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r/SaaS - Top Weekly Reddit

Software As a Service Companies — The Future Of Tech Businesses. Subreddit for discussions and useful links for SaaS owners, online business owners

December 18, 2024  20:23:43

I’m 25. Still young, still figuring stuff out, but I know one thing for sure: I’m not about to live a life someone else designed for me. I look around and see friends and family stuck in a world they built for themselves. They hate their alarms, hate every extra minute at work, and spend their weeks just counting down to Friday so they can hit a bar and drink away the stress.

And yet, somehow, they feel the need to tell me how to live. “Get a stable job” they say. “Send your résumé to some soul-sucking company with windowless offices”. But why the hell would I do that? Why would I sign up for a life they obviously hate?

Whoa, whoa, slow down, take your hands off that keyboard! Don’t go typing out some snarky comment just yet. Let me explain. No, I’m not some spoiled rich kid. No, I don’t have a trust fund or some wealthy uncle hooking me up. I pay my own way. I know what it’s like to grind, to make sacrifices. I get that nothing in this world comes for free.

But here’s the thing I can’t shake: how many lives do we get? One. Not one and a half. Not two. Just one. So why the hell would I keep putting my dreams on hold—waiting for summer, for vacation days, for the next weekend? Why wait for the “perfect time” that might never come?

I’ve decided to start now. Tonight, if I have to. Yeah, I’ll lose sleep, but not over some boring project or a dead-end job. I’m losing sleep over something bigger—a passion, a vision, a plan for my life that’s crystal clear in my head. A dream that just needs me to make it real.

So if you’ve read this far, wish me luck. And if you’re anything like me, grab that thing you love and make it happen. And if it doesn’t work out? Screw it—start again!

submitted by /u/WerewolfCapital4616
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December 19, 2024  15:38:21

B2B Construction Tech SaaS, been around for about 3 years. Fully bootstrapped. 3 F/T employees:

  • Engineering/Product
  • Sales/Success
  • Biz Dev/Marketing

We also have 2 contractors who put in about 100 hrs/year combined for marketing/UX.

Sitting about $750k revenue for 2024, of which $550k is ARR.

Sales Strategy Learnings

  • In construction, practically everything is project-based - especially accounting methodologies. That means generating a business case for a broad, enterprise-style adoption is always an uphill battle, as every business is quite sensitive to growing overhead. In fact, it's common projects have autonomy to buy their own tech (think: a $150 million mid-rise building wanting to use drone footage to show progress to the client). That necessitates a land-and-expend motion for nearly every account to move from single project purchases to sweet, sweet enterprise-style ARR.
    • In retrospect - ConTech SaaS is always an uphill battle, and I'm not sure I'd recommend it for a beginner without a strong network in the space.
  • Our single-project prices can be 10x what an enterprise license [ARR] would be for buying project licenses in bulk. But sometimes, even that's not enough to drive people to upgrade to an enterprise license. Under-pricing one-time purchases has been a huge mistake for our largest enterprises. But it's a double-edged sword: Price a single project too high, and you'll miss your opportunity to break into the account, and you might not get another swing for 8-12 months.
  • True enterprise sales cycle lengths are absolutely killer for revenue velocity, especially procurement. In fact, we've been in procurement with an F500 for about 6 months (they've had a couple of acquisitions, yada yada, delaying our deal). We can close 20 x $12k deals in the time it takes us to close 1x $60k deal - but those smaller deals also result in 20 implementations, more support tickets, etc. There's definitely a sweet spot.
  • Know your costs. Lots of companies wanting to spend $8k/yr also want to markup our MSA, which then costs money with outside counsel. Telling customers the annual price to redline our contract is $15k has accelerated our time to close substantially and kept legal costs down.
  • Our product does quite well in EMEA and APAC, but as a sales team of 1.5, it's absolutely exhausting and not sustainable for the long haul for us. It's been better to put forth outrageous prices in those areas and pick and choose customers for whom this is the biggest pain. Compliance is a real doozy the more countries you support.

Operations Learnings

  • Suck it up and buy a good CRM like Hubspot once you have enough customers (for us, that was around $30k/month revenue). It's expensive, sure, but our efficiency has 5x'd as a result, especially being so lean. We switched free/cheap CRM's 3 times, then limped along for 18 months using Airtable, then finally migrated to Hubspot. It's been 100% worth it. If your sales person is worth their salt, they can negotiate a good price.
  • Getting a SOC 2/ISO 270001 is a pain in the ass, but getting it done up front and early allows you to break into WAY more accounts than would otherwise be possible. It definitely accelerates revenue and deals, and is a competitive differentiator against smaller businesses nipping our heels. We got it done for about $15k hard costs (excluding our time to modify/build policies, update GCP, etc.).
  • We're focused on operationalizing OKR's, which has really helped keep our eyes on what's important. Highly recommended given the infinite distractions at this scale.

