[HN Gopher] The New American Micro-SaaS Dream
___________________________________________________________________
The New American Micro-SaaS Dream
Author : raunometsa
Score : 145 points
Date : 2022-07-04 11:00 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (microfounder.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (microfounder.com)
| zurtri wrote:
| I run a SaaS.
|
| The value of the business is not necessarily in the code (any
| decent coding team could recreate the software bar a bunch of
| edge cases in a few months), but moreso in the relationships I
| have in the industry I'm in.
|
| These relationships can't be copied or stolen readily. And if
| someone was out to steal them - I'd see them coming.
| DLA wrote:
| Agree. Relational capital is durable and could even be a form
| of pretty strong moat. What industry / type SaaS do you run?
| muhaaa wrote:
| I built 7 products until I had a product with product market fit
| with decent revenue. I could not solve the marketing / ads riddle
| yet. But I have about 25% revenue growth per month starting from
| a low level. Now I am making a 8th app. I started while I was
| working as an employee. Obviously I made more money. now I have
| way more time and flexibility which is a massive gain of freedom
| plus any potential revenue growth. Basically I exchanged
| employment risk with business risk which is fine for me.
| moneywoes wrote:
| How did you find your just buyers? Signed someone looking to do
| the same
| kory wrote:
| This is something I'm excited about, as I have the time &
| interest.
|
| One concern I have though, is coming up with an idea I'm
| passionate about enough to run with.
|
| Where are these business ideas found? A Ubiquiti host is great
| one, for example.
| encoderer wrote:
| You don't always need passion about the subject matter. I was
| not "passionate" about cron jobs but I needed some tooling,
| built Cronitor, and now I never have to work for somebody else,
| which is something I CAN get passionate about.
| kory wrote:
| Perhaps I mean more of, "convinced this is an idea that could
| potentially be a commercial product" rather than "passionate"
| raunometsa wrote:
| But I think you're right in your first comment about being
| passionate about the idea! The thing is, you don't get a
| salary from day one or maybe even year one (as compared to,
| for example, to building a VC-funded startup or working
| somewhere) and so you need to find the energy and
| motivation from something else, and "passion" fits very
| well with this "something else."
|
| As I recently wrote in one of the latest newsletters
| (you'll find it on MicroFounder, called "keep going"):
|
| "It can be easy to abandon your project as soon as you
| launch and don't see instant results - be it visitors or
| paying customers - but I've been looking closely how
| microfounders build their startups for the last 3+ years
| and I've almost never seen a real overnight success."
| encoderer wrote:
| You don't need passion you just need a real problem to
| solve.
| kjksf wrote:
| https://30x500.com/academy/ is a course that provides a
| systematic way of looking for a viable idea.
|
| Google for "sales safari amy hoy" and you'll find many
| summaries like https://egghead.io/learn/30x500/sales-safari
|
| And it really boils down to: keep your eyes open when you're
| reading forums / mailing lists / discord etc. Pay attention to
| what people complain about, what they say they need or want.
| And then create products that address that.
| tothrowaway wrote:
| Go to indiehackers.com and find out what profitable businesses
| people have created. Make a competitor. The profit margins in
| SaaS are phenomenal so there is always room for new entrants.
|
| You can throw some keywords into the Google Keyword Planner
| tool, and see what people are searching for. Or just run a
| normal google search for "tools for <industry>" and see what
| pops up.
|
| Don't be discouraged by competitors. Their existence basically
| pre-validates the market for you. Just make sure you can
| differentiate yourself somehow (usually, on price because your
| product will be less feature rich initially).
|
| And I'll throw this in without any kind of justification: don't
| make a SaaS for other developers, or lawyers.
| zelag wrote:
| I'm curious: why not for lawyers?
| jay3ss wrote:
| I know a business owner who doesn't like to do work for
| lawyers. The justification is that they're more capable of
| suing him (based on his previous experience)
| moneywoes wrote:
| For customer acquisition do you think it's all inbound
| content writing? Any other ideas?
| nine_k wrote:
| Look at what non-tech people are struggling with. Think about
| ways to make their life easier with the tech you know, at a
| small expense.
|
| This takes hanging out with non-tech people, or at least
| reading what they write, or what others write about them.
| oldstrangers wrote:
| I'm happy with my $7k MRR. I'm like a micro-micro founder.
