market with less competition.
        
         | hugs wrote:
         | I used to be a "9-5 engineer in a big company". But I always
         | loved playing with robots. It took me years to a) learn how to
         | build robots (started as a self-taught weekend hobby), and b)
         | find companies that want to buy robots I can make. Now my niche
         | is making and selling robots to companies. (My specific niche
         | is shoebox-sized robots for testing/automating touchscreen
         | devices.) The "niche eureka moment" was when I realized the
         | "hardware testing with robots" niche was very similar to my
         | existing "software test automation" 9-5 big company job skill
         | set (modulo electronics+mechanical skills).
         | 
         | Unfortunately, my discovery and learning process also involved
         | a good amount of luck and trying to describe it feels a lot
         | like step #2 in the "How to draw an owl" meme. At some point,
         | luck and hard work is involved, and there is no obvious
         | playbook for your next step.
         | 
         | However, if there is a chiton of money to be made in Excel add-
         | ins for amputee ballerinas, and you know how to make add-ins,
         | and you know how to find and talk to amputee ballerinas, it
         | might not be a bad career move, though...
        
         | foogazi wrote:
         | > what if I am a...
         | 
         | Why does advice have to apply to every scenario ?
         | 
         | What if you are a paraguayan field worker and this is not
         | actionable for you ?
         | 
         | Anyways, I'd suggest you talk to others around you and see if
         | you spot the pain points in their day
        
           | artemonster wrote:
           | >Anyways, I'd suggest you talk to others around you and see
           | if you spot the pain points in their day
           | 
           | This is not a predictable tactic that would yield a viable
           | SaaS idea, this is a gamble "go dive into the ocean, maybe
           | you will find treasure"
        
             | dinkleberg wrote:
             | There is no predictability in starting a business. If we
             | could easily predict the idea for the next big unicorn
             | everyone would be going in on it.
             | 
             | Starting a business is a gamble. If you don't have some
             | risk tolerance, starting a startup is not the right path.
        
             | panorama wrote:
             | This tactic is exactly how I found our idea.
             | 
             | Of course you won't strike gold on the first person you
             | talk to. Be smart about it, talk to people who work in an
             | industry you would like to serve (doctors, lawyers,
             | marketers, mechanics, etc.) and figure out the
             | inefficiencies in their day to day life. It's not as hard
             | as you've made it out to be.
        
             | paxys wrote:
             | There is no "predictable tactic" for being a successful
             | entrepreneur.
        
             | yibg wrote:
             | Are you expecting a predictable formula for starting a
             | successful business?
        
         | omarhaneef wrote:
         | I thought this was implicit: you find a problem you deal with
         | on a daily basis.
         | 
         | This is probably why there are so many more startups pitching
         | development tools than, for instance, something to make the
         | lives of truckers a little easier.
         | 
         | If you work as a regular engineer, you must come across dozens
         | of daily problems any of which are not properly solved by your
         | current tools. Even simple things like following up
         | consistently, or checking to see if someone responded to an
         | email to a third party etc
         | 
         | Addendum: In response to many comments, I should add that this
         | method is not supposed to guarantee you a good idea, but is a
         | source for ideas to filter, refine, develop or abandon.
        
           | artemonster wrote:
           | "you find a problem you deal with on a daily basis". Nope,
           | not necessarily. Depends on where you work. If you are a cog
           | in a big company, slaving away your 9-5, then no. You would
           | NEVER get an idea that some finance folk would love to get an
           | excel addin where you can click together in a simple GUI a
           | data fetch from API, or whatever.
        
             | grogenaut wrote:
             | not if you never go talk to anyonw but your direct team.
             | when i was at a 500 person consulting team i would wander
             | over and chat woth sales, finance, and hr. sales needed
             | updated resumes and better writing and presentation skills.
             | i pushes the engineers ro all do lunch and learns. finance
             | i plumbed some extra metrics for. hr i got some data into
             | excel for, amd figured out how to get our door badge system
             | to accept building badges which saved money and let people
             | carry one badge. all within 4 years of school.
             | 
             | at a game studio of 300 i would wander amd chat with the
             | various non-coder teams and just watch their workflows. for
             | the tech artists a big blocker was gui access to enums in
             | shaders (custom engine). i just set several of them up to
             | compile the engine and taught tyem how to link enums to the
             | editor gui, saved them many weeks of wait time. saw the
             | lighting bake loop would take 1 year to run fully and a
             | local test loop was 8 hours. asked my boss for time and
             | rigged up a cluster of 64 ps4 dev kits and brought that
             | down to 45 minutes, going from less than one local
             | iteration a day to 9, and less than one a year to 3 a week
             | for full bakes (cluster would bake when it wasnt helping am
             | artist).
             | 
             | at super large mega corp i do similar, constantly meeting
             | people for coffee and understanding more than just my cog.
             | Eventually I got good enough at it and a reputation for
             | improving things that I just get pushed/pulled at
             | problem/opportunities areas, but you have to work up to it.
             | 
             | while none of this is doing a startup, if youre not
             | curious, youll never see the myriad of things that could be
             | improved with software, nor will many non tech folks, or
             | really anyone who doesnt think "outside the box" as the
             | olds say. challenge for devs is understanding where that
             | tech is worth it and how to sell it, and not become that
             | angry dev who is just yelling at everyone and politics for
             | not taking every one of their half baked ideas as words
             | from on high.
        
