[HN Gopher] Going full time on my SaaS after 13 years
___________________________________________________________________
Going full time on my SaaS after 13 years
Author : matt1
Score : 498 points
Date : 2023-01-04 15:23 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (mattmazur.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (mattmazur.com)
| intelVISA wrote:
| Nice one Matt, grats and hope it goes well!
| Brajeshwar wrote:
| Hey Matt,
|
| This is awesome. Congratulations and best of luck. I remember
| using it and we communicated (email), about your time in Iraq and
| how your built[1] Preceden. You upgraded my account while I was
| toying with few ideas and using it to plan timelines.
|
| Nice stumbling on it again there.
|
| 1. https://mattmazur.com/2016/01/04/building-a-startup-
| in-45-mi...
| matt1 wrote:
| I still have our email exchange from back in 2016 - I hope you
| were able to successfully leverage the eCommerce boom in India
| that you mentioned. Thanks for saying hey!
| squishy47 wrote:
| now that's how community engagement is done. bloody good
| marketing.
| ravivyas wrote:
| Best of luck
| andsoitis wrote:
| Congratulations!
| matt1 wrote:
| Thanks!
| noname123 wrote:
| Hi Matt, thanks for sharing. Just a proof of my staying power, I
| saw your Preceden post on HN; and paid for a license 13 years ago
| promptly your v0.1 and I am still here.
| https://i.imgur.com/ejUm3Gh.png
|
| I had bought a license purely on a whim as I was browsing HN on
| company-time. I was in 20's, bored and ambitious with no concrete
| plans and I proceeded to play on company-time in my cubicle the
| rest of the day and planned out my life plan on Preceden instead
| of working, like the timeline for when I should get my next
| promotion (maybe in 2 years for at least 10K, rite??), when I
| should buy my 1st house etc (maybe a fix upper? duplex so I can
| rent it out?), when I should get married etc (in 5 years). I
| showed my entire life plan to my co-workers whom all laughed at
| me b/c (a) I planned everything out in my life, and (b) I paid
| for a $19 license to plot out my life plan.
|
| To get to the bottom-line, I never got that promotion, am still
| renting and still haven't gotten married! So definitely you who
| got my $19 license fees and my co-workers got the last laugh!
|
| (But like you I kept on and off workin' my side-hustles since
| 2010 even when it seemed entire hopeless - which was building a
| trading bot; and like anything in life after so many false
| starts, it eventually started becoming consistent and compounded;
| and my capital gains from trading has been significantly greater
| than my W-2 as a SWE for the last 3 years. So much has changed on
| HN since 2010: crypto, Web3, new JS frameworks that pop up every
| year, unicorns; but the only thing that has paid off at least for
| me - it seems is sticking to something and showing up for it
| every day for 13 years and counting... thanks again for sharing!)
| jwmoz wrote:
| Can you talk more about your trading bot? I've also done
| something similar the last year, mainly systematic trading and
| cross-sectional system.
| matt1 wrote:
| Wow, you got on one of those $19 for life plans that I
| initially offered, that's wild!
|
| It's great to hear you got some use out of the tool and
| hopefully continue to do so. I look forward to your next life
| update in 13 years when Preceden makes the HackerNews homepage
| again :).
|
| PS for any aspiring entrepreneurs: don't offer lifetime plans,
| and definitely not for $19, lol.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| Congrats on 13 years. I started selling my (desktop) software
| in 2005 and am still going.
|
| >don't offer lifetime plans
|
| Yep! https://successfulsoftware.net/2008/09/08/should-i-give-
| free...
| rwalling wrote:
| Congrats, Matt. I've enjoyed watching your journey for the past
| decade and am very excited that you're able to go FT on Preceden.
| matt1 wrote:
| Thanks Rob! I have you, Mike, Sherry, and the Microconf
| community to thank in large part for showing me that this route
| is possible. I also have a copy of Start Small Stay Small, The
| Single Founder, and Keeping Your Sh*t Together on my bookshelf
| next to me (all highly recommended for anyone here interested
| in this approach to building a software business).
| rwalling wrote:
| Awesome!
| amalgamated_inc wrote:
| Very cool!
| tr33house wrote:
| Congratulations Matt! How did you arrive at the threshold for
| working on this full-time? Are you sharing ARR/MRR values at this
| time?
| nhance wrote:
| Could you share this information as a percentage of your
| monthly expenses?
|
| I'm pulling the trigger on this after 17 years in business and
| our ARR covered 50% of our anticipated annual expenses last
| year.
|
| We also grew by 100% last year, all while on coast with $0
| spent in marketing.
|
| The time we spend on the products, when added up over time, the
| most valuable time we spend, so we have cut expenses and plowed
| away revenue to help us make this launch this year.
|
| The goal is to meet 100% of anticipated annual expenses in net
| ARR by the end of this year and it feels very doable.
|
| After 17 years, I'm also shy to discuss details because it's
| taken dozens, if not hundreds of attempts to find something
| that worked. Started in 2005.
| matt1 wrote:
| Here's a similar thread about my decision to go full time:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34248481
|
| I'm not and don't plan to share revenue numbers. Not much
| benefit.