Marketing Learnings

  • Our customers are our best sellers and will always have more credibility than us. Paying for a happy hour for their team pays dividends upon dividends.
  • Shaking hands is the way to go in this industry. We can cold call and email and LinkedIn all we want, but meeting in person will allow us to close a deal in <48 hours.
  • We hired a part-time contractor for some marketing strategy, but have since parted ways. It was the right decision.
  • We have several years in the space prior to this business, and our network has been invaluable in landing meetings and getting money in the door.
  • It took us probably 15 months to get our market position right and learn to clearly communicate our value props/differentiators to our customers. However, the marketing consulting that got us there was incredibly valuable. It also helped with how we package and market our product.

Product Learnings (not my space, but can provide sales perspective)

  • If someone won't buy without a feature, make them commit in writing to buy before building it and make it a scope of work. It gives them an "out" in case you can't live up to expectations, but also gets you money in the door.

2025 Lookahead

  • Our objectives going forward are really to make this a lifestyle business - put in 10 hours a week, and collect 6 figures for checking the support inbox and managing renewals. We should be able to make that happen baesed on next year's projections.
  • We're pretty under the radar, and we like things that way. Our customers are raving fanatics about our product and the level of service we can provide at our scale.
  • A few VC's keep knocking, but we have no interest in ever taking funding. We'll never be a $100 Million business due to the nature of our product, but we're totally okay with that if this business enables us to spend more time with our families and less time slaving away for the man. :)

Anyways, happy to answer any questions.

EDIT 1: Wow, people seem to be really caught up on Hubspot lol. Use whatever CRM you want, I don't care. We just wasted a lot of time with cheaper ones due to lesser out-of-the-box integration and customization/workflow capabilities.

Example: We implemented a self-guided tour of our app using arcade.software . Arcade integrates with two CRM's: Salesforce (too much truck for our small business) and Hubspot. That alone helps us gain visibility into prospects' activities and interests. I realize there are infinite cheaper options that might work for your business, but HS works for us.

On a related "Sales Learning" note, we found that posting an Arcade on our website was a mistake. It gave prospects too much confidence in understanding our product, so they'd just come inbound looking for price and not wanting to talk - even if they were completely wrong on the fundamentals of how our product worked and what it did. We locked down a much more abbreviated tour behind an email verification (we have a Slack approve/deny one button click for us to verify, super simple), and are sure to make personal outreach shortly after the email is sent and enroll them in an email sequence. The new tour is designed to leave them with questions rather than lots of information about how our product works, and it also gives us insight into what specific features/functions that customer was intersted in.

submitted by /u/Classic-Rutabaga-474
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December 18, 2024  12:51:31

Hey Reddit 👋,

I wanted to share a bit about some side projects I’ve been working on lately. Quick background for context: I’m the CEO of a mid-to-large-scale eCommerce company pulling in €10M+ annually in net turnover. We even built our own internal tracking software that’s now a SaaS (in early review stages on Shopify), competing with platforms like Lifetimely and TrueROAS.

But! That’s not really the point of this post — there’s another journey I’ve been on that I’m super excited to share (and maybe get your feedback on!).

AI Transformed My Role (and My Ideas List)

I’m not a developer by trade — never properly learned how to code, and to be honest, I don’t intend to. But, I’ve always been the kind of guy who jots down ideas in a notes app and dreams about execution. My dev team calls me their “4th developer” (they’re a team of three) because I have solid theoretical knowledge and can kinda read code.

And then AI happened. 🛠️

It basically turned my random ideas app into an MVP generation machine. I thought it’d be fun to share one of the apps I’m especially proud of. I am also planning to build this in public and therefore I am planning to post my progress on X and every project will have /stats page where live stats of the app will be available.

Tackling My Task Management Problem 🚀

I’ve sucked at task management for YEARS, I still do! I’ve tried literally everything — Sheets, Todoist, Asana, ClickUp, Notion — you name it. I’d start… and then quit after a few weeks - always.

What I struggle with the most is delegating tasks. As a CEO, I delegate a ton, and it’s super hard to track everything I’ve handed off to the team. Take this example: A few days ago, I emailed an employee about checking potential collaboration opportunities with a courier company. Just one of 10s of tasks like this I delegate daily.

