⚙️ Recap: How To Saas
“I only know IT and the other niches i have interest in are not making any money” or “Why i have to sell a product first, i still don’t understand” and “I stopped my Saas instantly, it’s a B2C that no one has interest in but i thought execution will bring results..”
These are some parts of the collected feedback.
What i understood is that there is little to no information about startups. A lot of these IT dudes start in the Startup hustle without understanding what a Saas is. A lot of them just forget the business aspect of this.
If you did the How To Saas serie, give us feedback so we can grow.
If you didn’t, don’t forget to read the first part.
Trending on Indie Hackers
I really enjoyed the first episode and I subscribed to your newsletter but I never received a copy of "How to Rob" :C
Check your spam folder. If you didn't find the welcome e-mail, write me here or respond to any email you received from me and i will send it to you.
By the way, SaaS has two lower a and two upper case S.
Thanks
I have an idea but i need lead generation and no code development learning material. I like the serie but i think no one will appreciate the offer unless you do the whole serie. I was sceptical first but i learned a lot.
Thanks, yes its really hard to push into doing stuff, you can only inform them and using their motivations they will follow through
I have to admit that i didnt knew how to "properly" Saas and i obviously am still working on it, there is a lot of things that i started looking into because of your review and am expecting some more specific contents that we can discuss Or read about
Happy to help sir, Thanks for the feedback
I loved the bootcamp the most,
I’d like to see more content about finding ideas
Rob’s content is pretty good too, especially the microconf from jason cohen and others ..
I love the series, please write about finding ideas!
We will, we will roast saas ideas too just to give u a feeling of what works and what not.
I love the how to saas series, i never thought about audience or channels before, i like rob’s content a lot. I have a lot of suggestions about topics that i want you to go into. Overall many many thanks
Hey, Thanks a lot :)
I appreciate the feedback. We will post more and provide more content from our experience.
Oh man, there is so much information out there on how to build a tech company. Most people are lazy and expect everything to be served to them. I have been meeting these types of founders since 2004. They always complain about their failures, instead of doing something about it.
When I failed my first tech startup in 2006 and lost all my savings and more, I decided to build Manchester's tech startup ecosystem, as there was none at the time. I ran over 100 tech startup centric events and brought everyone together from 2006 to 2013.
SaaS is not about "At least 500$ MRR in 6 months, xxx", it's about creating a product and a business around it that is offered through subscriptions and allows anyone to trial (optional), subscribe and start using it without much of human interaction, unless it's enterprise SaaS.
Whether it takes 6 months or more to get off the ground is irrelevant.
Building a business takes so much effort - you are right, it's naive of everyone to think they can become a successful business person. However, there is nothing to stop anyone from becoming successful - success and failure depends on many factors.
To help solo founders and self-funded tech startups, I created https://skilledup.life - free unlimited talent for tech startups. We now have nearly 20,000 SkilledUp Lifers from 104 countries.
To help tech founders, I also have a UK based trusted tech founder community https://techcelerate.ventures.
There is so much help out there. Well done in creating your newsletter. All the best
[email protected]
@ManojRanaweera, Thanks for the promo.
You don’t seem like someone that read the article or downloaded the material of the third part. Because that part alone is responding on all of the thing you put in question.
Amy Hoy’s “why you should create a tiny product first” and 37signals e-book are a strict guideline on how you achieve such things. In my How To SaaS series, i explain rob wallings point of view on what SaaS, churn, conversion rate, B2B and B2C are. Justin’s Bootcamp will give you a reality check and let you know that you are most likely in the first or second stage of the Indie Founder level up game, and amy’s will show you exactly with little steps how to grow from L1 to L2. So 500 MRR after 6 months is a pretty decent value if you followed the whole series.
So what’s the difference between “us” and other people ?
We are giving information for free because we are trying to build a network of like-minded people, this will help us grow together. If we want someone to provide information for us, we can try to give information first. “What comes around goes around”.
“They” are usually salesy people, that want to create audiences and sell e-books and CTAs to sell their courses whatever they find the place to do so. They are usually, the same persons that downvote other people in reddit/linkedin/ other social medias and hate competition, trying to catch opportunities to trash everyone else.
I read what you posted here. I was around when 37 Signals built their products. One of the reasons for their success was "timing". There was nothing much happening then in terms of product innovation. First mover advantage (with good execution) was very strong, e.g. Zendesk, MailChimp, etc. They brought products that made it very easy to use with great UI and designs.
37 Signals were a software house that built many tools. The same model was copied by many as everyone at that time got hooked on the model. Fog Creek's best tool was Trello. Zestia never even got to the second product and so on. You can detect these companies from that era. They always have a product name that is drastically different from Company name, as the intention was to build multiple tools.
The market is full of lazy tech founders. I stand by this comment. They are lazy to do sufficient research.
I was not commenting on what you offered. I was commenting on people's general laziness. That's all.
Anyway, good luck with what you are doing. Hoping to see you build a thriving business.
They built BaseCamp, sold some stuff but what they did before anybody else is that they were the first ones to sell an e-book. They say and i quote :”we don’t sell products or create companies or do consulting.. We just reduce risk for our clients” .
So yes they are still the origenator of this whole thing.
What i mean @ManojRanaweera, is that not everybody in here trying to make a 2B$ business, some of us want just to achieve financial freedom and it could be 2K MRR for some or 100k MRR for some other group.
Some of us are just simple people that wants a way out. Selling a product or creating a micro-saas could be the more reasonable solution, not the next facebook or uber.
Book on Ruby was a hit.
Yes, you are right, all of us are trying to improve our own livelihoods.
Sorry if I don't get too excited. I have been building tech startups since 2004 and have seen a lot that happens in the ecosystem, both good and bad.