| ezekiel11 wrote:
| little do they tell you about the product-market fit lottery and
| how hard it is to win a bagger. i worked on one saas for years
| that yielded nothing. i worked on another that took literally a
| few weeks to make and somehow its gaining traction.
|
| i literally did nothing different. sometimes i ponder whether
| capitalism really is the result of dice rolling and the
| participant thinks they have greater influence than they really
| do.
| seibelj wrote:
| Capitalism is about channeling all of the energy, resources,
| and effort of the most ambitious people into trying to solve
| other people's problems. You win if you solve other people's
| problems with some excellent combination of quality and price.
|
| The most ambitious people used to be conquerors, trying to
| force humanity into subjugation to rule as much as possible.
|
| Now, the most ambitious people do everything they can to solve
| problems, as that is how you gain the most resources and
| personal wealth.
|
| The end result is the capitalists that win, win big. But to me
| this is far superior than the alternative.
|
| The "dice rolling" process you feel is random can be studied
| and optimized to increase your chances of success, either with
| better targeting or with more dice rolls. This is the product
| development process and the risk involved is why creators of
| successful businesses deserve huge rewards.
| ezekiel11 wrote:
| Even before you get to solve other people's problems, its a
| competition to even get noticed and that you exist. Literally
| every advice you hear on SaaS growth, has an implicit
| understanding that you are past the inflexion point of
| product-market fit.
|
| Again I compare it to something like poker tournament. In the
| beginning you are trying to build enough chips to get ahead
| the pack, there are lot of failures, risks are unknown
| seibelj wrote:
| Marketing - which is making the market aware you exist - is
| a fundamental element of business. Even those that do "no
| marketing" _have_ to do some sort of marketing, it just
| isn't the advertising sort.
|
| There is all manner of marketing possible at all price
| points. Just hitting up your network is marketing. I have
| successfully sold products by having people answer
| questions all day every day to the long tail of Reddit
| comments in honest ways explaining how our product solves
| their problem.
| ezekiel11 wrote:
| True true. I'm a bit jaded after being gaslit into
| spending thousands of dollars on ad networks, one of
| which convinced me to hand over a few dollars _per click_
| that resulted in a bad time. I guess this is my fault,
| not realizing it was unsustainable.
|
| then I moved on to "content marketing" and "selling
| before you have a product" and I also struggled. Spending
| hours and $$$ on content that nobody even read or saw.
| Without a product I could not even get past "do you have
| a demo".
|
| This road is full of pitfalls, false promises and
| outright gambling at times. I wish I had the resources I
| have now to spray and pray (try everything and see what
| sticks literally).
|
| I wish I could just hire somebody like you hire coders.
| The difficulty comes from not knowing if this marketer is
| just blowing hot air or know what they are doing.
| Obviously, past performance helps but I find it a lot
| easier to find coders vs sales & marketing ppl.
| seibelj wrote:
| No 2 businesses are alike, no 2 industries are alike, no
| 2 consumer profiles are alike. There is no silver bullet
| to solving this problem. One thing I have noticed is you
| really need to understand the buyer deeply - this is most
| easy if you yourself want this product, but failing that,
| studying your buyer as much as possible. When you really
| get into the head of the buyer you may figure out a
| channel to sell that is un-obvious.
|
| Marketing is an art - truth be told, all of business is
| an art, which is why expertise is valued so highly. The
| moment something becomes commoditized is the moment you
| no longer need experts and the solutions are widespread.
|
| If you are bootstrapping, I think it's easiest to
| actually have a bare-minimum product first. This is a
| risk - you need to put the time and effort into building
| something to sell. If you yourself are not an engineer,
| then it becomes even harder.
|
| If you aren't going to bootstrap, then you need to have
| connections. At this point in my career if I chose to
| start a new company in the area where I am well-known and
| successful, raising a few million dollars for a seed
| round would be easy. But this is after more than a decade
| of building contacts, reputation, and so on - if I was
| just starting out, that would be impossible.
|
| Starting a new, successful business is a puzzle. If it
| was easy, it wouldn't be rewarding. Good luck!
| ezekiel11 wrote:
| very nicely put. at different stages of the poker
| tournament (time), chips (funds), cards (strategy), your
| behavior and options drastically differ.
|
| and I think back to your point about knowing the buyer
| being critical. there is also a huge barrier/cost to
| acquiring that information in some spaces, and often you
| can get false signals from your potential buyers.