| md8 wrote:
| Hey, I am a leandomainsearch user. Thanks for building.
| matt1 wrote:
| You bet!
| ultrasounder wrote:
| Very inspiring! Not a hint of survivor bias.Long ramp of SAAS
| death ramp beckons!
| gossamer wrote:
| I was just looking the Preceden site today. It looks like a nice
| timeline program. Good luck!
| matt1 wrote:
| Appreciate it!
| dutchbrit wrote:
| Congratulations Matt! I love reading blog posts like this, did
| you do all the marketing yourself?
| matt1 wrote:
| Mostly, yes, though I've worked with a few contractors over the
| years to help with specific things.
|
| Preceden has been sitting at the top of page 2 for "timeline
| maker" and related terms on Google for about a decade which
| is... fun.
| soobinrho wrote:
| The moment I clicked your article and saw Preceden, I realized
| this is exactly what, I didn't know, I needed because some online
| coding competitions require you to submit a timeline.
| matt1 wrote:
| Hope it's a good fit for the competitions! You can create
| timelines with up to 10 events for free, so it should be more
| than enough for that purpose.
| username_my1 wrote:
| Hey Matt, Your product fits perfectly a feature we're building
| and we'd love to use it.
|
| But it needs to be programmatically accessible in react (js lib)
| and of course it needs to function very smoothly with large
| number of events.
|
| Good luck going full time I see a need in this exact space !
| matt1 wrote:
| There's no API at the moment to programmatically build your
| timeline, but that might be something I add down the road.
|
| Here's the relevant post on Preceden's public roadmap if you
| care to give it an upvote:
| https://roadmap.preceden.com/b/y0ge5xve/feature-ideas/api
|
| Hope it winds up being a good fit even without an API.
| username_my1 wrote:
| already upvoted it.
|
| unfortunately it won't work without the APIs because it needs
| to be part of our product and there the data is constantly
| being updated dynamically by different actors / processes .
| matt1 wrote:
| Noted - thanks for the nudge to work on it!
| jimnotgym wrote:
| Hey Matt, I can't develop cool looking apps like this.
| I'm envious.
|
| What I can tell you is that sales people at big software
| companies never say 'No it can't do that' as an initial
| conversation. They would say something like, 'I'm sure it
| _could_ do that. Let 's set up a call to get your
| requirements straight'. He might only need a subset of
| your features, and the api needed could be trivial. He
| might have a $moneyisnoobject Corp waiting to pay.
|
| I mean you are completely within your rights to push away
| non-core users if you want.... but you know when a saas
| price page has Free, Basic and Enterprise teirs, and the
| Enterprise one has 'please call' next to it? That is
| because the price for customization is too embarrassing
| for both parties to make public!
| matt1 wrote:
| Great points - thanks for suggesting that approach!
| tayloramurphy wrote:
| Very cool to see you on HN Matt!
|
| I know Matt from the data world where his SQL Style Guide[0] was
| always at odds with the one we maintained at GitLab[1]. :-D
|
| Posts like this are great to show folks just how long it can take
| to do things. I love his story and am eager to watch Preceden
| grow!
|
| [0] https://github.com/mattm/sql-style-guide [1]
| https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/business-technology/data-t...
| wdewind wrote:
| Hey Matt,
|
| Not sure if you remember me but we talked about Lean Designs many
| years back (back then it was called jMockups). Excited to this
| next step for you! Congrats and good luck!
| matt1 wrote:
| jMockups... now that's a name I haven't heard in a while! And
| one of those lesson learned: don't name products like that :).
|
| More about that tool and other lessons learned for anyone
| interested: https://mattmazur.com/2016/07/08/a-long-overdue-
| lean-designs...
| raheemm wrote:
| Matt, Thanks for writing this. I've also had a long, slow ramp up
| with my saas (8 years) and it's great to read stories/experiences
| like this.
| jacquesm wrote:
| You should consider doing a 'Show HN', it would be very nice to
| read how you got to where you are today.
| winrid wrote:
| Very inspiring! I hope to get there in a few years too!
| matt1 wrote:
| Best of luck!
| geph2021 wrote:
| congrats, and a great story. Inspiring to see you stick with it
| for so long while dealing with the competing priorities of a
| young family.
|
| If only there was a timeline tool that could easily create an
| appealing, succinct graphic of the Preceden story. ;)
| matt1 wrote:
| Missed opportunity right there :)
| agentwiggles wrote:
| This is super inspiring.
|
| I just started working on a side project that I hope can one day
| be worth something. I'm also the sole breadwinner of a household
| with 2 (soon to be 3) kids and a wife depending on me, so it's
| really inspiring to see that the dream really can happen, even if
| it takes a decade plus to realize.
|
| Even if my thing never takes off, it's a tool I've wanted for a
| long time, so I'm motivated to keep going even if it never makes
| a penny.
|
| Congratulations, wishing you lots of continued success.
| matt1 wrote:
| I should have said this in the post, but even if your startup
| doesn't take off, the skills you learn along the way are very
| valuable and will make you better at all of your future jobs.
