7 ms·

I'll add something I wish I had realized several years ago: build a SaaS is not the only path to a product business, and for a solo founder, it's (in my opinion

I'll add something I wish I had realized several years ago: build a SaaS is not the only path to a product business, and for a solo founder, it's (in my opinion) probably not a very good path. I spent 5 years trying to get a micro ISV off the ground which made scheduling software for hair salons. It was a terrible idea for a large number of reasons (described in detail here: https://www.jasonswett.net/im-shutting-down-snip-heres-why/ https://www.jasonswett.net/im-shutting-down-snip-heres-why/) and I never made more than about $430/mo. My opinion now is that info products are a better way for a solo founder to get started with a product business. The reason is that a SaaS product can take a huge amount of effort (perhaps pre-traction effort, which is risky) to get off the ground whereas an info product business can be started with a tiny "guide" and then expanded outwardly from there, keeping effort in proportion with traction the whole time. My current business is AngularOnRails.com, an info product business. In its third month of making money, it made $1580, over 3 times what the SaaS made at its peak. Here's a detailed income report: https://www.jasonswett.net/november-2016-angular-on-rails-income-report/ https://www.jasonswett.net/november-2016-angular-on-rails-in...

jetti 10y ago
Info products can be a good source of relatively passive income. How are you marketing your info product? For myself, I'm writing desktop software for developers which is a market I know and something that really interests me. On top of that, there is no need for continuous uptime
- jasonswett 10y ago
  I'm marketing it by writing blog posts, usually long, definitive blog posts that spell out the details of solving problems as opposed to "Top 10 Ways to Wipe Your Ass" or whatever. From there, I get people to subscribe to my email list by offering a free guide as a lead magnet. Most of the sales I've made have been via my email list.
- hacheka 10y ago
  How do you address the piracy / license problems? I'm starting also a desktop version but piracy is main concern.
apineda 10y ago
Would you recommend against buying a SaaS that is ~$2-3k/MRR?
- jasonswett 10y ago
  I don't think I'm really qualified to give a recommendation on something like that. Even if I were, I think there are a lot of factors that would need to go into such a decision. What I might recommend is for you to look up what Rob Walling has to say on build versus buy.
bshimmin 10y ago
I am quite interested to know how you got into the business of making software for hair salons when you're not a "domain expert in the beauty industry" - did you start out building this for someone else who was involved in this industry, and then decide to give it a go yourself? There's some great advice in your post about your ill-fated Snip (strong name!) product, anyway! (I'm not sure I agree about product businesses - I think it depends on the industry and your connexions - but certainly no one should think that going it alone will be easy.)
- jasonswett 10y ago
  My wife got a job at a hair salon and their software sucked. I didn't have any exposure prior to that.
pryelluw 10y ago
Shhh, dont give away the secret sauce. ;) Truth is that info products are perfect for solo founders as a way to start generating revenue for bootstrapping something else (or simply as additional income). Marketing them is easy. You just have to put samples online, work the SEO, and share it on social (inbound). Building one is also simple. No need for anything fancy. Ive sold info products using a static page and a paypal button.
lowken10 10y ago
I went after the hair stylist market for three months as part of The Foundation. I quickly came to the realization that it was not a good market for the simple reason that the owners of hair saloons like to cut hair. Because of this they are very hard to get on the phone. One key for any potential SaaS market is to make sure you have a way to reach that market. Make sure they are on email or social media in large numbers. I too pivoted to information products. Good luck with your course.
- jasonswett 10y ago
  Thanks. Yes, it's not enough for there to be a need. You also have to think about how you'll reach prospects. Stylists and salon owners aren't on the computer all day every day and they don't like to take phone calls from salespeople. They're very expensive and/or time-consuming to reach. A solo bootstrapper almost by definition has very little time or money, so salons are a very bad match for the capabilities of solo boostrappers.
  - radicalbyte 10y ago
    Funny, two years ago I built an MVP for the same market/problem with a couple of friends. It helped us understand the problem and was very MVP (3 man weeks of work all in). We concluded very quickly that the problem is reaching the audience. We did have a strategy, but the impending arrival of babies means that the entire thing was put on ice. It's tempting to revisit the niche because, at least if our numbers are correct, we have a real chance of being able to reach the niche whilst keeping the CAS manageable.
  - mooreds 10y ago
    We have some of the same problem (buyers of our software really want to be out in the kitchen), and have found a lot of leverage building a community of existing owners/managers where they can all share experiences. So, not sure if there ks a forum for salon owners, but if there's not, that's the first thing I'd look at building. And if there is, well, there's your marketing strategy. (At least a big component of it.)
joshontheweb 10y ago
Word. I started my current SaaS with the goal of working 10hrs a week and making 15k a month. I'm getting close to my monthly revenue goal but if I'm not sleeping, I'm working. I don't regret it. I'm enjoying the challenge now but it wasn't what I had thought I was getting myself into. I truly underestimated the gravity of emails and support requests. As a one man shop, it can grind entire days to a halt. Passive info products do seem to be the easier path to a more leisurely success. Edit: missed a word
- nerdy 10y ago
  Have you considered the cause of the e-mails/support requests and tried to streamline your process or at least provide additional instruction in order to quell the high volume? My experience has been that support requests can be near zero if you actively work on some kind of automated solution for the highest frequency problems.