|
| As engineers than the best products we create is the one
| we solve for ourselves. My strength is not in cold
| calling/reaching out to ppl on linkedin/customer
| development interviews. It's intuition.
|
| but does it affect the outcome, does having a stronger
| intuition and your discipline to follow it result in a
| successful outcome compared to when you don't? I think
| the question is then what comes first, luck or intuition?
| seibelj wrote:
| Another option if you are the technical talent is to find
| someone you trust to partner with on the business side. I
| highly recommend partnering with someone you have worked
| with before to ensure you can get along with them, but
| failing that, someone with reputation - they have had
| true success in the past and have people who can vouch
| for them.
| kjksf wrote:
| Your world view is contradictory.
|
| Is success mostly luck? Or is it mostly skill?
|
| You repeatedly state that it's mostly luck. A poker
| tournament.
|
| At the same time you believe some marketers are better
| than others and want to hire the good ones.
|
| So it must be mostly skill. But you said business success
| is luck. Hire random people as marketers, random people
| as programmers. It doesn't matter if they have skill
| since it's all luck anyway.
| ezekiel11 wrote:
| It need not be mutually exclusive. For instance, poker
| tournament isn't quite like a game of roulettes, there is
| skill involved, and there is luck involved.
|
| At any given time, the proportion of skill/luck can
| wildly fluctuate and is not know until a result is
| observed.
|
| so while I recognize I need skilled people to increase my
| probability, I am cognizant also of the uncertainty or
| luck factor.
| moneywoes wrote:
| Hey I feel like I'm on ending on this path as an engineer
| would love to email some questions and have a convo if
| possible. Email in my bio
| achillesheels wrote:
| You did do something different. There were two different
| applications correct? One had more urgency as a solution than
| the other. Why was that?
| muhaaa wrote:
| Product market fit is a game of probability. Just throw enough
| stuff against the wall and see what sticks. Then improve.
| [deleted]
| Icathian wrote:
| I think you're probably right, by and large. The trick, then,
| is to get as many rolls of the dice as is possible, and to
| recognize as early as possible whether you've won or lost. If
| you've lost, cut your losses and roll again, if you've won
| double down and cling on for dear life.
|
| While simple, this is not an easy call to make, I imagine.
| ezekiel11 wrote:
| which makes me think back to somebody saying how poker
| tournaments are a mini version of our free market democracy.
| As you win more chips, you stand to win even more chips
| because your incremental risk is a lot less expensive than
| somebody on their last few blinds. Someone with very few
| chips cannot afford to experiment, has to choose a hand with
| the highest rate of probability, and even then they can still
| fail!
| BlargMcLarg wrote:
| Worse, since society becomes reliant on big players, their
| risk is further lowered by the fact they "can't possibly
| fail or it would be a disaster". At that point it's more
| like every big player gets an extra card they can choose to
| use.
| [deleted]
| nine_k wrote:
| Markets may stay irrational longer that you can whatever.
|
| To me markets look like evolution processes: there's definitely
| a vector towards better efficiency, better "fitness", but the
| trajectory is more like a random walk than a targeted shot.
|
| With that, markets fail, but all highly-planned regimes have
| historically failed even worse.
|
| What I take from this is that one should not emotionally invest
| in a business, and not make a serious business out of things
| that one has emotionally invested in. Be curious, try things
| and see if they work. Many of the best-looking of them won't;
| some of the sillies of them will.
| stakkur wrote:
| I'm far less interested in 'ARR' or 'MRR' than I am 'how long
| will this actually sustain?' And for this sort of stuff, the
| answer is nearly always "several months, or maybe a few years, or
| until Corporation X spends a month adding it as a feature to
| their app".
|
| It's really just one notch above the drop-shipping 'dream'.
| mattlondon wrote:
| Yeah I had the same thought.
|
| But there is something to be said for making a bunch of money
| for a short amount of time and have enough to be buying your
| house outright. That will set you up for an easier life in the
| future where you do not need to be a "wage slave" just so you
| can keep up with the monthly rent or mortgage payments.
|
| Having a guaranteed roof over your head whatever happens (even
| if you can only afford candles and basic pasta to eat) frees
| you up a lot. I guess in America it probably doesn't help much
| since you might need medical treatment one day so you'll need
| several hundred thousand dollars in reserve for day to day
| medical expenses, but anywhere else in the world you could live
| quite happily on the odd small contracting job here and there
| if you know you have zero housing costs (or close to zero when
| considering maintenance and taxes etc)
| Axsuul wrote:
| Why would you need to have several hundred thousand dollars
| in reserve if you can just get health insurance?