|
| I hope things work out for you and that they don't take as long
| as they did for me :).
| agentwiggles wrote:
| Calling it a "startup" at this point feels like a wild
| exaggeration, I have a user account system and a landing page
| so far.
|
| My current goal is to dedicate the same amount of time to the
| idea that I spent playing Factorio last year (about 160 hours
| by Steam's reckoning). At the end of that I will, if nothing
| else, have learned a lot about Phoenix, which feels like a
| good bet regardless of any wild dreams of sustaining an
| income from the other.
|
| Either way though, thanks for the encouragement!
| yrgulation wrote:
| Congratulations to sticking to it for such a long time. Given
| sufficient time any startup can work. The more you know the more
| competitive you are the better the product.
| matt1 wrote:
| Thank you!
| waprin wrote:
| Congrats and thanks for sharing, as an aspiring SaaS bootstrapper
| and father there's plenty of headwinds so nice to see people
| sharing their stories piloting through them.
| matt1 wrote:
| Thanks for saying so!
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| You are a hero.
| sails wrote:
| Congrats Matt! Very cool to see.
|
| A question. I'm trying to find a tool to visualise and document
| the evolution of obscure sports (purely because I find the
| interactions fascinating). It seems that your tool might be the
| perfect fit, especially the "writing" examples. I was wondering
| if it would be possible to visualise something along the lines of
| a quasi-directed graph. Nodes being specific instances of the
| inception of a "new" sport (hence the date requirement), and
| edges being the influence on other spots. Multiple edges for each
| node are possible, and all sports will have a start date and some
| an end date. I tried[2] with a basic POC but it seems the issue
| is that the nodes run without an end date, which breaks the
| dependency visualisation.
|
| One comment. Once logged in I wasn't easily able to get back to
| the landing page, which had some useful info around visualisation
| types that I wanted to review.
|
| And a note. I've apologised to a few people who I subjected to a
| variation on your SQL screener interview question [2], which
| contained far too much fiddling with SQLite time functions,
| entirely my mistake in ruining an otherwise great basic SQL test!
|
| [1] https://www.preceden.com/timelines/868890-obscure-
| sports?s=e... [2]
| https://mattmazur.com/2018/11/12/analyzing-89-responses-to-a...
| matt1 wrote:
| Glad you found that SQL screener interview question helpful and
| sorry if the date/time manipulation made it more complex than
| it needed to be :).
|
| Regarding the visualization capabilities: I would change the
| shape of the events from a line to a solid bar. When you
| combine that with the connections (which you're already using)
| it will look more like a directed graph like you're interested
| in. End dates are optional for events, so you should be able to
| get by with or without it. Happy to discuss more over email:
| help@preceden.com. Regardless, good luck with your
| visualization, it's a fascinating use case.
| mustafabisic1 wrote:
| I love this story and I wish you all the best. It goes to show
| that everybody has their own pace and journey.
|
| I feel like a lot of people are happy in their work even without
| a side gig, but it's kind of not cool to say.
|
| I'm totally happy with my role and couldn't be happier and more
| committed to my current job.
|
| The beautiful thing is that I have my own pace as well on a side
| gig. After 10 years of thinking and planning I just started on
| one faithful day with a HN comment 23 weeks ago.
|
| Today my weekly newsletter for remote working parents has 23
| newsletter sends and over 100 subscribers (muscle)
| matt1 wrote:
| [dead]
| randall wrote:
| Awesome!! Good luck. I hope this makes you even happier and have
| a higher quality of life!
| user3939382 wrote:
| This is pretty inspiring. I had a startup and system in 2005 that
| was so ahead of its time that many of its features still haven't
| been implemented by its contemporary competitors, it's tough when
| I think about it.
| matt1 wrote:
| It's never to late to start something new. In a decade you'll
| wish you did.
| tchock23 wrote:
| LeanDomainSearch has found me so many good product/domain names
| over the years. Thank you so much for creating it, and best of
| luck to you with going full time!
| matt1 wrote:
| Kudos to Automattic and Matt Mullenweg for keeping it running
| 10 years after its acquisition!
| princevegeta89 wrote:
| Love it when I hear stories like this one. Love Microstartups at
| the same time as well. No mess no fuss, no funding drama. Good
| luck OP!
| jacquesm wrote:
| That's absolutely amazing to see you stick with it for such a
| long time to get to the point of being self supporting. Very
| nice, and heartfelt congratulations.
|
| It would be great to see a write-up of the lessons learned over
| the years, especially those early ones that limited your growth
| and also of interest would be your views around the long term
| effect of eco-system and language choices.
| matt1 wrote:
| > see a write-up of the lessons learned over the years
|
| It would make for a long blog post and no doubt one I'd have to
| continue updating, hah. I will write it at some point though,
| thanks for suggesting it.
|
| And thank you for all your thoughtful comments on HackerNews
| over its history as well as the posts on your blog. You're
| brilliant and this community is a better place because of your
| participation in it.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Blush.
|
| Looking forward to seeing that blog post and if you want a
| proofreader count me in, email in profile. For every fifty
| fly-by-night and gone again operations there is one of yours
| and those are much more valuable lessons than most.
| apurvak wrote:
| Congrats. It's very inspiring story.
| matt1 wrote:
| Appreciate it!