             | count wrote:
             | Maybe this is an indication that you're not the right
             | personality type for this sort of thing.
        
             | HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
             | I think you need to look more closely. There are often
             | problems all around, but they've been "solved." Thing is,
             | very often the solutions suck and are wide open for
             | improvement.
             | 
             | An example from my day to day in a large corporation: we
             | have to enter time weekly: how much time did you spend on
             | project X, Y or in training/meetings/etc. Sure there is
             | software that does this, but it's _terrible_ There are many
             | issues with it that should be trivially solvable.
             | 
             | Now, I will admit that time tracking software is a huge
             | field with lots of strong competition, so this may not be a
             | field you'd want to enter, but it's an example of the
             | problems you would come across during an average workday
             | that are ripe for better solutions.
        
             | edmundsauto wrote:
             | There are also routes outside your main 9-5 at BigCo. In
             | fact, your employment agreement with BigCo probably is
             | written so that you don't want to get an idea for an
             | internal product!
             | 
             | Try meeting people not in your field. Yes, it will take
             | effort. Yes, it will be uncomfortable. Because of those
             | challenges, fewer people have explored that space - so
             | there are still fertile grounds for new products.
        
           | lewisjoe wrote:
           | pg has an excellent essay on how to fine niches or startup
           | ideas in general.
           | 
           | My thumbrule: 1. Pick a market that already has money-making
           | companies. If you can beat them by price & quality, even
           | after considering the first-mover advantage - go for it.
           | 
           | 2. [From pg's essay] Just experiene more in life, with
           | different people facing different kinds of problems from
           | different sectors. That's a sure shot way to eventually run
           | into a market with less competition.
        
             | GGfpc wrote:
             | Can you link the essay? Or even expand on what is pg?
        
               | HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
               | pg == one of the founders of YC.
               | 
               | http://www.paulgraham.com/articles.html
        
           | nocommandline wrote:
           | 1) >>> you find a problem you deal with on a daily basis. <<<
           | 
           | Agree with this. As they say - necessity is the mother of
           | invention. A lot of the episodes I listened to on the Podcast
           | - How I built this with Guy Raz - were about people getting
           | frustrated with a problem they faced on a daily basis and
           | deciding to fix it (usually starting quite small).
           | 
           | 2) >>> This is probably why there are so many more startups
           | pitching development tools than, for instance, something to
           | make the lives of truckers a little easier. <<<
           | 
           | This makes sense if you're a developer or work in software.
           | Eg, I'm a Product person who built tools on the side to
           | scratch my itch. My platform was Google App Engine (GAE).
           | When the GAE GUI was deprecated, I realized that I really
           | found a GUI much more convenient and so built -
           | https://nocommandline.com and in the process fixed stuff I
           | didn't like about the old GUI.
           | 
           | I think the trick here is to set right expectation i.e.
           | recognize that not every idea is going to be a Unicorn or a
           | big business. It could remain 'just a side project' or turn
           | out to be something that just brings you extra income (pay
           | your rent, weekly gas bill, etc).
        
           | cvhashim wrote:
           | Here's a midly annoying problem I'm currently facing with
           | Slack. Getting annoyed of jumping between DM's and channels
           | where I end up losing track of a channel I may have needed
           | open or was going through. I feel like having tabs in slack
           | would fix this? Not sure if it makes sense for the app to
           | have this feature but something I've been thinking about.
        
