How do you organize your start up? And which tools do you use?
Hello fellow Indie Hacker,
I am planning on building my first SaaS product. My idea is not finalized yet but I wanna build a project management app specifically designed for the needs of Entrepreneurs and Freelancers.
What I don't like about PM Apps like Asana or Trello is, that you create the tasks but you still have no idea if your time management is accurate to finish the task till due.
I am curious if you have similar issues? So please let me know if you use any kind of PM app and what are your pain points with these apps and project management in general?
Also what are features that you truly wish would exist in your perfect project management app?
I am excited for your answers!
Stay awesome,
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We used Pivotal Tracker for many years in our company and really loved its simplicity for project management.
But after it was announced that Pivotal would be shut down, we couldn’t find any replacement that felt the same — so we ended up developing our own tool, LiteTracker. It keeps the same straightforward, no-frills approach that made Pivotal so good, while being simple for teams who just want to focus on their work instead of managing the tool.
If you’re curious, you can take a look at LiteTracker - Agile project management — would be great to hear how it resonates with you since you’ve been exploring similar challenges.
I think for the vast majority of startups & founders I meet nowadays, Notion is the standard.
Purely because a lot of tasks involved in startups goes beyond just task tracking & time management — there's documentation, writing up strategy, tracking qualitative data, meeting notes, etc.
Notion is the best when it comes to collaboration, and I haven't found any alternatives that are as easy to use.
I agree @eric_travel! Notion is an incredible tool. I use it to summarize my uni lectures and plan my start up process.
In my mind my tool focuses more on helping you get things done using different time management strategies and also planning the tasks that you have in your schedule.
I really appreciate your input, I think you gave me some interesting things to consider! When it comes to finishing tasks and also goals and your start up milestones in time, is there something that could help you with that besides notion?
There are too many project management applications, and there are many giants, including clikup, which has recently become popular. I admire your courage, but this field is indeed a huge competition. Maybe it will be easier for you to enter from a very vertical field.
I completely agree with this. It's not a solved problem by any stretch, but with the number of players and the billions of $ spent in the space already, I think the problem is too difficult to create a "one size fits" all app.
Like CRMs, you are usually best, finding one that has the main pain points sorted and then accepting that the only solution is customisation and add on's to get you as close to perfect as possible.
Sounds like a tough one for your first entry into IH life.
@don_achilles, @richbenny Thank you both for your honest feedback!
I have to say that this thread helped me a lot and I reflected myself the past couple of days. I think you guys are right. My initial plan was to build a completely new product but after reading all these valuable comments I think if I wanna start in pm niche its better to build an extension to an existing tool, like Notion or ClickUp.
Would love to hear your opinions on that! Would you say there are also too many add ons and integrations out there?
Thank you in advance!
We have tried countless products merged together between Trello/Jira (tasks), Hubspot (CRM) and Aha (PM) yet eventually just moved everything to Notion. Everything including business operations, marketing, asset store (themes, icons, logos), sales (CRM), client success, project management, product documentation and development tracking is managed inter-connectively in Notion.
Takes a while to get use to structuring the databases to fit how your business needs yet when you get over the learning curve it is worth it!
I have use Wrike, Azure Dev Ops, Atlassian, GitHub and Jira Enterprise as larger organizations but none can compete for the price, flexibility and all-in-one solution for a smaller organization.
One downside is the formatting copying and pasting out of Notion if you using for rich text messages such as email.
This is my story too. I've moved everything to notion a few years ago now and never looked back. Took a while to get it right, but since then I've even done that in my day jobs too i.e. like as Head of Product coming in to a company and moving as much of their stuff into notion as possible. I actually caught up with that company recently (I left around 4 months back) and they explicitly mentioned how grateful they were that I'd moved them to Notion haha.
The copying and pasting thing I've noticed a few people have mentioned, I've not been too bothered by that actually, but I can see how it would get annoying.
60 people, 7 countries and we use Notion for everything especially project management. Totally happy with that. Very personalized for our state of development.
We spend time to design the database and the relationship between them, maximize the view and formula feature. Since last year, we leverage their API to deeply connect with others product that we can't replace by Notion to close the loop (like Slack, Form to collect external feedback,...)