| mattlondon wrote:
| As I understand it, US health insurance often just entirely
| nopes-out and tries to find any possible excuse not to
| cover your illness.
|
| And even if they do cover you, from what I understand you
| still need to actually pay some percentage of the hugely
| inflated costs yourself.
|
| I have a cousin in Florida who was charged $700 for some
| cortisone cream, but "good news" they only had to pay 20%
| because their insurance covered it! That is still $140 for
| something that in the UK is approx PS2/$3 (three) (e.g.
| https://www.expresschemist.co.uk/hydrocortisone-
| cream.html), assuming you need to pay at all (many people
| get these things entirely free, and if not it will be at
| some fixed peppercorn price regardless of what the drugs
| actually are).
|
| If basic skin creams are 700 bucks, I can't imagine what
| actual treatment costs. You'll want to keep a significant
| buffer of cash in case you are unfortunately sick one day,
| otherwise if you cannot pay your medical bills then I
| presume they will declare you bankrupt and force you to
| sell your house to pay the bills. The last thing you want
| if you have a heart attack or cancer is that your kids now
| also don't have a home as well as you not being there to
| support them etc. To me it feels irresponsible to just
| trust that insurance will cover you when in reality there
| is a not insignificant risk that you will not be covered
| and instead have some huge bill arrive one day that you
| cannot pay.
| jcadam wrote:
| Ideally Corporation X would buy you out and you would be the
| one adding it as a feature to their app.
| brundolf wrote:
| That's the dream, but I'm always skeptical about how easily it
| replicates. We see the success stories, but we don't see the
| thousands of people who tried and failed to get anything to take
| off at all
| ronyfadel wrote:
| This gold rush started -at least for my generation- with the App
| Store.
|
| The reach of the internet is so great that even simple ideas are
| still raking in thousands of dollars per month.
|
| I remember sitting at a dinner table with new acquaintances, and
| my -now ex- girlfriend saying it's baffling how seemingly simple
| apps [1] even make _any_ money. They were making twice her
| monthly salary at the time :D
|
| [1] https://fadel.io/
| ec109685 wrote:
| I got to 2k a month for a max sound recording program of mine
| back in late nineties with a shareware model, so it's been
| possible for a while (and that was a lot of money for a college
| kid).
|
| Started with AOL downloads in the beginning
| ackbar03 wrote:
| I don't think apps make anywhere near that much money now
| unless I'm mistaken
| raunometsa wrote:
| Philip is making $10k+ per month with Session
| (https://www.stayinsession.com) but I see apps very rarely on
| MicroFounder... mostly SaaS
| pc86 wrote:
| Personally when I think of apps I think of one-time
| purchases. Good on him for finding 2k+ people willing to
| pay $5/mo for a pomodoro timer but this seems much closer
| to SaaS than app to me.
| cercatrova wrote:
| Hence the title, micro-SaaS
| ronyfadel wrote:
| You're mistaken. If you'd like to estimate how much apps are
| making, check https://app.sensortower.com/ (it's pretty
| accurate), you're going to be very surprised with the number
| of apps making > $5k/month.
| opheliate wrote:
| I'm surprised to see this on the front-page. It really doesn't
| seem to have much substance, just aspiration-porn driving sales
| of their product. I was hoping to read about how to get started,
| pitfalls to watch out for, etc.
| BackBlast wrote:
| You get started by sharpening your tools and learning about how
| business works.
|
| For me, it was mostly podcasts on commutes and physical chores.
| I listened to podcasts about web development, JavaScript,
| backend, data flows, infrastructure. I built small systems that
| used this understanding, cementing it in my brain with the pros
| and cons of approaches where the rubber meets the road. Then I
| listened to podcasts about small business, particular
| successful SaaS companies, marketing, sales approaches,
| management, hiring and all the ingredients that made them
| successful. Side benefit of this exploratory research is that
| it makes you very valuable in the market.
|
| Find a need, think of how to serve that need, judge its
| longevity, quality, and value. Then you put your now sharp
| tools to work. Idea evaluation is a good skill, and required.
| You need to be brutally rational about the ideas. Emotional
| attachment helps drive your motivation to work on it, but it
| won't magically make customers appear.