             | philsnow wrote:
             | I cling to using Chrome's support for shortcuts-as-apps: go
             | to whateverteam.slack.com, hamburger menu -> "More tools"
             | -> "Create shortcut..." -> "[X] open as window". At least
             | on Mac, it creates a .app in "$HOME/Applications/Chrome
             | Apps" that works like any other app: it shows up in the
             | cmd-tab switcher, you can open it with spotlight, etc.
             | 
             | The best part (and the part relevant to your comment) is
             | that this just opens a Chrome window and you can open
             | (cmd-N) as many windows into the same slack team as you
             | want, and it behaves like you expect a Mac app to behave:
             | cmd-tab goes between teams and cmd-backtick goes between
             | windows of a single team.
             | 
             | I gather that there are some Mac apps or extensions or
             | something that let you gather windows of _any_ app into
             | tabs, so you could likely use one of those here to get tabs
             | instead of windows.
             | 
             | Supposedly Chrome is getting rid of support for Chrome
             | Apps, I think that's what these things are called (?). If
             | so, I'm going to be impacted when it finally goes away.
        
             | Ozzie_osman wrote:
             | Slack has a history button. It's not perfect but it does
             | the basics of what you describe
             | https://www.howtogeek.com/668154/how-to-quickly-access-
             | your-...
        
             | _jal wrote:
             | I encourage people to move to email. I know people hate it,
             | but I'm serious.
             | 
             | Threading suddenly works in a non-stupid way, search
             | suddenly works, and you can manage your own windows.
        
             | boredumb wrote:
             | I have the same problem and honestly just a 'recently used
             | channel' history would solve it easily.
        
           | axegon_ wrote:
           | Most problems we all face on daily basis are completely
           | trivial and those which aren't are often solved by someone.
           | Which is something people often overlook and end up making
           | products which no one really needs. Here's an example - I
           | broke the remote for my AC earlier this year but I managed to
           | salvage the codes and program a wifi-enabled ESP32 to
           | communicate with the AC over wifi remotely, I made a crazy
           | stupid UI for my phone so I can control it remotely(though I
           | spend 90% of my time at home). Sounds like a brilliant
           | product, doesn't it? Is there a market for it? I haven't
           | bothered to check but my bet is that there might be 3000
           | people worldwide that would consider getting one, out of
           | which maybe 50 would end up buying it. So no, this probably
           | won't break the front page of Amazon to put it lightly.
        
             | HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
             | That's actually a good idea.
             | 
             | Was the original remote app enabled? If not, now you have a
             | potential product for those people who would rather use an
             | app than the manual remote. Are spare remotes hard to get
             | or expensive? There's another market that might want to buy
             | from you, especially if the AC unit that is old or
             | obsolete.
             | 
             | Spare parts/retrofits with new features is big business.
             | There's a good chance that if you dug into this particular
             | problem you'd find that it could be profitable. Not quit-
             | you-day-job profitable, but at least enough to bring in a
             | few extra $k per month.
        
               | axegon_ wrote:
               | I never said it wasn't a good idea. Almost 6 months later
               | it serves me perfectly well. There was no original app.
               | The AC itself was here when I moved in, it's an obscure
               | manufacturer no one has ever heard about and I recon it's
               | been here since the building was built around 2007. All I
               | could find out about it was that it was made in South
               | Africa and that's it. Infrared communication is
               | incredibly simple on those devices and it's a matter of
               | two hours to reverse engineer them(no shifting, rotations
               | or any of that fancy stuff). All in all it cost me around
               | 20 bucks and ~day to get it to work+the crazy stupid ui
               | running off an actix webserver. But if I had the option
               | to buy a remote control which works with it, I would have
               | gladly done that instead(tried several universal remotes,
               | none of which worked).
               | 
               | My point was that this does solve my problem but it's an
               | incredibly niche problem for an even smaller niche
               | market. The owners of this AC from the same unknown
               | manufacturer, that either can't find a spare remote or
               | want to make it wifi enabled. It's insanely specific,
               | isn't it? Let's not fool ourselves, writing the software
               | is the easy part and fairly inexpensive when you can do
               | it yourself, get a cheap stm32 board and flash it.
               | Manufacturing on the other hand is a whole different ball
               | game and honestly I can't justify the work of developing,
               | manufacturing, distributing and dealing with taxes at the
               | end of each month, all for 300 bucks tops(I'm probably
               | far too optimistic).
               | 
               | edit: esp32, not stm32(I'm mostly playing with stm32
               | lately).
        
               | HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
               | Understood. We all do what we're comfortable with.
               | 
               | > an incredibly niche problem for an even smaller niche
               | market
               | 
               | These are my favorite because no one "big" wants to get
               | into them. I make a device that converts signals from
               | heavy machinery that uses a specific type of almost-
               | obsolete sensor to let it use a modern control that you
               | can buy off the shelf. A friend of mine used to have a
               | nice side business (was full time for a while) selling a
               | replacement timer for a specific type of industrial
               | printer.
               | 
               | I like markets like that. The biggest problem I'd see in
               | your case is that it's a consumer item, not industrial.
               | Most customers just don't want to spend a whole lot
               | unless they have to.
        