Suddenly, I thought: “Wouldn’t it be AMAZING if just typing out this email automatically created a task for me to track?” 💡

So… I jumped in. With the power of AI and a few intense days of work, I built a task manager that does just that. But of course, I couldn’t stop there.

Research & Leveling It Up 📈

I looked at similar tools like TickTick and Todoist, scraped their G2 reviews (totally legally, promise! 😅), and ran them through AI for a deep SWOT analysis. I wanted to understand what their users liked/didn’t like and what gaps my app could fill.

Some of the features people said they were missing didn’t align with the vision for my app (keeping it simple and personal), but I found some gold nuggets:

  • Integration with calendars (Google)
  • Reminders
  • Customizable UX (themes)

So, I started implementing what made sense and am keeping others on the roadmap for the future.

And I’ve even built for that to, it still doesn’t have a name, however the point is you select on how many reviews of a specific app you want to make a SWOT analysis on and it will do it for you. Example for Todoist in comments. But more on that, some other time, maybe other post ...

Key Features So Far:

Here’s what’s live right now:

Email to Task: Add an email as to, cc, or bcc — and it automatically creates a task with context, due dates, labels, etc.

WhatsApp Reminders: Get nudged to handle your tasks via WhatsApp.

WhatsApp to Task: Send a message like /task buy groceries — bam, it’s added with full context etc..

Chrome Extension (work-in-progress): Highlight text on any page, right-click, and send it straight to your task list.

Next Steps: Build WITH the Community 👥

Right now, the app is 100% free while still in the early stages. But hey, API calls and server costs aren’t cheap, so pricing is something I’ll figure out with you as we grow. For now, my goal is to hit 100 users and iterate from there. My first pricing idea is, without monthly subscription, I don’t want to charge someone for something he didn’t use. So I am planning on charging "per task", what do you think?

Here’s what I have planned:

📍 End of Year Goal: 100 users (starting from… 1 🥲).

💸 Revenue Roadmap: When we establish pricing, we’ll talk about that.

🛠️ Milestones:

  • Post on Product Hunt when we hit 100 users.
  • Clean up my self-written spaghetti code (hire a pro dev for review 🙃).
  • Hire a part-time dev once we hit MRR that can cover its costs.

You can check how are we doing on thisisatask.me/stats

Other Side Projects I’m Working On:

Because… what’s life without taking on too much, right? 😂 Full list of things I’m building:

  1. Internal HRM: Not public, tried and tested in-house.
  2. Android TV App: Syncs with HRM to post announcements to office TVs (streamlined and simple).
  3. Stats Tracker App: Connects to our internal software and gives me real-time company insights.
  4. Review Analyzer: Scrapes SaaS reviews (e.g., G2) and runs deep analysis via AI. This was originally for my Shopify SaaS but is quickly turning into something standalone. Coming soon!
  5. Mobile app game: secret for now.

Let’s Build This Together!

Would love it if you guys checked out https://thisisatask.me and gave it a spin! Still super early, super raw, but I’m pumped to hear your thoughts.

Also, what’s a must-have task manager feature for you? Anything that frustrates you with current tools? I want to keep evolving this in public, so your feedback is gold. 🌟

Let me know, Reddit! Are you with me? 🙌

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December 16, 2024  18:55:33

How I got my site into ChatGPT (and why you should too)

A few months back, I stumbled upon a comment on reddit saying:

“If you want your site to show up in ChatGPT, optimize for Bing.”

At first, I thought it was just another hot take by some random person on Reddit, but then I dug deeper into it. And tbh, it started making more sense with time.

See chatgpt uses bing's search index to pull results, right? That means if you rank on bing, you're more likely to appear in GPT gen. responses.

And the only diff bw goole and bing is that bing clusters kws differently and rely a lot more on HITL (Humans in the Loop).

So, I started exprimenting and here's what I learned:

  • bing loves specific and high intent queries (unlike Google where ranking for broad keywords can drive insane traffic). For e.g., for bing "best CRM for small teams" > "CRM software"
  • on-page on bing has soooo much value - exactly how Google treated on-page back in 2015
  • bing loves schema. I added faqs to 3 high intent pages and saw the impact in gpt responses within 2 days
  • relevant links on bing are way more valuable than links from high da websites. For our website, we made comments on WP blogs using "site:wordpress.com 'kw'" and saw sort of a reward. In comparison to one of our clients, wherein we got links from 50+ DA sites

The reason why I'm sharing this is because I had a meeting with a prospect this morning who mentioned that he found us via GPT.