|
| Then you try to execute. Good execution is the hardest part,
| and you give yourself the best shot by head down improvements
| in your skills. For software, your first goal is to produce
| something that serves the need and can acquire a few paying
| customers. The less "other stuff" involved the better, just
| serve the need. Once you have paying customers leverage their
| feedback to grow the product and pick the best direction to
| feel out where the market for it really is. Non-paying feedback
| is much worse than someone else with skin in the game, paying
| customers are key.
|
| It's a lot more blood and sweat than the article seems to point
| out. I like bootstrapping, but it means long evenings and
| weekends unless you have a sizable nest egg for a runway. Or
| better if you can afford to work only part-time and can find an
| accommodating position.
|
| Be ready to fail the first few times and try again. 2-3
| significant failures under your belt is pretty normal for a
| successful SaaS bootstrapper.
|
| If you have the stomach and drive for it. Then you to can reach
| this definition of success.
|
| There are tons of small underserved markets that would provide
| nicely for an individual or small team.
| robocat wrote:
| Have you created a profitable SaaS, or are you are responding
| hypothetically on how to do it based on what you have learned
| from others?
| 0xCAP wrote:
| Mind sharing the mentioned podcasts?
| Pandabob wrote:
| not op, but here's a bunch of bootstrapper podcasts:
|
| * Startups for the rest of us
|
| * Art of product
|
| * Out of Beta
|
| * Indiehackers
|
| * Software Social
|
| * Build your SaaS
|
| The guy doing Startups for the rest of us, Rob Walling,
| also runs a bootstrapper conference called Microcof that I
| recommend checking out.
| BackBlast wrote:
| The SaaS podcast https://saasclub.io/saas-podcast/
| JavaScript Jabber
|
| I flitted around a bunch of others always looking for
| quality hosts and topics. I didn't like most of those I
| found with signal-to-noise too low. There were others, but
| I can't recall them off the top of my head. I didn't really
| maintain a list.
| philmcc wrote:
| Jason Cohen is one of my favorite people speaking in this
| space.
|
| Here's a great, actionable, talk he did at the equally
| informative Rob Walling's conference.
|
| https://youtu.be/otbnC2zE2rw
|
| (I have followed this advice, and it has brought me a level of
| success and comfort I didn't know I could have, as an
| admittedly run of the mill developer)
| robocat wrote:
| Wow - that is some very high quality information about
| bootstrapping. And I co-founded a profitable SaaS!
|
| Caveat: when someone talented explains things, there is a lot
| of "it's obvious" (to them) and they can easily explain why
| it is obvious, and it all sounds convincingly obvious
| (successful founders often are very convincing -
| correlation). However the details of how he learnt his
| opinions and the details really really are not obvious unless
| you have the right talents, or perhaps if you can develop the
| right skills (where it is only rarely obvious how to learn
| them well).
|
| Aside: I _loath_ the term micro-SaaS - especially when
| applied to a business with "$1,000,000 ARR" - but even the
| spelling is crappy. What does micro imply? Jason mentions at
| the start he prefers the word "self-funded" which I really
| like (presumably the title of the video uses "bootstrapped"
| because that's more common?).
| tommoor wrote:
| Ah, well for that you need to buy the book ;)
| 88913527 wrote:
| The concept could be quite appealing to people who do a tour
| around a few tech companies and then are ready to de-accelerate
| in their career. Maybe they want to coast FIRE but still have
| income and do something with their time. Previously, these used
| to be called lifestyle businesses.
| notpachet wrote:
| > de-accelerate
|
| You can just say "decelerate".
| lolinder wrote:
| Unless what they meant is "stop accelerating quite so much"
| and not "slow down".
| leephillips wrote:
| That's what I meant.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| Both are examples of deceleration, but in the latter
| case, the vector is in a different direction.
|
| [edit] Apparently I'm wrong. All the definitions of
| deceleration I can find are actually negative
| acceleration.
| leephillips wrote:
| It's not the same. To decelerate is to have d^2c/dt^2 < 0
| (where c is the career measure). To de-accelerate is to
| reduce d^2c/dt^2 while d^2c/dt^2 remains > 0 (in other
| words, to make d^3/dt^3 < 0).
| t_mann wrote:
| It's strange, it seems more like someone built the minimum
| number of sentences around a few tweets to make it seem like a
| story. If that's the work of an AI, then I'm impressed,
| otherwise I'm baffled.