  - joshontheweb 10y ago
    I'm trying to work towards this. There are just a ton of problems that can occur since I'm dealing with recording/uploading audio in the browser. Network dropouts, OS audio settings, varied browser capabilities / versions, microphone selection issues, limited hard disk space, browser storage quotas, etc. My new goal is to have every single error or notification have a built-in link that takes them to a solution article. This seems to be effective so far.
- Cyph0n 10y ago
  That's pretty impressive actually! Have you considering hiring one or two people (e.g., freelancers) to remotely help with support? Also, a virtual secretary would be immensely helpful I'd imagine. I have a couple of ideas I've been wanting to work on, but time is quite scarce as a grad student. I guess it's partly because I tend to overthink (and over-design) my ideas, and end up getting overwhelmed before even touching a line of code! What's even worse is that the majority of my ideas are intended for my home country (EST+6 timezone), since I think it's much harder to be successful in an over-saturated market like the US. For example, one of my ideas is designing an Uber-like service for my home country. The current roadmap (which I haven't started on) is as follows: 1. Design a basic placeholder site with some info on the app/service 2. Run a limited ad campaign to gauge interest and ideally collect emails (Google, FB, local radio, local newspapers) 3. Try to get interested users to fill out a survey 4. If the results from 2) and 3) are promising, start developing a barebones MVP 5. The MVP will target one city, require manual signup for drivers, and only have a simple web client 6. If successful, start hiring local developers, optimizing server-side, and designing an Android app (iOS is a very small market) Any advice for someone in my position? I'm open to all types of feedback from any HNer - it's always good to get an opinion before working on something like this!
zippergz 10y ago
Thanks for this. It's some really good insight for me. I've had a few ideas bouncing around in my head for SaaS products to serve a few different small business niches where the existing software sucks badly. I think all of those markets would have similar difficulties to the ones you found in salons. On the one hand, it's really frustrating to know that I can build a product which would make peoples' lives and businesses better, but that I'm unlikely to be able to make it financially viable. But on the other hand, I'm grateful to realize this before pouring months or years of my life into it.
tmaly 10y ago
If you are not creating your own info product, what is the viability of a decent monthly income stream from selling an info product that someone else created?
- jasonswett 10y ago
  I understand that some people do do this. Affiliate marketing/joint ventures.
jv22222 10y ago
Hey Jason, Amy Hoy says the best way for solo founders to start off is with in info product. Just to cut their teeth at marketing and such. One thing, now that you have got that ball rolling I think you might consider another saas product in the future because you have so much learning about that. The one good thing about a saas product with good market fit is that you will get years of recurring revenue from the same customers. With pluggio I had some customers hitting $3.5k over time (and higher). That is the real power of saas and why it's worth considering in the long run. Edit: I guess it may be useful to note we have a bunch of articles here - https://blog.nugget.one/ https://blog.nugget.one/ - about how to avoid the kind of issues you spoke about in your blog.
- randomnumber314 10y ago
  http://blog.plugg.io/2016/12/18/blog-let-walmart-delivery-draft/ http://blog.plugg.io/2016/12/18/blog-let-walmart-delivery-dr... published draft?
imarg 10y ago
Starting with an info product is a common suggestion (Amy Hoy is one advocate as a sibling comment noted). But in order to be able to offer an info product don't you need to be really knowledgeable about something? If you hadn't your experience with your SaaS would you be in the same position to write (and sell!) your tutorial?
- johnward 10y ago
  I still battle with my inner dialog about "not being an expert" at anything. This is something I get caught up on but all you really need to be is more knowledgeable than your target audience. So sell something you already know to people who want to know it. There are still people out there that are basically beginners in web development. There are people one or more rungs down the ladder from you. You don't have to sell them some complex guide to intricacies of angular. How many non-technical people want to sell things only? People serve them all the time. One example I heard recently on a podcast was cssanimation.rocks. Basically his thought process was: I want to teach people something regarding CSS. I can't teach people ALL of CSS in a book (too much work). I like making animations. I'm going to focus on practical animations (forms, list boxes, basically things all sites do). He started posting some useful blog posts that taught people some of the basic concepts and captured emails. Now he has paying subscribers to an email course. Disclaimer: I fail to do everything I'm telling you to do.
  - jackgolding 10y ago
    CEO of One Month Rails Mattan Grieffel taught himself to code (mind you his co-founder was teaching others to learn to code at General Assembly.) I think this post from Scott Adams will help you understand how you can be gain more confidence http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/07/career-advice.html http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/07/care...
fabiandesimone 10y ago
Absolutely. Info-products, even the really cheesy looking ones with the spammy VSL's (Video Sales Letter) work insanely well. Depending on your niche you can do some pretty big numbers.
mightymosquito 10y ago
how did you go about marketing this, and what in your opinion would be a good way for a tech guy to start learning basics of marketing your product??
palidanx 10y ago
Hey Jason thanks for the thoughts on your blog post. Just curious, how long did it take you to write the angular on rails book? And I'm assuming it is a PDF?