Insane, right? I mean, who thought that you'd be getting business from gpt as well.

All I'll say is that we've been too focused on Google. Bing isn't just the "second best search engine out there" now but way way way more than that. Optimize for it and take the first mover's advantage.

tl;dr: rank on bing → get into gpt's search index

submitted by /u/ap-oorv
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December 20, 2024  18:09:59

I used to visit this Indie Hacker community regularly and loved the engaging discussions and the genuine community vibe. However, I recently logged in after 8-9 months, and it seems everything has changed. It feels more like a blog site with a database of SaaS ideas and subscriptions. I feel completely disconnected from it now. I’m not sure if it’s just me, or if others feel the same way. I really miss the busy, community-focused interface from the earlier days.

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December 19, 2024  13:03:31

I am a marketing lead at an AI SaaS, we knew we had a good product as we saw folks falling in love with it on the first glimpse. But how do we get people to discover the tool?

We came up with two solutions, which led us to $1,000,000 ARR!

  1. Cold Emails - We built an infra to send 1000 emails/day and it blew up our traffic & sign-ups. We got $30k of business in the first month itself and then it was a journey of improving the content & finding the right people.
    • Our content was humane and full of emotions, it was written in a colloquial language so that folks find it relevant and personalized.
    • Deliverability was an issue but we used Smartlead and it pretty much took care of everything, currently, they're having a winter promo where they're providing new sign-ups with 6000 email verification credits. Check it out here - https://smartlead.ai/?via=winterpromo
  2. Directories - We got listed to some directories which helped us build a good Domain Authority but to scale further we decided to make our Directory. We used a no-code tool, made a kickass directory and offered a listing in it via our cold emails. The directory tool is also running a promo right now, providing 50% off - directify.app

Both these tactics worked tremendously for us, but we had some minor campaigns running along with this as well. I'm still associated with the company that's why keeping this anonymous but would love to help you out, just ping me!

Edit: Adding proof -> https://imgur.com/a/S6I2pVB

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December 16, 2024  13:53:16

I just closed a deal to build an MVP for $3,400, and I’m beyond excited! This is my first official client, and it feels like a big step forward. The project’s all about delivering a quick, functional MVP so they can test their idea in the market.

A few things I learned in the process:

  • The process is everything. Being organized and following a structured process step-by-step really makes a difference in keeping everything on track.
  • Writing a solid proposal matters. Clearly outlining the scope and deliverables helped set expectations.
  • Contracts are key. Having everything formalized in a contract gave both of us peace of mind.
  • Keep it simple and focused. The clearer the scope, the smoother things go.
  • Communication is everything. Being upfront about timelines and expectations really built trust.
  • There’s demand out there. A lot of people need quick MVPs to validate their ideas before going all in.

It’s been a great learning experience, and I’m looking forward to more projects like this! If you’ve been through something similar or have tips, I’d love to hear about it.

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December 18, 2024  15:56:26

We launched on Product Hunt today (currently #2) but I think its open my eyes to:

  1. Product Hunt is the embodiment of dead internet Theory.

  2. Linkedin, Reddit and twitter are very soon to follow.

Every founder we talked to explained that organic reach and actual product quality are only like 10% of successful PH launches. They recommend warming up your entire network and sending email reminders for upvotes. Essentially treating it like a pure brute force marketing campaign. I think this is relatively expected though.

What I found unexpected is the level of bot/no value add interaction on Twitter and LinkedIn. These platforms are trending towards becoming places where AI made posts are a large portion of the content + AI agents are the ones responding on behalf of people.

All this said, there is still of course a % of real people who interact with content on these platforms but that percentage is decreasing.

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December 22, 2024  09:42:05

I left my job in October 2024 with the plan to build my own freelance career. I cannot call it SaaS as I do manual service for my clients.

I first started one landing page to build landing pages for others BUT there are toooooo many so I FAILED. Brutally failed at it.

My next service was helping founders to list their SaaS on 500+ directories manually and for this I launched getmorebacklinks.org and priced it lowest in the industry just at $75.

I did Cold DMs and offered free basic reports on Twitter and my service took off.

I am confused about what to do next. Should I build this more or start more services? I am also looking for a tech member, so you can tell me if you are interested.

