Hi IHs, I'm really curious to know in general if companies trust indie hackers saas products especially that they will upload their company data for example for a productivity tool or for analytics ...
and also while talking to your users, should you talk as a business or as a developers who owns the product.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts, this will help many members of the community.
My product: https://simpleboard.io
I built https://simpleboard.io to let people have a bird view of the company/team and what is going on, like project updates, who is working from the office / home, deadline ... to bring clarity to all the team members instead of chaos most teams are facing .
by letting everyone to upload mini reports instead of keeping manually insert time reports like with traditional apps
One thing to remember is that “companies” don’t trust anything or anyone because “companies” don’t make decisions, people do. Therefore the trick is making another human trust you and I think that indie hackers even have an advantage in that regard. Especially if you can talk directly to someone and present your size as a strength.
In my experience, being an indie hacker (or micro saas / startup) is not necessarily a barrier to companies uploading their data. Obviously it does depend on the nature of the data.
However, it is a lot harder for solo founders / small companies to convince companies to trust you. Especially if you have no track record. It is not impossible though. If what you offer them has clear value, then it puts you on the right track. You will likely have to work long and hard to build trust with them. Even then, you may find you have a champion for your product, but you can't get anywhere because it is vetoed by their management. In short, it is tough!
You'll need to do what you can to de-risk it for them. For example, you must answer questions such as:
When talking to users, you just want to try to resonate with them. Developers can be the most sceptical / hardest to convince, so if you can come across as "one-of-them" this really helps!
An advantage of being solo / small is that you can offer a more personalised service. This can be a huge win for you when you are trying to build trust, because it can be a competitive advantage which de-risks the decision.
Like I say, it is tough. It can take a year or more, and many many meetings to build the trust with the customers. I found that getting in front of them and meeting them face-to-face does help a lot in building trust.
thank you for sharing your knowledge.
The larger the company less likely to trust just starting IH SaaS products. You can mitigate this by personal relationship and traditional sales techniques, strongly discounted pilots etc. But generally you have to show some traction and stability before you can board mid/large clients.