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| Congrats on making it, Matt.
|
| I quit my job to focus on the side hustle full-time back at the
| start of 2020 (back when we all thought it was going to be like
| any other year).
|
| The hardest and most stressful part by far was renegotiating
| boundaries with my wife. Being physically around one another _all
| the time_ , and having no set hours is a recipe for relationship
| woes. Having our first kid during the lockdowns (we're in
| Melbourne, AU) didn't help either.
|
| Almost 3 years later, life is great, but for a time there it was
| the worst it had ever been. Make sure to take the time to
| negotiate boundaries, as all problems become work problems when
| you run your own business.
| matt1 wrote:
| Appreciate the heads up here. I've been working remotely since
| I left the Air Force a decade ago so it won't be much of a
| change, though it is going to be interesting to see how my
| schedule changes now that I now don't have to juggle
| contracting anymore. Any other suggestions are welcome!
| tjkrusinski wrote:
| You love to see it. Matt is a great example of someone who has
| bootstrapped and built a strong business while mitigating risk
| for his personal life. Much of the start up dogma tells you this
| isn't possible, but it is.
| matt1 wrote:
| It's come a long way since the days of our old Orlando Tech
| meetups :)
| sasha_fishter wrote:
| Great to see success stories from SaaS. Can you just share how
| did you attract first visitors, and subscribers when you first
| launched the web?
| matt1 wrote:
| I'm not sure I'm the best person to ask about this as I was
| very naive at that point in my journey. Launching Preceden was
| literally posting on HackerNews and hoping for the best.
|
| I would encourage you to join Microconf Connect, a Slack
| community of software entrepreneurs, where topics like this are
| discussed often: https://microconf.com/connect. Many of the old
| Microconf conference presentations are also on YouTube:
| https://www.youtube.com/c/MicroConf
| ricksunny wrote:
| Good on you; We need more examples highlighted of entrepreneurs
| leading the slow-burn (in a good way) types of ventures. Not
| every business activity fits the go-big-or-go-home Zuckerberg-
| esque meteoric rise archetype that the Techcrunch-led hype media
| attracts eyeballs for portraying.
| matt1 wrote:
| +100
|
| Like I mentioned in another comment, the Microconf community is
| a fantastic resource for learning how to build this type of
| business: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34248246
| stsrki wrote:
| I did something similar with Blazorise, a personal project of
| mine, https://blazorise.com/. It started as a hobby project.
| After some time it grew too large that it took most of my time,
| not to mention the time I could spend with my wife and son.
| Things changed during the Covid when I was laid off. Then I
| started freelancing for a while, and last year I finally took a
| big step and went full-time with Blazorise. Switched to dual
| licensing, where larger enterprises must purchase a commercial
| license. It is working, and hopefully, it will continue to
| work. Or otherwise, my wife will rage on me :/
| kilroy123 wrote:
| It's tough though. I've been slow-burning on a side project for
| two years.
|
| I'm unsure if I need to be patient and keep working on it. Or
| cut my losses and put my time and effort into something else.
| sirsinsalot wrote:
| Do you enjoy it?
| RicoElectrico wrote:
| Amen.
|
| But if you ever happen to invent a product category that turns
| out to be a huge untapped market, the gatekeepers-that-be
| (Google, Facebook, Apple et al.) will try to enter it as well
| and stomp you.
|
| Even if you don't, still, they collect their rent on everything
| we do online nowadays.
| didgetmaster wrote:
| It's not just SaaS or web based products that fall into this
| category. There are plenty of applications and systems that run
| stand-alone on a disconnected computer that can add real value
| and may take many years to develop for a sole engineer.
|
| I have a data management system that I have been working on for
| many years. It is core technology that could eventually be used
| in a SaaS or web based model, but for now it runs on a single
| computer with no dependencies to the Internet (other than to
| download the beta software at https://www.Didgets.com).
|
| Many of the features (file system imports, database tables,
| quick analytics, logging framework, indexing service, etc.)
| have come about one weekend or a series of evenings at a time.
|
| Congrats to Matt for sticking with it for so long.
| Alex3917 wrote:
| > We need more examples highlighted of entrepreneurs leading
| the slow-burn (in a good way) types of ventures.
|
| There will be a lot more example of this in the coming years
| because the costs of keeping a pre-PMF webapp online have
| basically fallen to zero. Whereas when Zuckerberg started
| Facebook, if it didn't take off right away then you had no
| choice but to shut it down.
|
| When you hear VCs and other folks cast doubt on the ability of
| anything that doesn't immediately capture lightning in a bottle
| to succeed in the long term, they are incorrectly pattern
| matching to a trend from the past that just happened to be an
| artifact of the economics of that time period.