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December 16, 2024  07:53:47

A little over a week ago, I launched TinyLaun.ch, a product hunt clone for showcasing and discovering new products. My goal was to keep the design minimal and make launching as simple as possible. While it’s still early days, growth so far has been exponential, having already onboarded 67 signups in just 10 days — without spending a single dollar on marketing and, importantly, without a social media following.

What Worked for Me

  1. Just take the leap and launch. In the past I've spent months and sometimes up to a year working on a product, just to find out nobody actually cares about it. This time, I built an MVP in just a few days. Bare-bones but fully functional. Enough to get started.

  2. Share the journey online. I started sharing regular progress updates along with new features with the Build in Public community on X. The community is overrun with "let's connect" and "follow for follow" posts and thus craving people actually building something cool and sharing progress updates.

  3. Engage with accounts of all sizes. This one's for people without a large online following like me. You're not going to get tons of impressions on your posts when you start out. That's why it's so important to engage with other creators. Take the time to check out their stuff, give them genuine feedback and congratulate them on their wins. They will return the favor and check out what you have to offer.

  4. Make use of the X Radar. The X Radar is a new feature on X for Premium+ subscribers allowing you to monitor tweets mentioning specific topics. My strategy is finding current Product Hunt launches, upvoting the launches and congratulating the makers on their launch. If they thank me, I mention TinyLaun.ch and suggest also launching on there, highlighting the upside of taking the time to do so (more on that later). This strategy should work for a wide range of businesses.

  5. Optimize for profile visits. Impressions are great. But what we're really aiming for is profile visits. Because once people visit your profile, they're ideally only one click away from your product. So your posts should make readers curious about your profile. I've had two (by my standards) viral posts that lead to lots of visits to my product. For the first post, I've turned my weakness into a strength. At that time, I only had 76 followers despite my account being 11 years old. My tweet:

    I grew my account from 0 to 76 followers in 11 years. Answer GROWTH to learn how I did it. 2035 could be your year.

    The tweet did exceptionally well for my small account and lead to ~5000 views, but more importantly 217 profile visits. A lot of them ended up checking out TinyLaun.ch and actually launching their products. The second viral tweet was just a screenshot of an email I received by Marc Lou that congratulated me on my "beautiful site". I posted it saying

    Guys my site is beautiful and nobody can tell me otherwise.

    It was the perfect storm, with ~6100 impressions, comments by larger accounts such as @jackfriks and everybody curious about what my site looks like, leading to 490 profile visits. Huge for a tiny account like mine. People found out about TinyLaun.ch, which is unrelated to the tweet, and started replying to the tweet that they too would schedule a launch. This is the power of making people curious to check your profile.

    For those curious, the email was related to issues setting up Marc's DataFast.

  6. Convert your profile visits. It's time to optimize your profile. First of all, make sure you have a recognizable profile picture. It's the main thing people will recognize your account by. It should be your face to build trust, without other people in the shot. You did it! People are visiting your profile. You only have a few seconds of their attention, so let's make them count. Put your product in your bio – it should only be a single tap away. Make sure to utilize your banner image well. It's your chance to show some personality. I chose to add a joke which seems to be doing well, as multiple people have positively commented on it. It's a fake quote that looks like it's taken from a book (made with bookquotes.click):

    If you launch on tinylaun.ch, you're goated. - Julius Caesar.

  7. Tag your users in shareable posts. Every day, I tweet the ranking of the previous launch day, making sure to tag the makers in the tweet. They are naturally proud of their accomplishment and retweet it, leading to more impressions.

  8. Reward your users and be rewarded in return. As a relatively new domain, I needed to find a way to grow my domain authority. I took inspiration from IndieVoice and found a way to exchange dofollow backlinks with makers. Every startup that ranks in the top 3 gets a badge for their landing page, and if they link it to TinyLaun.ch, they get a backlink back. Win-win!

  9. Be likable. Lastly, give before you take. Don't constantly promote your startup without pause. Help out the community, make a joke, show that you're not just there for clicks. If you give, you will receive in return. Be patient.

The Results

In just 10 days, we went from 0 to 67 registered users and 36 successful launches on the platform. The most attention I've ever gotten on my indie hacking journey. While these are still small numbers in the grand scheme of things, the trend so far is showing exponential growth day-over-day. I'm so excited for the future.

I really hope this helped someone, and I'm looking forward to hearing from you.

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December 17, 2024  15:16:39

Promised it. Achieved it 💪

$1K MRR milestone mission completed on Blitzit.

----

Recap: I've shared how we achieved $800 MRR 20 days ago here.

So, I am not doing it again.