@theAprilBuilder Thats really interesting to hear! I realize that I haven't had Notion on my radar. I used for my uni stuff but didn't know that it is so powerful!
When you use Notion, is there something that you miss about it or that you wish would exist?
I can say it's flexible enough to let us define any custom workflow.
Maybe one thing I expect to have is the ability to limit who can edit some specific field to setup the approval process or signoff flow.
Nice love this question. Quick high-level tips on organization:
Hold short, constructive meetings — give reporters on routine matters that last no more than 20 minutes. Concisely document items on Slack, Notion, whatever.
Employee handbook — gake it concise and accessible. Hit the relevant organizational items that are critical to everyone.
Write down your top priorities — make sure everyone knows the Northstar.
Thank you @codetoski for the great input!
I wrote this post about management tools a while back — maybe it'll help. Just found this one too, which is specifically about timeline management tools.
We use linear app for Awesomic.io
Notion is the best!
Well, In terms of organization, I use Notion for almost everything.
@devarifhossain Its crazy how many of IH are using Notion. Was not aware of this!
Already mentioned in here, but Notion is the best we've played around with. We pretty much run our entire business off of it
Same 😍
You must think about everything in great detail for your project to be successful because the slightest miscalculation can lead to failure. Also, during the development of a startup, I do not recommend that you save money on purchasing applications and software. When I opened my print shop, I spent a lot of time choosing software. I believe that any business needs to be automated. But I managed to find https://wye.com/print/; it's a great software for print shops.
I and my team have been using Notion and it's been great!
Mostly Notion - As a founder, you will have to manage your time while working on a lot of tasks.
I'm a fan of monday.com. Completely customizable but works well right out of the box too. Solid UX. And covers all my bases.
You can set up a Gantt chart to plan task timelines against your overall timeline. I think it also has a tool that measures how quickly you're getting through tasks against how much time you have left to see if you're moving quickly enough — not 100% sure of that.
As far as features that I wish PM tools included, I'd like them to take some work off my plate. Like follow up with people who haven't responded, or who haven't commit code in a while, etc.
If you are building your SaaS product it means that you code, therefore probably the easiest solution is to use GitHub issues and organize them into Github Projects.
In this way, you have it all in one place, easy to manage and close to your code. I have been using Jiira and many other different tools for my clients, but this setup is the easiest to work with. Final point is that is very similar to open source projects :)
I use emacs for
etc.
This is my first year of journey as an entrepreneur.
let me tell my story regarding why we kill our Saas Idea
one year ago.
My-partner and I have an idea to build a CRM
first we create Business Model Canvas (BMC) to mapping our USP ( unique selling preposition)
then we met with some developers company to discuss some features and how to build features like in our BMC, they said anything our plan they has capabilities to build like what we want.
then we met and conduct small market research with our primary target market to discuss their pain point, especially their experience use some CRM.
then we found, we shouldn't continue this idea.
my suggestion, please meet with your target market and use this framework
Javelin Board method to validate your idea.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-5Iyj9A1MU
Thank you
Btw we're using Click-Up as our project management platform
Hey @christmantoro, thank you for your valuable input! In the past I also used to be like the typical developer: Build first, find product market fit afterwards.
I've realized that its important to first talk to oyur target group. This helps you understand their pain points way better!
The problem is that there are so many different apps and project information is stored across all of them. Different teams in mid-market companies and beyond use different apps for project data, making the problem a whole lot worse!
I think you better off creating a plugin for existing solution than building your own from scratch.
Would you use terrible product management product with only your kick ass feature (likely your first MVP)? Or do you prefer super flexible and great tool without your feature (all existing product management tools)?
I think most would choose the latter. Which means you have to build a great foundation first before you can market your special feature.
@meznaricnet 100% agree! This post really helped to refine my idea.
Before I posted I wanted to create my own pm software. Now I realized that it's way better to improve existing solution. This comes with the great advantage, that people don't have to switch from product where they might already be locked in.