             | skeeter2020 wrote:
             | >> Most problems we all face on daily basis are completely
             | trivial and those which aren't are often solved by someone.
             | 
             | Resptfully disagree. There are a lot of non-trivial
             | problems that do not have good solutions. If you look for
             | niche manifestations of hard problems, you can both find
             | something with appropriate scope AND a good value
             | proposition. You also don't need to solve problems, just
             | make them better/easier.
        
               | axegon_ wrote:
               | I genuinely can't remember the last time(or if there ever
               | was such an event) I saw something new and thought "Hey
               | this solves/helps with X, I gotta have it". Software is
               | easy when this is all you do so when I have a problem I
               | can solve with code, I go on and do it. Manufacturing,
               | you are either a large corporation(apple, samsung, etc.)
               | or you are a black swan. Most simply fail.
        
         | yibg wrote:
         | Then maybe you shouldn't do a startup? Not everyone can and
         | should do a startup, lack of a good idea is probably a good
         | reason.
        
         | MangoCoffee wrote:
         | >find a niche
         | 
         | i don't believe it have to be a niche. lets look at Zoom, its
         | in a saturated market with a lot of established products that
         | already have all the Zoom's functions built in but hide under
         | complex UI that no one know how it work or its there.
        
         | halfmatthalfcat wrote:
         | You listen to people around you either in the same or different
         | industry. Finding an idea is a lot more about listening then it
         | is _you_ coming up with something.
         | 
         | Most of my projects have come from just listening to friends or
         | families on their pain points (either in their jobs or life),
         | evaluating the market around those problems and then taking
         | action if it's a good idea.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | ozim wrote:
         | By going to product hunt and making exact copy of something.
         | 
         | By lurking on HN and making a copy of one of "Show HN".
         | 
         | Just pick something that seems interesting for you.
         | 
         | Spend 2-3 years building it and marketing and if it works well
         | you have it. If it does not work, start over again.
         | 
         | Unless you want a sure money making product - then stick to
         | your 9-5 job that is money making product you have for sure.
         | 
         | Which is also like "find people that want something and build
         | it for them" because that will be your next 9-5 job then.
        
       | jerrygoyal wrote:
       | > A good ballpark to get started is creating three plans around
       | $47, $97 and $249 each.
       | 
       | just like that. really? no matter what kind of SaaS you're
       | running?
        
         | noodle wrote:
         | If you're in b2b, yeah those are pretty good _ballparks_ to
         | start in if you have no real idea of what to pick. If you
         | already know what to do, then do that instead.
         | 
         | This is a fairly decent bit of advice if someone's new and has
         | analysis paralysis on pricing.
        
         | 0des wrote:
         | And all I can think reading this is "lord please bless my free
         | tier and day job"
        
         | marcos100 wrote:
         | I think patio11 recommends these tiers for low touch B2B SaaS
         | with 10% discount for annual plans.
        
         | ogjunkyard wrote:
         | I thought the same thing.
         | 
         | Current major players in the market I'm going after offer their
         | products/services for free, and niche players offer their
         | products for $5/month or $20/year.
         | 
         | Charging $47+/month is a nonstarter as customers are price
         | conscious.
        
           | jerrre wrote:
           | You could also take that as a signal it's not a good market
           | to be in?
           | 
           | Depending on how easy it is to find customers, and your
           | goals/options regarding to scale of course.
        
             | ogjunkyard wrote:
             | In this case, serving the market is about scale and no-
             | touch/incredibly-low-touch sales. The companies not
             | charging anything are making money on the backend through
             | data, analytics, and sale of information to 3rd parties.
             | There's definitely money to be made, it just depends on who
             | you are asking for that money from.
        
           | ezekg wrote:
           | Honest question -- are you trying to build a sustainable
           | business on $20/yr per customer? That sounds very ...
           | challenging.
        
             | thih9 wrote:
             | Could you elaborate?
             | 
             | It seems to me that $20/year could be a good lowest tier
             | price, especially for products targeting individual
             | customers (as opposed to businesses). There are successful
             | solo founder projects in that range (notably pinboard.in,
             | $22/year).
        
               | ogjunkyard wrote:
               | For sure, I agree with this take. My goal is to build a
               | small, lean company that serves one particular market and
               | expand over time.
        
             | ogjunkyard wrote:
             | The company operating on the $20/year model offers a very
             | specific feature-product and that's basically the only
             | thing they do. My goal is to have that be one of the
             | features my company offers eventually and do this with a
             | handful of complimentary feature-companies to build
             | something more robust over time, the idea being that I
             | charge something like $10+/month for a set of "premium
             | features".
        
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