| waprin wrote:
| Yeah it's interesting reading the old pg essays where he
| says, VCs suck but they are a necessary evil. After all,
| racking reliable servers will cost at least 20k, paying a PR
| firm so that there's a chance anyone will hear about your
| site will cost at least 20k etc etc
|
| Now basically every PaaS has a free or cheap (<$50/mo) tier,
| tons of helpful tools with free or cheap tiers, you can get
| users / customers for free on social media and probably more
| effectively than traditional ads / PR coverage.
|
| It's not strictly true because some projects use GPUs for ML
| , sometimes there's some technical rot if you don't upgrade
| your stack a bit, market change could make you irrelevant etc
|
| But in general there's a lot of products that can simmer and
| slowly iterate for a long time as long as founder keeps
| chipping away as evidenced here.
| didgetmaster wrote:
| It has gotten much cheaper to host stuff, but I really
| wonder if marketing costs have fallen as well. You can
| certainly find cheap or free avenues (like HN) to tell
| people about your product, but it can be lost in the sea of
| information. Good marketing to the best subset of potential
| customers is essential in getting anything off the ground.
| That can be expensive especially if you are an engineer
| with very little marketing experience.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| My take is that marketing now can have very little out-
| of-pocket cost, but a massively increased time cost
| because you are now constantly engaging with people,
| making new posts, answering questions, exploring new
| avenues, etc.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| getting noticed by the right people cost-effectively is
| hard. Anything that makes it easier for you to get
| attention will also potentially make it easier for
| everyone else. So it will always be hard.
| Alex3917 wrote:
| > I really wonder if marketing costs have fallen as well
|
| The overall cost of building a product and getting a
| product to PMF is higher, but the main cost is time.
| That's why it can be advantageous to just work on
| something for ten years rather than going out, raising a
| bunch of money, and shutting down two years later.
| macNchz wrote:
| There was plenty of inexpensive hosting when Facebook
| launched. You could run several tiny PHP/MySQL web apps on a
| single shared hosting account for <$10/mo, and Linode had
| recently launched, offering a VPS starting at $20/mo.
|
| I recently migrated a little web app that has been online
| since before Facebook existed, away from the $5/mo shared
| hosting it had lived on since 2006.
|
| My family's dialup connection even came with free web hosting
| that ran Perl back in the 90s!
|
| http://web.archive.org/web/20040612195543/http://www.linode..
| ..
| bisRepetita wrote:
| Even back then, you did not have to grow as fast as VC made
| you think. It was a choice by Zuck to grow fast and take a
| lot of investment, he did not have to grow that fast.
|
| This is Zuck's interview in 2005 in Stanford: >So, I mean
| when you're 16 running a site and your core people are the
| kitchen table, your operating expenses are relatively low.
|
| >[...] we just kept our operating expenses low so far and by
| doing that we've been able to stay cash flow positive for
| basically the entire system's company
|
| >[...] we decided that it was ok to go a few months in cash
| flow negative while [...] like you know, using like $100,000,
| not like millions. So, um and then but, now were back. We do
| a lot of page views.
|
| See page 26: https://www.fbcoverup.com/docs/cyberhijack/2005-
| 10-26-Zucker...
| [deleted]
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| If your strategy involves needing to take advantage of
| network effects, growing as fast as possible seems like a
| requirement. It is a winner take all dynamic.
| Alex3917 wrote:
| > If your strategy involved needing to take advantage of
| network effects, growing as fast as possible seems like a
| requirement.
|
| Not necessarily. Most businesses with network effects
| (including Facebook) follow the "come for the tool, stay
| for the network" approach.
| kqr wrote:
| Right, but in any given group of people, the first people
| won't stick around to become the network unless they have
| reason to believe their network will shortly span their
| entire group -- i.e. grows fast.
| chrisweekly wrote:
| "PMF"?
| [deleted]
| jocaal wrote:
| product-market fit
| atleta wrote:
| This has been the case for over a decade. I've launched my
| first startup 11 years ago. I've used Linode and we've spent
| something like $20/month on hosting. (This has increased to
| around $80-$160 IIRC when we got funded, mostly due to the
| increased storage needs. We were a music startup and while S3
| was pretty cheap back then too, it was easier to have
| everything on Linode at first. I.e. with enough funding, time
| was more expensive than storage.)
|
| A bit more than a year later it went bust but I hoped I could
| still keep it alive, make it financially viable. I scaled
| back the infrastructure so costs would be below $30/mo again.
| jerryu wrote:
| Congratulations Matt. Would love to learn more about the
| lessons/tips you learned in the past 8 years.
|
| Is your primary reason to go full-time based on reaching a
| financial target or is it because you have more ideas for future
| now?
| matt1 wrote:
| I'll write a lessons learned post in the future, thanks for
| suggesting it.
|
| The decision to go full time now stemmed from a combination of
| factors: partly financial milestones, partly not having enough
| time in the day to focus on the things I want to work on,
| partly burnout (consulting + bootstrapping a SaaS takes a toll
| long term), partly just ready to enter a new season of my life,
| partly because I'm excited about the recent developments in AI
| want want more time to explore that space, partly because I
| think Preceden still has a ton of room for growth, just to name
| a few. For every person these factors will be different.