| CosmicShadow wrote:
| A go-nowhere article with a lofty click-bait title aimed at
| promoting the site it sits on using survivorship bias examples to
| prove what he's promoting works. I guess that's one way to grow,
| but still.
|
| It's just called being an entrepreneur and starting a business
| without getting funding. You get to choose how big or small you
| want to get it and you realize that you don't have to make it
| big, you can live a comfortable lifestyle if you want to.
|
| The little problems are learning how to entrepreneur
| successfully, have the money and energy to do so, and getting
| lucky enough to find the right idea, right market, right timing
| with the right messaging.
|
| It all seems so easy when you see someone making a boring, bland,
| basic ass tool collecting $1MM ARR, but you can't just easily do
| the same. It's possible, but good luck.
|
| You also learn that you don't have to sell a recurring service or
| even software at all, you can just sell "stuff" and people will
| buy it if there is a desire.
| DLA wrote:
| I'll take the counterpoint; I loved it. The article was by no
| means a HOWTO but rather an inspiration to what can be done by
| solo devs or very small teams without institutional money.
| There is far worse so-called click bait our there.
|
| Re: "survivorship bias" fair point, but all winning businesses
| and the end state returns of VC funds are all survivorship
| driven - losing entities drop out of history and fund returns,
| and in ugly cases the public stock markets too. The twitter
| feeds of many of the companies listed are very much building in
| the open and the ones that fail are in that sample set.
|
| It was interesting to me the types of businesses that are
| making money (in this list)--several Twitter audience growth
| tools, a few tools related to social media content, etc. Very
| marketing tool heavy list, but a few B2B plays in there too.
| jollybean wrote:
| I loathe to say this, but it might not be good for the economy
| because it fails to take into consideration division of labour.
|
| A 'niche product' is usually be more economically better provided
| by a slightly more generic product, or a 'product feature' at by
| BigCo or SME.
|
| Of course there are always going to be 'hyper niches' with very,
| specific and applied technology, but I don't feel this is the
| case.
|
| I think most of these micro saas just have customers that 'like
| them' and 'pay a certain amount' 'because' and not really fully
| taking into consideration the added complexity, cost, overhead,
| resiliency.
|
| In China, they have hugely complex manufacturing supply chains -
| yes - you need the little 'mom and pop shops' to provide that
| hyper niche component - but with generic SaaS it's not the case
| really.
|
| All of that said, the theory falters a bit when you have A) Big
| Corps and SMEs that languish and fail to provide features, or
| have monopoly pricing power (though the later is not usually the
| case, usually the price is near $0) and B) Surpluses are not
| shared aka if we all used BigCo and SME SaaS, they'd 'keep' all
| the surpluses and so everyone else is resigned to working at
| Starbucks. The $1M SaaS is basically a way to leverage power
| extract some surplus at the cost of overall efficiency.
|
| Again, legitimately hyper-niche solutions notwithstanding.
|
| I don't know what the answer is, but it's worth contemplating
| what this means structurally. At least it's not completely vapid
| 'Social Influencing' and scammy value destroying Crypto/NFTs.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| This is a perfect example of a different sort of analysis
| paralysis.
|
| Forget the economy. If you want to build something, build it.
| Worry about your impact on the economy when you're worth a few
| billion $$$. IOW - you'll never have to worry about it.
| moneywoes wrote:
| If I got this right, you're suggesting that bigger companies
| can cannibalize all of the sales for smaller cos and there's no
| reason for a micro SaaS to exist?
|
| If that's the case what type of company is worth considering
| for someone like with a poor background like myself to escape
| the rat race?
| jollybean wrote:
| I'm not saying they 'should' rather, it's likely more
| efficient in most cases.
|
| For 'individual contributors' the best thing is likely
| 'highly skilled things' that cannot be scaled via automation,
| best example Doctor or Dentist.
|
| Or businesses that are inherently local i.e.
| contractor/construction.
|
| There should theoretically be 'space' a the long tail for
| niche providers of goods as well (i.e. Shopify Store) but for
| SaaS it's a bit doubtful.
|
| Also, theoretically, the efficiency in tech should roll into
| higher tax revenue and public services ... but that's not
| likely the case sadly.
|
| In reality, there might be plenty of room for overlapping,
| small time SaaS makers to exist, even though there might be a
| ton of duplication and inefficiency in the market.