Here's 5 failures that you must avoid:

  1. ignoring email campaigns
  2. releasing payment feature improvement without proper testing leading to frustrated customers and increasing churn rates
  3. ignoring other distribution channels
  4. not being fast enough to release key improvements, and features
  5. hiring excited people who are not for the long term game

For our next milestones we are focusing on more distribution channels such as:

  • mobile app for android and iOS
  • microsoft store publish
  • mac app store publish
  • more integrations
  • webhooks.
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December 19, 2024  17:47:50

After three months, I’ve decided to shut down my price tracking app.

I created Pricesaurus (https://www.pricesaurus.com/) because I hated using alternatives like Keepa and others. I just wanted something super simple: pick a product, get notified when it hits my target price, and that’s it.

Working on this project was a great personal challenge and a nice addition to my portfolio, but truthfully, it never really took off. As I was wrapping it up, I realized that while it might be useful to some, it would likely never become profitable.

I managed to get about 250 sign-ups, but not a single paying user. I’ve received no support requests or any indication that people are seriously using it.

So, what do you think? I’m open to any honest, even harsh, feedback. I’m planning to shut it down, but I’m curious if anyone sees a reason it might still be worth keeping online.

Just to be clear, I’m not interested in “just improving it a bit more.” I’ve already spent a ton of time on it, and the idea of a small user bump or a tiny increase in conversion doesn’t really motivate me anymore.

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December 22, 2024  04:07:18

In my experience doing user interviews, I find other professionals wanting to charge for knowledge or gate keep them in general. Don't get me wrong, you should charge for knowledge, but some knowledge shouldn't be charged for. If I'm asking you what challenges you face at work and I expect your response to be asynchronous, I do not have to necessarily pay. If I need to schedule a call with you and take more of your time, that's a different story.

My experience;, say you post on a sub for non techies, a few users will get angry and come at you with "here comes another techie who thinks he can change the world, pay people for their time" or something similar. In contrast, you can posts an issue you're having on Stack overflow and have it resolved by a random stranger who's happy with a thank you and an upvote.

This culture doesn't exist anywhere else, even in academia.

Thoughts?

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December 18, 2024  07:30:16

Hey Guys,

Just a post because I'm Happy because I just made my first money while I sleep, thanks to my app!

I spent one year building different apps and I struggled to find customers.
So I built an app useful for me and I know, and strongly belive others can benefit from it.

And "Voila "

So to all makers, indie hackers, and solopreneurs, keep going and building your first MRR is one step away !!!

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December 18, 2024  13:57:04

I heard somewhere a while ago that software companies are hard to build mainly because of two reasons:

Reason 1: People don’t usually switch software once they’ve found one that works for them and they’ve already invested in putting in all of their data on the platform. (Consumer inertia)

Reason 2: The companies that do build software are REALLY good at building software so any technical advantage you think you might have gets crushed really fast.

What’s your take on this, any experiences where you found this to be true or not ? All comments welcome

submitted by /u/OkInflation2276
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December 21, 2024  21:25:00

Check out https://backdropify.app It's totally free. No signup needed.

Killer features - Fast - use copy/paste to avoid download clutter - Custom gradient - use dropper to pick colours of your brand - Custom background image - Adjust aspect ratio to fit all needs

Feedback is appreciated - I'm also taking feature requests

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December 20, 2024  19:54:16

So I'm a solo founder & grew my Saas to 2.5k MRR since November last year.

It hit that revenue about 6 months ago & I tried to grow it myself (I did paid ads & SEO)
but lacking a lot of knowledge & wasting a lot of time.

At this point I feel I need someone with marketing skills to grow it further.
Now the project has a lot of potential & users love it. So I want to keep 10% and sell the rest.

I will remain a solo developer on the project. So it will be an easier transition. But I want to find someone with a solid plan for marketing & past successful projects.

Did anyone tried that before? What was the outcome? Would anyone here be interested?
Please DM if you need details.

BTW: Acquire gave me a rough estimate of 120K as a sale price.

submitted by /u/NetworkEducational81
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December 16, 2024  12:09:32

Hey,

Roast my SaaS, be brutal. All advice and tips will be taken into consideration.

https://intelgain.io

Thank you guys in advance!

submitted by /u/Aboodss
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December 16, 2024  07:44:10

The problem with 99% of the founders here that promote their tools is this: They don't have a problem.