jetti 10y ago

Info products can be a good source of relatively passive income. How are you marketing your info product? For myself, I'm writing desktop software for developers which is a market I know and something that really interests me. On top of that, there is no need for continuous uptime

jasonswett 10y ago
I'm marketing it by writing blog posts, usually long, definitive blog posts that spell out the details of solving problems as opposed to "Top 10 Ways to Wipe Your Ass" or whatever. From there, I get people to subscribe to my email list by offering a free guide as a lead magnet. Most of the sales I've made have been via my email list.
hacheka 10y ago
How do you address the piracy / license problems? I'm starting also a desktop version but piracy is main concern.

apineda 10y ago

Would you recommend against buying a SaaS that is ~$2-3k/MRR?

jasonswett 10y ago
I don't think I'm really qualified to give a recommendation on something like that. Even if I were, I think there are a lot of factors that would need to go into such a decision. What I might recommend is for you to look up what Rob Walling has to say on build versus buy.

bshimmin 10y ago

I am quite interested to know how you got into the business of making software for hair salons when you're not a "domain expert in the beauty industry" - did you start out building this for someone else who was involved in this industry, and then decide to give it a go yourself? There's some great advice in your post about your ill-fated Snip (strong name!) product, anyway! (I'm not sure I agree about product businesses - I think it depends on the industry and your connexions - but certainly no one should think that going it alone will be easy.)

