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I've crashed and burned on SaaS enough that I'm very into the landing page approach -- don't build the product, but convince people you have so that they can cl
by dangero 9y ago
I've crashed and burned on SaaS enough that I'm very into the landing page approach -- don't build the product, but convince people you have so that they can click the "buy now" button. That way you feel more confident that the market exists while you're actually building it. After all the projects I've failed at, nothing is harder for me to do than spend 200+ hours on something without having a clue whether it will reap benefits or not. Corey spent 100 hours trying to gather traction. He could have potentially skipped the 100 hours it took to build it and instead just tested the sales side.
There are people who can know where a market is and confidently blaze straight into it without any validation. I think I'm just not that genius or lucky.
- ianstormtaylor 9y agoI'm curious, if you're willing to share, what were the projects you worked on that failed?
- dangero 9y agoI built a competitor to Reddit and Digg (at the time) called RatherGather that had some differentiators that ended up not mattering to people. I wish I understood Metcalfe's Law better at the time. I built a mobile game called Roaring Racers where you had to use your voice to make your car move (roar louder, go faster). I built a stickers app for iOS stickers launch that allowed you to import anything. This one wasn't a total dud, but the way Apple positioned the store, the traction wasn't at a scale that made it worth my time. And then of course there's the laundry list of companies that I've been employed by and built products for where months into it I discovered nobody in the company had really done any market testing, but they got clearance to build something for $XXX,XXX anyways. 9/10 startups fail, so just by nature of that fact, most of us spend our time working on building tech that never really "makes it". There have been great successes too, but you asked about the failures.
- dangero 9y agoEdit: I forgot one that is fairly recent too. I built a Windows app that allowed you to watch Twitch picture in picture while playing a game. Sold one copy before shutting it down.
- albertgoeswoof 9y agoRoaring racers sounds like a brilliant idea! Where can I play it??
- dangero 9y agoIt came out maybe a year after the App Store launched, and the 100 copies I sold never justified maintaining it. It's long gone. Only way to play it would be an old iPhone that still has it installed and I don't even have one of those.
- KekDemaga 9y agoGood idea but I for one am glad that roaring racers did not become pokemon go. Kids are loud enough.
- tomcam 9y agoI absolutely love your creativity and persistence. Thanks for sharing. You're totally going to hit one out of the park.
- andrewchambers 9y agoI think the second/third/forth SaaS site won't take 200 hours once you get in the groove.
- MediumD 9y agoIf I understand you correctly: You whip up a bootstrap page that describes the product with a 'beta sign-up & pay' button, and if enough people sign up and pay, you build it? - What sort of demo do you have on the website? Or is it just a basic description of the product and a list of features? - Does this mean you get payment processing setup before development every time? - How do you manage returning money if you decide not to do it?
- dangero 9y agoI usually just do believable screenshots and a call to action like, "Request a trial" or "Buy now" it depends on what it's for. I never take any money I just log the actions people took on the site. If it's a buy button, then you can just say, "Thanks for your interest. We are launching soon."
- zeptomu 9y agoBut it can also have the opposite effect: people get put off as they think the product is vaporware (rightfully).
- beambot 9y agoLet's say you get 20 people to signup, all of whom think it is (rightfully) vaporware. Well, at least now you can be sure there's a real market (>>20) to justify development. Even if you drop those 20 on the floor... the validation is more than worthwhile.
- Untit1ed 9y agoMy experience in doing this has been that a surprising number of people who click the buy button still put their email address down afterwards, and none of the people I've talked to who did were remotely miffed about the deception. It probably depends on the audience, but people are more understanding than you'd think about the need to look before you leap, especially when they know you're just a solo entrepreneur.
- crispinb 9y ago
- alexpetralia 9y agoAny recommendations for quick and effective landing page solutions? I assume something like MailChimp for email sign-ups?
- cookingrobot 9y agohttps://launchrock.com https://launchrock.com is the classic tool for this.
- lugg 9y agoEmail signups don't really validate your idea anymore, even if they manage to get you some emails. There was a post a while ago on Reddit where someone built this little project: https://fauxbuy.com https://fauxbuy.com Basically lets you add a fake buy button easily and emails you when someone attempts to buy.
- Untit1ed 9y agoI'm building something to do exactly this at https://nichetester.com https://nichetester.com - I should note that I used the method described in the OP to validate it and it worked really well :).
- mindhash 9y agolandbot.io is interesting. Try it out
- stephengillie 9y agoDo you only consider a project a success when other people are using it?
- justonepost 9y agoTragedy of the commons. This stops working as everyone creates these vaporware pages.
- nickjj 9y agoThat's essentially what Kickstarter is. You get backed before you build your product, and you don't even need to convince people it exists because they expect your product not to be finished. I think it's an excellent model as long as you live up to your promise and deliver above and beyond expectations. It's how I started my software developer course selling business and validated the idea (spending hundreds of hours making a course is no different than a SAAS MVP). I wrote all about this process recently in an Indie Hackers interview: https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses/nick-janetakis https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses/nick-janetakis.
- laydn 9y agoI don't mean to sound harsh, but, just 200+ hours? That's a little more than a month of work. I wouldn't even begin to expect any meaningful returns with just one month of full-time work.
- codingdave 9y agoThat was known back in the day as "vaporware". Somehow today that concept evolved into "marketing".