One of the challenges of being a solopreneur is that there are many different things to do and because of that is really hard to prioritize. To help with that I have created a guide to help makers to better organize their startups and to increase their chances of success. I hope it helps
I use emacs org-mode for product development / todos and Wobaka as CRM to keep track of customers, contacts, follow ups and do email outreach. I write changelogs in a Ghost based blog and keep track of changes using git. That's pretty much it.
Perfect project management for me is making it easy to re-organize things. As the old saying: plans are useless, planning is essential.
disclaimer: I'm also the founder of Wobaka :)
As a product manager, I’d stay away from building project management apps if your goal is to build a business.
Its one of the most overcrowded markets there is… second maybe to note-taking apps.
Market yourself as a freelance software engineer to small-to-mid size companies that can automate any task for them as a small project with a one-time fee. The fee enables you to establish willingness to pay. They don’t need to pay you a lot, or even market rate, but they do need to pay you.
Then, go to another company just like the first one and offer to do the same thing. Rinse and repeat, and soon enough you’ll have enough customers for your SaaS. The difference between this strategy and your current strategy is that you are targeting companies, not roles.
@prattcmp, Really appreciate your thoughts! Through this post I realized that building a completely new pm software is not the best idea. Right now I refined my idea to the point where I wanna build a software that improves existing pm software.
Because you as a PM, would be in my target audience, what is your opinion on a tool that helps you keep track of the workload of your team and schedules the work for them?
The benefits would be that your team gets more work done, you help to prevent unnecessary stress and high workloads which increases your teams productivity and it will help you analyse if projects can be achieved in time?
If not, why wouldn't you be interested? Also if you feel comfortable I appreciate i you would share your team size, because the tool would be more effective for teams >10 members.
Thank you in advance!
Azure and Slack. I believe these 2 are good.
I replaced slack with Teams :)
What kind of personal experience/troubles have you had with this space?
I have used ClickUp and also tried few similar before that. But every time I feel like most of the tools seem pretty tough for the first time. My suggestion for your upcoming PM tool is to make it easy to understand and less time consuming to manage things.
at this stage of your project, do not worry or care about time management.
focus solely on velocity and momentum.
you will know how long things are taking / will take based solely on your involvement every day and being in the weeds (the app won't do that).
all you need is a place to track all the tasks (features/bugs) your come up with. some version of status = Started, Progress, Test, Complete
that's it, after that it's all fluff that does more harm than good when starting out.
@ChrisBertulli I definetly agree with you! Action is the most important part of the start up.
My goal of this post was to understand the pain points and desires in pm more. I think you helped me a lot with your comment. I haven't thought about that but when you just start out PM might not be the key focus.
I think I will continue to refine my idea, to provide a real value for my users.
If you are interested how my idea turns out, feel free to follow my Newsletter where I will post monthly updates on my start-up process!
This is the link: https://sendfox.com/maximilianmuhlenberg :)
I haven't seen it mentioned yet here, so I thought I would also comment - I use Azure Devops for task management (https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/devops/) - it has great support for estimation, time tracking, and resource planning. It also has a very powerful query tool for generating custom reports - very useful for weekly/monthly/yearly client summaries...etc.
However, I do think there is a gap in the market for a end-to-end solution. Briefing in new work, estimating, quoting, invoicing, up-selling...etc.
@pandabridge Azure is a really great tool, I use it at my part time job :)
Can you specifiy what you mean by end-to-end solution?
Excited to hear from you!
I split my time between freelance software development, and being a wantrepreneur! When I say end-to-end, I'm referring to the freelance aspect of my work. At the moment I have to juggle multiple systems to track requirements and estimates, send quotes to clients, track progress and time spent against projects, storing project assets (code/documents/media...etc) and sending one-off or recurring invoices. It would be great if there was a tool that did all of the above.
Hope that helps.
Thats really interesting. I will definetly keep your thoughts in mind when building the product!
We use ClickUp.com for tasks, documents, roadmaps, etc. - while it's a bit complicated from first sight, it's extremely flexible.
I saw the tool during my research, it looks really great @vaclavhodek !
What do you like especially about ClickUp and do you know some things that would make your life easier when it comes to project management that ClickUP does not have?