In other words, their SaaS tool is most often just a GPT Wrapper and it only exists because it is nowadays so easy to build those kind of tools but they don't actually solve a real world problem. Stop building tools just because they are cool and then be surprised that nobody wants to buy it. Nobody needs a kinky NFSW GPT wrapper just because you found out that there is a model that lets you generate girls in bras. Think about a problem you want to solve first. Then you build your tool / business around it, you iterate fast and only build as much as necessary so you can get valuable feedback and eventually land your first sales.

Another thing:

99% of GPT Wrappers will fail because they are so easy to reproduce with just 1 prompt. Of the other 1%, the ones that are successful enough will get eventually killed too. Why? Because if they become popular (like pdfGPT) then openAi will simply release a plugin and you're out of business.

AI startups need to go back to a state where genAI is not sending prompts to a LLM anymore. No solution that wraps GPT is an innovation

to wrap up:

  1. If you don't solve a problem, you will very likely not make sales -> Problem first, solution 2nd. You should be able to formulate your problem in one or two sentences and know your target group
  2. If your app can be replaced by one or multiple gpt prompts -> you'll drown in the wave of thousands of new "AI SaaS founders" and you will very likely fail
submitted by /u/liveticker1
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December 17, 2024  06:24:04

Don’t ship fast. What you really need is "Sell Fast". u/marclouv sells very fast. I learned a lot from him.

I do these three steps to sell fast for new products:

Step 1: Listen to pain

- Listen to your own PAIN or your followers/community pain.

- You don’t need an MVP. Just ask “hey, for painkiller X, I charge Y, you buy?”. Talk to your customers for real.

- Do it 1-on-1. Tweet. Reddit Post. Wherever the PAIN is. Do it every single day until you confirm demand.

To confirm demand quickly 👇

Step 2: Confirm demand before MVP.

- Don’t quit your job, or spend months or $. Create a visual MVP of your painkiller (max 1 day).

- Put out a pre-launch and charge X amount for real. Get 100-200 people on your site: DM, tweet, reddit, youtube, fb groups. Wherever the PAIN is.

- If conversion rate is 1% of 100 visitors and pricing is $29. That means you need 10k visitors to hit $2.9K/m.

- If you see actual sales. Ask yourself “Is there a ROI for me to pursue this and build the MVP?” Can I consistently get 10k visitors/m?

Then sell without paid ads 👇

Step 3: Sell your painkiller without paid ads.

- It’s easier to sell a painkiller when you can feel the product-market fit, the actual sales from step 2.

- How did Marc sell $40k in one day? Personal brand.

- Personal brand > SEO & paid ads. Grow your Twitter, YouTube, Reddit or wherever your customers are hanging.

My goal is to grow my personal brand 10x faster this way 👇

To grow personal brand 10x faster I’m building TweetViral(dot)app and make it 10x easier to produce viral content.

Limited: I'm giving free access to TweetViral, in exchange for testimonials. Just DM me :)

submitted by /u/j0hnnetr
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December 19, 2024  06:14:14

I launched my fitness tracking app a year ago, and I'd like to share some key lessons I've learned along the way. Currently, the app has an MRR of $725 with a 50% conversion rate from free trial to paid subscription. Here are the most important insights that might help other Flutter developers:

1. Don’t Waste Time on Features Nobody Will Use

My app is a workout tracking app, and I spent a lot of time developing a community feature. I implemented follow/unfollow functionalities, integrated Firebase Realtime Database for real-time notifications of new posts, and added features like comments, user blocking, report post, and workout record sharing, among others. I never considered that no one would use these features immediately after launch. Focus on perfecting the core functionalities first and gradually add other features. Even after launch, only a few users will use the core features initially.

2. Plan for a Global Release Early

Although I planned to launch globally, I didn’t consider it in the design phase. The UI broke on most screens because English typically has more characters than Korean (since I’m Korean and launched in Korea first). Design your UI with the longer English text in mind from the beginning. Additionally, the US uses pounds, so to properly convert weights between kg and lbs, all numerical types need to be doubles. This seemed obvious, but I had integers in my screens and database, requiring a complete migration to doubles. Also, always store times in UTC in your backend database. I foolishly stored times as local dates, forcing me to migrate all timestamps, which was extremely painful.

3. Use RevenueCat for Implementing Subscriptions

I generate revenue through subscriptions. If you plan to implement subscriptions, use RevenueCat without hesitation. Initially, I tried to implement subscriptions directly using in_app_purchase to save on RevenueCat fees, but it turned out to be a complete waste of time. There are already so many aspects to manage; don’t reinvent the wheel.