jasonswett 10y ago
My wife got a job at a hair salon and their software sucked. I didn't have any exposure prior to that.

pryelluw 10y ago

Shhh, dont give away the secret sauce. ;) Truth is that info products are perfect for solo founders as a way to start generating revenue for bootstrapping something else (or simply as additional income). Marketing them is easy. You just have to put samples online, work the SEO, and share it on social (inbound). Building one is also simple. No need for anything fancy. Ive sold info products using a static page and a paypal button.

lowken10 10y ago

I went after the hair stylist market for three months as part of The Foundation. I quickly came to the realization that it was not a good market for the simple reason that the owners of hair saloons like to cut hair. Because of this they are very hard to get on the phone. One key for any potential SaaS market is to make sure you have a way to reach that market. Make sure they are on email or social media in large numbers. I too pivoted to information products. Good luck with your course.

jasonswett 10y ago
Thanks. Yes, it's not enough for there to be a need. You also have to think about how you'll reach prospects. Stylists and salon owners aren't on the computer all day every day and they don't like to take phone calls from salespeople. They're very expensive and/or time-consuming to reach. A solo bootstrapper almost by definition has very little time or money, so salons are a very bad match for the capabilities of solo boostrappers.
- radicalbyte 10y ago
  Funny, two years ago I built an MVP for the same market/problem with a couple of friends. It helped us understand the problem and was very MVP (3 man weeks of work all in). We concluded very quickly that the problem is reaching the audience. We did have a strategy, but the impending arrival of babies means that the entire thing was put on ice. It's tempting to revisit the niche because, at least if our numbers are correct, we have a real chance of being able to reach the niche whilst keeping the CAS manageable.
- mooreds 10y ago
  We have some of the same problem (buyers of our software really want to be out in the kitchen), and have found a lot of leverage building a community of existing owners/managers where they can all share experiences. So, not sure if there ks a forum for salon owners, but if there's not, that's the first thing I'd look at building. And if there is, well, there's your marketing strategy. (At least a big component of it.)

joshontheweb 10y ago

Word. I started my current SaaS with the goal of working 10hrs a week and making 15k a month. I'm getting close to my monthly revenue goal but if I'm not sleeping, I'm working. I don't regret it. I'm enjoying the challenge now but it wasn't what I had thought I was getting myself into. I truly underestimated the gravity of emails and support requests. As a one man shop, it can grind entire days to a halt. Passive info products do seem to be the easier path to a more leisurely success. Edit: missed a word

nerdy 10y ago
Have you considered the cause of the e-mails/support requests and tried to streamline your process or at least provide additional instruction in order to quell the high volume? My experience has been that support requests can be near zero if you actively work on some kind of automated solution for the highest frequency problems.
- joshontheweb 10y ago
  I'm trying to work towards this. There are just a ton of problems that can occur since I'm dealing with recording/uploading audio in the browser. Network dropouts, OS audio settings, varied browser capabilities / versions, microphone selection issues, limited hard disk space, browser storage quotas, etc. My new goal is to have every single error or notification have a built-in link that takes them to a solution article. This seems to be effective so far.
Cyph0n 10y ago
That's pretty impressive actually! Have you considering hiring one or two people (e.g., freelancers) to remotely help with support? Also, a virtual secretary would be immensely helpful I'd imagine. I have a couple of ideas I've been wanting to work on, but time is quite scarce as a grad student. I guess it's partly because I tend to overthink (and over-design) my ideas, and end up getting overwhelmed before even touching a line of code! What's even worse is that the majority of my ideas are intended for my home country (EST+6 timezone), since I think it's much harder to be successful in an over-saturated market like the US. For example, one of my ideas is designing an Uber-like service for my home country. The current roadmap (which I haven't started on) is as follows: 1. Design a basic placeholder site with some info on the app/service 2. Run a limited ad campaign to gauge interest and ideally collect emails (Google, FB, local radio, local newspapers) 3. Try to get interested users to fill out a survey 4. If the results from 2) and 3) are promising, start developing a barebones MVP 5. The MVP will target one city, require manual signup for drivers, and only have a simple web client 6. If successful, start hiring local developers, optimizing server-side, and designing an Android app (iOS is a very small market) Any advice for someone in my position? I'm open to all types of feedback from any HNer - it's always good to get an opinion before working on something like this!