Would love to hear your thoughts!
It's extremely flexible, and it supports almost everything - documents, tasks (with custom fields, statuses, etc.), recurrent tasks, sprints, time management (from estimations to time tracking), mind maps, email integration, trello-like boards, maps, automation, integrations (e.g., Github) and so much more. It has great notifications. And it even has simple reminders, so you don't need to use the full tasks. It really keeps our company running from development to marketing.
It took us a bit of time to adapt to ClickUp and to adapt ClickUp to our workflow, but there is nothing we would miss so much that we would consider switching to another tool. We even use their API to automate complex actions for our non-technical colleagues.
In fact, I wouldn't write another PM software as the market is too crowded and there are great existing options.
First, go and explore ClickUp; use it extensively for different situations. Don't try to do things your exact way but rather try to find if you can solve it with existing tools. Not because you should always adapt, but because your way of doing things may not be the optimal one.
@vaclavhodek Thank you for your honest feedback! I think what you say about the pm niche is true, lots of products. You sparked the idea in me to maybe transition from building a completely new product to build something that integrates existings tolls and make the day-to-day work with existing tools better!
Thanks a lot!
It's not something common for solo entrepreneurs and small companies to pay for consulting services, but it would be maybe better to understand such a tool deeply and provide paid support to companies that are struggling with their workflow.
At fortressa.com we are using a combination of Taiga + Obsidian.
I'm the one in charge of project management and it's working pretty well at the moment.
You need to be very tidy and cleanliness is important but Obisidian is great!
Just checked them out, really interesting software @lc_fd
Do you feel like there is something that these softwares need to improve, or what are your pain points? Especially related to pm and time management?
Maybe my product can solve some issues for you :)
At the moment the only "difficulty" is keeping everything coordinated.
We are happy at the moment, also because we are only two.
Maybe Taiga is overkill too, we could do it all with Obsidian and some plugins.
I needed a tool that would divide the time into sprints and measure the sprint points.
@lc_fd Thats really interesting, for me it feels like an important pain point for people is the time management issue.
I think for my start-up I will build something that automatically schedules the tasks for people and plans them, maybe in your calendar.
My current idea would look like this: You create tasks in your PM software and set a time estimate.
My product will then automatically plan the tasks in your calendar, so that you know when to do which task, to achieve your goal in time.
Is this something you would be using for your work/Business?
I appreciate your thoughts and opinion on that :)
Like all projects that are starting, ours is also complicated to standardize.
Putting things on the calendar is not 100% a solution that solves everything. We already do it but the difficulty is knowing that the plans will not be respected and the same to arrive at the result.
I really want to see what you can build.
When you have something in your hands I will be happy to look at it!
We use Jira + tempo plugin in my startup, it started to work fine when I hired our first project manager :)
Nice @artkulak! I've worked with Jira in my first Internship. I feel like it's the Mercedes Benz of PM Tools :)
Even when it's working fine, do you have any pain points with the project management? Especially with scheduling your Jira task and getting done evrything in time?
Best, Max
Yes, as always we have some tasks that don't fit into the sprint but we don't have a way to know this beforehand. It would be nice to estimate the capacity of the team for each project and derive recommendations for tasks to take into the sprint. I think it is possible to estimate based on story points done during the past sprints
@artkulak Yes, something like this is in my mind when I build my product. A PM tool that lets you create tasks but also helps you plan them and fit them into your schedule, so that you never have to worry about not finishing your tasks in time.
If you are interested, I would appreciate if you join my newsletter. My plan is to build the product in the upcoming months and give my readers monthly updates on important learnings and my strategy for launch and marketing.
This is the link to my newsletter: https://sendfox.com/maximilianmuhlenberg
I use Notion to organize my checklists, timeline, partnership deals, marketing plans, etc.
Great @MRR-scaler! It seems like a lot of indie hackers use Notion for their PM.
Do you have something that still bothers you about Notion or project management in general?
Best, Max
Damn sorry for my late reply. Cool question, but instead of broadening the frame into project management, I think you could have first asked:
"What are the top 2 tasks you find Notion most useful for?"