| stevemethiew wrote:
| [dead]
| bambax wrote:
| Congrats on going full-time!
|
| I remember using Lean Domain Search in the past and that it was
| in fact "lean" and pretty well made, super fast and easy to use.
|
| As for Preceden, how did you come up with the idea, and where do
| customers come from? That there are enough users of a tool like
| this to support you sounds amazing -- and I hope I don't sound
| dismissive: _envious_ would be a better word!
|
| Testimonials are actually pretty inspiring, but one has to scroll
| to find them; maybe a link at the top of the page would help one
| see them faster?
|
| It makes one wonder how many other functions are waiting to be
| "webified" like this.
| matt1 wrote:
| Glad you found Lean Domain Search useful!
|
| Regarding the idea for Preceden: it was a combination of seeing
| a lot of coworkers struggling to create timelines while I was
| in the Air Force plus an interest in visualizing the life
| stories of some family members.
|
| And for better or worse, that's why it's a general purpose
| timeline maker tool, not one focused just on project managers
| or just on genealogy or any of the other myriad of use cases
| people find for it. In retrospect though, I should have focused
| because it would have simplified a lot of things (copywriting,
| features, marketing, and much more).
| encoderer wrote:
| This is great to hear, congrats.
|
| I took about 6.5 years to do that same journey (and having a
| kid), and one problem I had was that the goalposts kept shifting
| on me, partly because a slowly growing side-income is easy to get
| accustomed to so even when I got to where my startup was able to
| pay me as much as my day job, it felt more like I had _doubled_
| my salary, not replaced it. Did you struggle with that at all?
| matt1 wrote:
| This was my life the last few years :D.
|
| Eventually just had to go for it and give up the extra income.
|
| It's not clear it was the best decision financially (though it
| may wind up being so), but it felt like the best decision for
| my soul, if that makes sense.
| encoderer wrote:
| Oh yeah you bet. Same here. For me, it was doubly true
| because I made the leap during the Pandemic lock-down and it
| was an enormous relief to get out of the zoom-meeting
| hellscape that my life had became. (I was a middle-manager).
|
| It is hard because I also did not ask my wife/family to take
| a big hit and instead figured I would burn through cash for
| 2-3 years while I either grew the business or, eventually,
| did something else. At the time my portfolio was doing great,
| tons of crypto gains, real wealth effect, and then basically
| 4 months after leaving my job the top was in and it's been
| nothing but declining values. Nevertheless, the business has
| grown, and as far as I can tell, in 2023, we will break even
| as a family, and then be out of this crunch. I do wish I
| could have refinanced my mortgage at 2% but nobody would
| touch me because I didn't have a regular w2 income from a
| non-affiliated company.
|
| Wish you the best man! I do have timelines in my product and
| I would pay a modest fee (maybe... 1k a year?) to license a
| library that was better than what I currently use which is
| fullcalendar
| matt1 wrote:
| Thanks for sharing and best of luck with your business's
| growth in 2023!
|
| Also, regarding FullCalendar, if you need an actual
| calendar then Preceden won't be a good fit for you. But if
| you're OK with a horizontal timeline, it might work well.
| Worth checking out IMHO.
| encoderer wrote:
| Yeah they have a timeline component that we use. It's
| nice but a bit sluggish when there are too many rows.
| rathboma wrote:
| Big congratulations! Always happy to see indies-with-kids get
| beyond ramen profitability to a sustainable income!
| matt1 wrote:
| Thanks! I read something here on HN recently about how
| representation matters: essentially that it's important that
| people are aware of what others in similar circumstances are up
| to. I hope this post finds some other long-term side-project
| solo-founder parent SaaS bootstrappers and encourages them to
| keep going.
| jordanmoconnor wrote:
| Awesome work! It takes a lot of guts to go out on your own and
| bet on yourself. I did that over two years ago and I'll never
| regret it - the amount of time I get to spend with my kids is
| incredible, and serving customers that use and love the tools you
| build is a great feeling.
| matt1 wrote:
| Thanks, I'm looking forward to the extra time with the family
| as well!
|
| And since you didn't share your startup, I'll do it for ya:
| https://closet.tools/
| jordanmoconnor wrote:
| Ha, thanks. My customers aren't here, only the people who
| will create a copycat this weekend
| matt1 wrote:
| Hopefully more than a weekend ;)
| AndrewCopeland wrote:
| Love the story! Breath of fresh air and a similar trajectory I
| would like to take for my own startup.
|
| The slow burn is real and making meaningful connections to
| customers is important for consistent revenue in the long term.
| matt1 wrote:
| Thanks! And yes, without the right SaaS metrics, it can take a
| very long time to grow to a meaningful amount of revenue. I'd
| recommend anyone interested in starting a SaaS to get familiar
| with the economics and relevant metrics before building a
| product.
| TobyTheDog123 wrote:
| Congrats!
| llIIllIIllIIl wrote:
| Congratulations! Your story is very inspiring, your product is
| amazing and i wish you best of luck. I will follow your path,
| just today got my first paying subscription purchased for my
| SaaS.