| moneywoes wrote:
| R.E the Shopify example, would building a Shopify App Store
| app not be viable or would it just be inevitable for a
| bigger software org to copy what you're doing and sell.
|
| What are your thoughts on indie hacker?
| aliswe wrote:
| I built a CMS in Dot Net core completely built and integrated
| into entity framework. i was super excited, the UI admin
| interface mimicked gits workflow, instantly diffing anything you
| type. supports complex properties, enumerables, nested forms.
|
| it was "almost done".
|
| but I came to the conclusion and insight that I should be
| enjoying the journey as much as the end goal, and as such I
| stopped development.
|
| for now.
| davepeck wrote:
| I got lucky and built a Micro-SaaS that grew to a healthy ARR.
|
| At least, I assume I got lucky. I've only done this once. Twice?
| I have yet to attempt.
|
| I remember the early days of painful uncertainty and minuscule
| MRR before I really understood my market. Could I break through
| that "fog of startup" a second time?
|
| Whether you're on the venture treadmill or your aspirations are
| smaller (but every bit as valid, IMHO), building a great business
| -- solving a real and pressing problem, communicating that
| solution to the right people at the right time, and capturing
| some of the value created -- well, it's never easy.
|
| I appreciate the aspirational tone of the article, but I don't
| feel that it captures... any of this? To me, anyway, it feels
| important to at least acknowledge that much of the work is
| unglamorous grind whose outcome is always in doubt.
| lumost wrote:
| Curious what if any funding models would have helped you
| achieve this outcome? I suspect although I could be wrong, that
| a small amount of venture capital prices at a reasonable SMB
| rate would enable many more successful small SaaS firms.
|
| It's a shame that in software we must always "go big" or go
| home. Particularly when much of the world runs on broken or
| nonexistent software.
| siliconc0w wrote:
| I tell myself that eventually I'll quit my job and 'micro-found'
| something simple that generates enough income that, combined with
| investments, will be sufficient. I've built a fair share of demos
| for ideas but it's hard to take them to a full product. Very few
| ideas I have seem good for this model (niche, executable w/ a
| small team) and the barriers to entry for software businesses
| have gone up considerably - it's hard to be a 'generalist' since
| the popular tooling is now built for specialists and the tech has
| gotten considerably more complicated, mostly due to evolving
| standards, customer expectations, and security requirements.
| jeanlucas wrote:
| I don't know, it is hard for me to just say "go with it", maybe
| I'm getting old.
|
| Businesses like this are a dream, but it's also a risk. To me
| seems like the next goldrush, and those mining and rushing to the
| gold are usually the ones to lose as well.
|
| I feel anxious and not sure if I want to support such movement.
|
| There's a second thought: I don't think paying 10/15 small SaaS
| each with their own instability, billing issues, risks. Imagine
| running just an ecommerce like this [0]. This is not the future I
| want to see for internet businesses. You shouldn't need a
| plethora of small suppliers to just run a blog with payments. Or
| most things.
|
| Isn't it fragile to a platform to just take it all?
|
| I feel conflicted.
|
| [0]: Interesting comment from an e-commerce entrepreneur -
| https://twitter.com/benedictevans/status/1543740260265361408
| k__ wrote:
| True.
|
| On the other hand, there are small companies that have their
| niche and nobody bothers to steal them customers.
| jeanlucas wrote:
| Hope so, I think their biggest risk is just being so niche
| that won't have enough clients to sustain the founders
| ambition and they will give up halfway.
|
| It's hard to put your faith on a product you don't know will
| exist in 2 years.
| pedalpete wrote:
| I actually think micro-SaaS is an oasis.
|
| There are hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people
| building small businesses to leverage a tiny opportunity in the
| market. Build a feature that no major player has captured yet.
|
| This is good for the user for a time. But then they end up with a
| ton of tiny subscriptions, and trying to link them together to
| make a complete product. All these tiny companies competing for
| eyeballs, to get the marketing to be recognized on top of the
| other tiny companies building similar tools.
|
| And what's the goal of almost all of these little tools? To make
| a small difference in the efficiency of somebody running their
| business. Minor efficiencies, not game changers for the most
| part.
|
| Then one of the big players comes in and adds the feature to
| their main product. Poof, everything somebody worked long and
| hard for disappears.
|
| Niche to find what you can build that's larger, but I think
| staying niche as a goal is a challenge.
| Jistern wrote:
| >> I actually think micro-SaaS is an oasis.
