100 Mistakes I made bootstrapping my first SaaS to $550K ARR.
I spent the last 4-5 years bootstrapping my very first SaaS business to $550K ARR and these are the 100 mistakes I made. This is a manifesto on everything NOT TO DO while growing your own SaaS business. I'm not smarter than you, I just got lucky and worked hard. You can too.
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This feels like it's supposed to be a blog post, not an ebook.
I expected the same!
Wouild it be possibble to post the sample section from the book?
Mistake #35
“I put design over utility.”
When I was building AccelerList early on, the user interface was so embarrassingly simple. It looked like version .0001. But when I released it, people liked it and used it. I had a good combination of a simple UI, the right price point, and product-market fit. Over time, however, I lost those principles of simplicity.
As I grew our revenue, I thought v2 and v3 needed to be fancier. I wasted thousands of dollars window dressing the application with no upside in revenue. What we thought we're improvements were considered unnecessary distractions by our customers.
Action: Respect simplicity and utility over design whenever you build features. Workflows should be able to be crafted at the grade school level. Users want simple, and so should you.
Nice example.
bite?
Congrats on the launch Travis! Have been following your updates on Twitter ;)
I run failory.com, where we frequently post about failures and mistakes made by startups and entrepreneurs. Would be happy to collaborate on something if you're intrested.
Also, it'd be amazing if you openly shared how do the pre-sales and launch go!
Thanks man! Yup, I'm creating a follow up video series as well as to how I created this lengthy eBook without losing my mind!
:-(
Mistake #35
“I put design over utility.”
When I was building AccelerList early on, the user interface was so embarrassingly simple. It looked like version .0001. But when I released it, people liked it and used it. I had a good combination of a simple UI, the right price point, and product-market fit. Over time, however, I lost those principles of simplicity.
As I grew our revenue, I thought v2 and v3 needed to be fancier. I wasted thousands of dollars window dressing the application with no upside in revenue. What we thought we're improvements were considered unnecessary distractions by our customers.
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Action: Respect simplicity and utility over design whenever you build features. Workflows should be able to be crafted at the grade school level. Users want simple, and so should you.
Based on this sample excerpt, I wouldn't buy the ebook.
I wish you the best of luck though.
lol, I'm not going to give the juiciest mistakes I made as a free sample. Folks will happily pay $20 this week for 2 starbucks but not knowledge to help them grow form someone that has done it already. 💪🏼🤔
Any "teaser" to check before buying?
Just posted Mistake #35 :-)
cool :)
550K ARR is NOT 550K MRR, but a good start.
Good luck!
$550K MRR would be NICE!
This comment was deleted 5 years ago.
Thanks! Fixed it!!