zippergz 10y ago

Thanks for this. It's some really good insight for me. I've had a few ideas bouncing around in my head for SaaS products to serve a few different small business niches where the existing software sucks badly. I think all of those markets would have similar difficulties to the ones you found in salons. On the one hand, it's really frustrating to know that I can build a product which would make peoples' lives and businesses better, but that I'm unlikely to be able to make it financially viable. But on the other hand, I'm grateful to realize this before pouring months or years of my life into it.

tmaly 10y ago

If you are not creating your own info product, what is the viability of a decent monthly income stream from selling an info product that someone else created?

jasonswett 10y ago
I understand that some people do do this. Affiliate marketing/joint ventures.

jv22222 10y ago

Hey Jason, Amy Hoy says the best way for solo founders to start off is with in info product. Just to cut their teeth at marketing and such. One thing, now that you have got that ball rolling I think you might consider another saas product in the future because you have so much learning about that. The one good thing about a saas product with good market fit is that you will get years of recurring revenue from the same customers. With pluggio I had some customers hitting $3.5k over time (and higher). That is the real power of saas and why it's worth considering in the long run. Edit: I guess it may be useful to note we have a bunch of articles here - https://blog.nugget.one/ https://blog.nugget.one/ - about how to avoid the kind of issues you spoke about in your blog.

randomnumber314 10y ago
http://blog.plugg.io/2016/12/18/blog-let-walmart-delivery-draft/ http://blog.plugg.io/2016/12/18/blog-let-walmart-delivery-dr... published draft?

imarg 10y ago

Starting with an info product is a common suggestion (Amy Hoy is one advocate as a sibling comment noted). But in order to be able to offer an info product don't you need to be really knowledgeable about something? If you hadn't your experience with your SaaS would you be in the same position to write (and sell!) your tutorial?

johnward 10y ago
I still battle with my inner dialog about "not being an expert" at anything. This is something I get caught up on but all you really need to be is more knowledgeable than your target audience. So sell something you already know to people who want to know it. There are still people out there that are basically beginners in web development. There are people one or more rungs down the ladder from you. You don't have to sell them some complex guide to intricacies of angular. How many non-technical people want to sell things only? People serve them all the time. One example I heard recently on a podcast was cssanimation.rocks. Basically his thought process was: I want to teach people something regarding CSS. I can't teach people ALL of CSS in a book (too much work). I like making animations. I'm going to focus on practical animations (forms, list boxes, basically things all sites do). He started posting some useful blog posts that taught people some of the basic concepts and captured emails. Now he has paying subscribers to an email course. Disclaimer: I fail to do everything I'm telling you to do.
- jackgolding 10y ago
  CEO of One Month Rails Mattan Grieffel taught himself to code (mind you his co-founder was teaching others to learn to code at General Assembly.) I think this post from Scott Adams will help you understand how you can be gain more confidence http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/07/career-advice.html http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/07/care...

fabiandesimone 10y ago

Absolutely. Info-products, even the really cheesy looking ones with the spammy VSL's (Video Sales Letter) work insanely well. Depending on your niche you can do some pretty big numbers.

mightymosquito 10y ago

how did you go about marketing this, and what in your opinion would be a good way for a tech guy to start learning basics of marketing your product??

palidanx 10y ago

Hey Jason thanks for the thoughts on your blog post. Just curious, how long did it take you to write the angular on rails book? And I'm assuming it is a PDF?