|
| Did you mean "mirage" instead of "oasis"?
| leephillips wrote:
| Now it makes sense.
| Jistern wrote:
| Yeah. I agree. I often tend confuse the terms "mirage" and
| "oasis" in my own mind. After all, they are both things one
| might perceive in a hot desert, although the first is not
| real; whereas, the second is real.
| asciiresort wrote:
| > Then one of the big players comes in and adds the feature to
| their main product.
|
| You can also position yourself to be an acquisition target.
| samtho wrote:
| I don't think the goal is to be totally sustainable
| indefinitely, if I ran a micro-SaaS product, I would fully
| expect a bigger player to add that feature one day. The goal,
| IMO seems to be to get something working and generating ARR
| with as little overhead as possible. If you can make $100k/yr
| with 4 hours per week of work, that's a huge win even if it
| doesn't last forever.
|
| You can still work a 9-to-5 and enjoy the benefits those come
| with as well as having supplemental income. Because you're
| still in a career as a employee at this stage, a big player
| coming to eat your lunch isn't going to be financial ruin, only
| a lifestyle change if applicable.
|
| The bigger goal (for me at least) is to get enough cash in an
| index fund where the money you need each month is exceeded by
| monthly gains of your investment portfolio.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| I'm going to play devil's advocate and suggest that there are
| many potential customers who can't afford the "main product"
| but will do fine with just a few features of it at a
| significantly lower cost that a smaller business can provide.
|
| It's entirely possible to make a living from crumbs as long as
| there are enough of them.
| rmbyrro wrote:
| > Then one of the big players comes in and adds the feature to
| their main product. Poof, everything somebody worked long and
| hard for disappears.
|
| It depends a lot on how you market yourself.
|
| Basecamp is a good - admittedly cliche, though - example. Now
| they have Hey. It's an email client for $100/yr. And they
| continue to make millions, despite sharing the market with
| giants.
|
| The reason people use their services is not only because of the
| features. They also build a relationship.
|
| One doesn't stay married because there's no other potential
| partner around with _better features_. It 's because there's a
| deeper relationship, a bond. Might be stretching now?
| Perhaps...
| Jistern wrote:
| > Then one of the big players comes in and adds the feature
| to their main product. Poof, everything somebody worked long
| and hard for disappears.
|
| There's a lot of wisdom in the statement above, but you also
| have a point... which I think you went much too far with.
|
| Basecamp is not a relationship; it's a brand, but it's much
| weaker than, say, Apple, Ferrari, Nike, etc.
|
| See, Basecamp was what all the kool kidz were using. And the
| Basecamp founders were soooo koooool! They even wrote a book!
| Oh yeah, and they used "the hot new technology" red choo-choo
| trains, er, uh, I mean Ruby on Rails.
|
| Hey, if people can feel passionately about sugar-flavored
| water with bubbles in it, they can feel passionately about
| software... I guess.
|
| Buuuuut the inherent problem is this: you can show off your
| Apple, Ferrari, Nike, etc. to your friends and to the
| girls/women you want to impress.
|
| Basecamp, not so much. Basecamp seems like a dying brand to
| me. I don't see why anyone would begin using Basecamp these
| days because it's waaaaay overpriced.
|
| But for a 40 year old who started using it 18 years ago,
| sure, he might have enough money, nostalgia, and, well,
| laziness, to keep using it.
|
| I doubt Basecamp has many users under the age of 30, and
| probably never will. And I doubt it has many new users. At
| the end of the day most software doesn't have a social aspect
| to it; these days I assume Basecamp essentially is seen as a
| commodity (like a pillow case) by most people, even those who
| use it. Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube are
| outliers which are extremely popular and have network
| effects.
| semireg wrote:
| This is a strange amplification, for sure. But so is every other
| success story.
|
| I've had two successes that were only tangentially connected. The
| first was consulting, then building my own app, now I'm entering
| selling hardware.
|
| I went from building industrial BLE sensor apps for $/hr, to
| selling licenses for a niche electron app (talking to hardware,
| label printers), and soon I'll be selling physical hardware
| (label printers) bundled with my app.
|
| Each success let me bootstrap the next. I'm still solo, and plan
| to grow to 7-figures over the next 18 months. Buckle up!
|
| You can read a bit more about the label printing solution I've
| built at https://sourceforge.net/articles/qa-with-label-live-how-
| we-m...
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