"Are there tasks all centred around building SparrowStartup.com? Or do you use Notion for other parts of your life as well?"
And then:
"For these 2 tasks, do you see a better way of doing them? Are you able to track and hit your goals as you expect to?"
--
To answer your Q, not really. I'm pretty happy with Notion because:
For era.sh we are currently using Youtrack by Jetbrains. It's a bit better than Trello, but I'm still not satisfied. If I would have no project at the moment, a PM app for for Entrepreneurs and Freelancer would be on my mind. I struggle so much with that.
For everything better than the existing solutions I'd be thankful!
Hey @ERAAlex, thanks for your thoughts!
Btw I checked out your service and have to admit: Your website is fire! Really cool minimalistic design!
It's really motivating to hear that other people are also struggling with this!
Right now I launched a Newsletter where I document my process of building my Project Management software.
If you are interested, I would appreciate if you join! :)
This is the link: https://sendfox.com/maximilianmuhlenberg
I will post monthly updates on the process and share my struggles and experiences with the process. Also everyone who joins will get an inexpensive Life Time Deal at launch :)
Thanks for the nice words.
There are so many pain points in a developers life. If we all build solutions, and improve existing ones - it will be less and less pain.
I think on of the biggest pain points are, that everyone tries to create "all-in-one"-solutions. If you try to cover too much at once - you always will sacrifice some UX - which leads to more pain and struggle.
Thanks for sharing that - I just signed up and will follow your journey. Hopefully I can use your tool one day.
Schöne Grüße nach Heidelberg.
Cheers,
Alex
Thank you a lot Alex!
I appreciate your support. I will start next week with my first email.
Btw Schöne Grüße zurück nach Wien :D
Best, Max
Hi there.
I'd admit that both Asana and Trello are quite good solutions for project management and task organization.
If speaking about pain points and the most important features for such tools, it'd be definitely a work breakdown structure https://blog.ganttpro.com/en/how-to-create-a-work-breakdown-structure-wbs-with-project-planning-templates/ (WBS).
This structure is essential for any project management tool because it provides a clear, hierarchical decomposition of a project's scope into manageable sections. It helps project managers and teams visualize projects in smaller, more manageable parts, facilitating better planning, resource allocation, and scheduling. It ensures all necessary tasks are identified and assigned, reducing the risk of overlooking critical components. Additionally, it serves as a foundation for cost estimation and progress tracking, contributing to more effective project control and successful completion.
🚀🏄🏻♂️👀
I think you need in personal CRM for you. Not Trello, because it's solution for team.
For example https://ordemio.com - personal crm for your contact list from dif channels...
Currently using Notion for devaviary.com. But recent frustration (copy-pasting just plain doesn’t work, not enough scripting abilities & customisation) has led me to try out Coda and now I’m considering migrating to Coda instead! So far loving Coda’s customisation & inline scripting abilities.
Can you be a bit more specifics? Just curious. Notion has a rest api allowing you to do pretty much everything.
We are just about to start work on a couple of notion integrations for our project and I wonder if Coda could save us from coding.
I’m referring to in-app scripting abilities, e.g. script & customise a button, formatting the table, having formulas outside a database, etc. Not Notion’s REST api. Sorry for the confusion 😅
What sort of integration are you working on?
You should look Producter (producter.co) 🏄🏻♂️🚀
no time management issue. I am a master of time.
anyone have time management issue, I recommend read up on pmbok guide book: https://www.pmi.org/pmbok-guide-standards/foundational/pmbok
You need some high level plans, some work breakdown structure (wbs), then you just need to have good lists. If you want additional formal training, software engineering classes that goes through architecture design document, software design document, etc will help you understand how to divide and conquer. Once you practice these enough, then you'll do fine.
I think tldr; the time management is something that can be trained and needs to be embedded within ourselves than having a tool there. Tool can only get you so far.
I tested ClickUp and Asana last week, although they were good project management apps, they weren't for me. Currently using Milanote for their startup hub templates. Their visuals are great for brainstorming and concepts. I upgraded my account and what's great about it is the team you invite to edit, share, or view your board, only requires a free account.
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