| matt1 wrote:
| Congrats to you to as well then!
| sergiotapia wrote:
| >As the sole breadwinner in our household with 4 young kids, I
| was not comfortable going full time and merely being ramen
| profitable or anything close to it.
|
| It takes a lot of balls and willpower to take this plunge. I wish
| you a lot of success and hope you make it. I'm also the sole
| breadwinner of my home and it's a lot of responsibility.
| matt1 wrote:
| Thanks! It was not an easy decision even after getting Preceden
| to where I wanted it to be financially.
| smarri wrote:
| Congratulations!
| mugraph wrote:
| Interesting looking project! Good luck with going full time.
|
| Under "Advanced Features for Power Users" it should read: "you'll
| have everything you need to create _a_ professional timeline,
| roadmap, or Gantt chart."
| matt1 wrote:
| Deploying a change to fix the typo now - thank you for pointing
| it out!
| PentelicoMarble wrote:
| A product built by an ex-soldier who was part of an occupying
| force that committed countless war crimes? No thank you.
|
| Question for other HN users - would you use a product built by an
| officer of the Russian army who was part of the war in Ukraine?
|
| Edit: Those downvoting me, did I say anything that is not true?
| MrOwnPut wrote:
| You're able to safely post that stupid comment because of
| soldiers and Pax Americana.
| PentelicoMarble wrote:
| What's stupid about it?
| MrOwnPut wrote:
| Because of the latter half of my sentence you ignored.
|
| It's easy to highroad everyone when you sit back reaping
| the benefits of what others have done.
| PentelicoMarble wrote:
| I'm not high roading anyone, I'm merely saying I prefer
| products not built by war criminals. I certainly don't
| reap any benefits from what Matt and his fellow soldiers
| did in Iraq during their illegal war, and even if I did -
| does that mean I can't talk about it?
| MrOwnPut wrote:
| Please lookup the definition of high roading.
|
| But yes, you certainly can talk about your misguided
| views! And people can call out your misguided views as
| well!
|
| All because of the 1A which is protected from outside
| forces with the strength of the US military.
|
| Soldiers have little to do with policies such as the
| endless Middle East wars.
|
| Your moral crusade should be aimed at the defense
| contractors and their congress buddies.
|
| It's not the soldiers choosing proxy wars in Ukraine or
| the Middle East, it's congress.
| jimnotgym wrote:
| Soldiers sent to war are not automatically war criminals,
| whether or not the war was legitimate. Your blanket
| statement suggests that a mechanic, chef, or nurse who
| was sent to Iraq was a war criminal. You are just wrong.
|
| I think you calling someone a war criminal is way outside
| of what is legitimate on this forum.
| [deleted]
| hasmolo wrote:
| I don't think blaming the individual soldier is ever a fair
| choice. Most folks in the army aren't there by first or even
| second choice. the amount of pro military military people is
| shockingly low.
|
| to say it another way:
|
| veterans should never be ashamed they are veterans, the
| government and voters should be ashamed they're creating
| veterans.
| TobyTheDog123 wrote:
| The dream of the 90's is alive in Portland - The tattoo ink
| never runs dry
| atleta wrote:
| I didn't downvote you but I think equating the Russian attack
| on Ukraine with the American war on Iraq is probably what
| earned you the downvotes. Especially because you seem to equate
| the too based on the extent and number of war crimes.
| Committing war crimes seems to be the norm, even an expectation
| in the Russian army. These also seem being denied and never
| investigated while they are pretty well documented. This
| doesn't seem to be the case with the US army. (Yes, they did
| happen, but they seem to happen at a much lower rate, more
| isolated cases and some of them actually get investigated
| officially and the perpetrators get sentenced.)
|
| And then let's not forget that the American war in Iraq (and
| Afghanistan) has been ironically labelled as "democracy export"
| for a reason. Yes, it didn't work, yes it was probably a bad
| idea from the start, but at least it wasn't "autocracy export".
| Which the war on Ukraine _is_. The goal of the Russian
| leadership (read: Putin) has been to remove the democratically
| elected Ukrainian leadership and install a puppet government.
| This is a bit harder to support than the US narrative of
| toppling a dictatorship and help the people to start a
| democracy. (Again, even if the latter was doomed to fail.)
|
| Sure, the Russian soldiers and society were also sold a nice
| (horror) story about the Ukrainian leadership (or maybe
| Ukrainians in general) being 'nazi'. You can hear in some
| captured phone calls from the early days of the war that the
| soldiers try to explain to their relatives that there are no
| 'nazis' there just normal people.
|
| On I side note, I would use a product built by a Russian
| soldier who participated in the war if he made it clear that he
| didn't want to participate and didn't commit (or maybe even
| opposed/prevented committing) war crimes.
| bsaul wrote:
| Didn't downvote you, but i assume that yes, most people here
| are able to understand that human life is complex, and that we
| should congratulate people whenever they're doing something
| good.
|
| Most people are, fortunately, also able to distinguish between
| a soldier, his army policy, and the regime ruling over that
| army at a given time.
| PentelicoMarble wrote:
| I disagree that we should congratulate anyone whenever they
| do something good, no matter what they did in the past.