4. Polish Your UI to Professional Standards

The UI of your core features should not feel rough or amateurish compared to those of major companies’ well-known apps. This is because your competitors are not amateurs. Most are professionals with dedicated designers and resources, not individuals. Regular users have no reason to download an app that looks amateurish. I meticulously refine every detail of the UI. Just as Michelin-starred chefs wouldn’t serve imperfect dishes to customers but would discard them to make new ones, I strive to perfect the UI. Without at least this mindset, maintaining quality is impossible. Of course, this approach may be subject to personal preferences.

5. Listen to User Feedback

Initially, I added a contact button on almost every page. This allowed users to immediately report any inconveniences. When I received feedback, I promptly fixed the issues and submitted updates to the app store. I also personally responded to users who inquired about the updates. This greatly impressed users. By turning each user into a fan of your app, they will bring in more users. This strategy always works when you have few users at launch.

6. Regularly Collect Feedback on User Experience

Approximately every two months, I display a survey dialog asking users about their current satisfaction and any desired features. This dialog appears on the home screen when the app is opened, allowing me to gather user opinions. If users provide feedback about inconveniences or desired features, I reach out to them individually. Whenever possible, I promptly implement fixes or add features and inform each user that their feedback has been addressed. Again, this strategy is always effective when you have a small user base at launch.

7. Users Rarely Leave Reviews in the App Store

Even if users are satisfied, they seldom go to the app store to leave reviews voluntarily. Therefore, I encourage reviews by adding a message at the end of responses informing users that I would greatly appreciate a review and include a [Leave a Review] button. Users who receive updates based on their requested features are usually inclined to leave a review.

8. Plan Your Marketing Strategy Before Launch

For some reason, I was convinced that my app would be a hit immediately after launch. This was, of course, a foolish assumption. No one was interested, and when you first launch an app, it doesn’t even appear in search results under its name in the app store. I use all my resources for user word-of-mouth and the revenue generated by my app, utilizing Google Ads' Universal App Campaigns (UAC).

9. Carefully Set Subscription Pricing

Your revenue should exceed your advertising costs to sustain growth through ongoing ad campaigns. I set my subscription prices too low without much thought, resulting in advertising costs always exceeding revenue. Analyze the Cost Per Install (CPI) for your app’s core keywords and carefully set your subscription prices.


If you have any topics you'd like, I can write about my experiences with them. I continue to learn and improve continuously. I would greatly appreciate any feedback on my app. Check it out here

submitted by /u/Ok_Laugh_3201
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December 17, 2024  14:21:49

As the title says, I went through the hassle of getting started for my SaaS from 0 to 1 and, although I'm not THE most qualified, could certainly provide some help to fellow entrepreneurs.

Here are the rules:

Post the link of your SaaS and your tagline.

On December 22nd I'll randomly select one to be their first customer. In the meantime, I'll try to get back to everyone posting their links with a short feedback.

I encourage any other people to do the same!!

Credentials: I've built and launched 7/8 SaaS over the past 6 months with QuickMVP and my own SaaS. (Alongside my co-founder)

submitted by /u/Current-Payment-5403
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December 16, 2024  00:47:31

i will pay someone $100 for 30 mins of work

I'm having trouble integrating an API to my bubble.io site.

i've done it before and i know it's simple but I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong. if anyone can hop on zoom for 15-30 mins and walk me through it while i screenshare, i'll cashapp / venmo / applepay / zelle you $100 bucks.

thanks.

submitted by /u/tiggy03
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December 20, 2024  12:31:20

For context only, I'm building SAAS since 2009.
But this year, the number of new tools/solutions I come across daily is just crazy.

They get built so fast (development become a commodity), no-code tools, AI and cheap development.

Just do marketing, speak to users, do sales.

Don't wait to be perfect, or to finish version 104.

This is also a reminder to myself.

submitted by /u/alexrada
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December 20, 2024  11:46:07

I just completed the acquisition of my 3rd micro SaaS. This purchase takes me to 5k MRR across my portfolio which is 25% of my long-term goal of 20k.

Some details on the acquisition:

  • B2B
  • Slack app
  • Selling for a <3.5X ARR multiple
  • Simple to understand
  • Does one thing very well
  • No complex tech or other dependencies
  • High margin (>80% net profit)
  • Currently doing $1.3k a month

See my full portfolio and learn more about the acquisition in my latest substack post - https://open.substack.com/pub/justinbutlion/p/my-3rd-saas-acquisition-translate?r=3xv01&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

submitted by /u/hawkeye77787
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