|
| Would you blindly congratulate a participant in the Bucha
| massacre on the launch of their new app?
|
| Would you congratulate a former ISIS member?
|
| Surely even the most amoral person on HN would draw the line
| somewhere?
| jimnotgym wrote:
| Was a soldier who was posted to Iraq morally inferior to a
| colleague who didn't get posted?
|
| I mean, neither was her choice? Soldiers go where they are
| sent.
|
| Or do you think people shouldn't join the armed forces of a
| country in case a future regime deploys them in a way they
| disagree with?
| stevoski wrote:
| Matt, this is simply an awesome story. It's surprisingly common
| that people take years to get to the point where they can go
| full-time.
|
| I find your story far more relatable than the "I started a SaaS
| and reached tons of revenue in one year - and you can too!"
| stories we are plagued with.
| matwood wrote:
| It sounds a lot like many (most?) small/medium companies that
| take a decade of work to find their footing. You typically
| don't see them on the front page of HN though.
| matt1 wrote:
| Thanks for saying so! And yes, for every bootstrapped startup
| that sees a rocket ship trajectory and makes headlines, there
| are probably 100 that are struggling to grow. Would love to
| read more about those journeys.
| shostack wrote:
| How has the recent Google Sheets timeline feature release
| impacted you?
|
| https://workspaceupdates.googleblog.com/2022/11/timeline-vie...
| tarunkotia wrote:
| Hey Matt,
|
| Firstly, congratulations! This is very inspiring and I love the
| pragmatic approach to starting a startup. You wrote about
| converting to a contractor with Help Scout from being a full-time
| employee. How did it help you free-up your time?
| matt1 wrote:
| Initially my intent was to go from full time employee to a ~16
| hours/week contractor so I could spend the rest of my time on
| Preceden, but I wound up also picking up contracting work with
| my former employer (Automattic) and found myself working 30+
| hours/week contracting. So much for focusing on Preceden.
|
| Eventually I stopped contracting at Automattic and gradually
| reduced my hours at Help Scout until it made sense for me to go
| full time on Preceden. I'm fortunate both Help Scout and
| Automattic were open to me contracting as it made this
| transition much easier than it would have been otherwise.
| hoten wrote:
| I'm curious about how you juggled entrepreneurship and active
| deployment. Were there any interesting challenges, or did you
| ever meet someone doing similar things? Did you feel the need to
| hide what you were doing from your CO?
| matt1 wrote:
| You may have seen the old post about that experience, but
| here's a link in case not:
| https://mattmazur.com/2016/01/04/building-a-startup-in-45-mi...
|
| I never hid the fact I was working on side businesses, but also
| didn't go out of my way to tell coworkers. Don't think my CO's
| knew about it. I knew a few other officers who had side
| businesses, though not in the software space.
| mikkelenzo wrote:
| Great to see this!
| drewda wrote:
| This looks like a very nicely polished marketing website and SaaS
| product. If the creator would be open to sharing, I'd be curious
| to hear more about whether he's engaged contractors or firms to
| help with specific types of design over the years. Any lessons
| learned on that front?
|
| I know there are many services that claim they'll sell you a
| "custom" logo for $100 or whatever... but assembling a nicely
| polished marketing site and product that look good together
| usually isn't as simple as that.
| matt1 wrote:
| My design skills are alright (see the 2019 screenshot in the
| post), but it took hiring a designer a few years ago to take it
| to the next level (see the site today). I found him on Tailwind
| Discord and have been very fortunate to work with him.
|
| In retrospect I should have found someone much sooner given how
| important aesthetics are for a visualization tool like
| Preceden.
| drewda wrote:
| Makes sense. Would you be able to share a bit more about how
| you started off with the designer?
|
| (Background: I'm asking because our SaaS business is at a
| point where we know it's ready for more polish for both
| marketing site and web app, but are unclear how much we
| should budget and whether we should go "all in" by hiring a
| designer who takes everything as far as CSS, or start with a
| couple targeted improvements that would be lower risk/budget
| first.)
| matt1 wrote:
| I was lucky to find someone who can both design well and
| implement the changes in the codebase (using Tailwind CSS
| which I'd highly recommend). You can obviously have two
| separate people (one to design, one to implement), but if
| you can find someone who can do both it will simplify
| things.
|
| For Preceden, we kind of just went page by page converting
| the old design over to Tailwind, making improvements along
| the way, and gradually ripping out all of the old CSS that
| had accumulated over a decade of me working on it. As I
| built out new features he would help with the design, but
| he spent the majority of his time improving the existing
| design.
| drewda wrote:
| It sounds like selecting Tailwind helped to make clear
| the specific skills you were looking to hire for and at
| what level you'd be working together. Good to know.
| Thanks for sharing.
| lukko wrote:
| That's brilliant, well done. Also, I have been looking for a
| better tool to make GANTT charts!
| matt1 wrote:
| Hope Preceden is a good fit! It doesn't have all the bells and
| whistles as other Gantt chart tools, but that's exactly why a
| lot of people like it.
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