3 ms·

If you have a few dozen people who want to pay you what, a total of $2,000 a month, you are already better than 99% of businesses. Paul Graham had 50 customers

If you have a few dozen people who want to pay you what, a total of $2,000 a month, you are already better than 99% of businesses. Paul Graham had 50 customers for Viaweb like this, and eventually scaled it to 200 before being acquired. If you only have 3 people who are interested and they only want to pay maybe $10 a month, then you need to scale up your outreach and get in front of more potential users

onlyrealcuzzo 9y ago
Hey, thanks! It's closer to $2k a month than $10 a month. I'm 3 for 3 with companies I've propositioned. So I think if I had the connections to reach dozens of software companies, it's not unreasonable that I might have a dozen or so companies willing to sign up. I don't have those contacts, though. So I'm not there yet. I'm a 3. I still don't know what this means. Should I be thinking about an accelerator? Should I be thinking about raising a lot of money? Should I be thinking about hiring? Or am I still really early? Should my focus still be on talking to software companies and figuring out the distribution?
- quuquuquu 9y ago
  Sorry for the late reply! I'm going to continue to think outloud here for you, just my thoughts :) I think if the addressable market is only 54mm then an accelerator might not be too interested. You would also need a cofounder in their mind, someone who does the business stuff I guess, and success is not easily screenable there. It sounds like your product is quite niche and requires high touch enterprise sales? If your product is in maintenance mode only, then you could probably handle this yourself, even without many connections. If you have a multi billion dollar market to <<disrupt>> and a small team of people to do demos, contracts, support, etc, then you are a strong candidate for an accelerator I think, since in their mind it's all about growing or dying. But if not, then you can run a lifestyle business with a few dozen customers :) I currently am working on a b2c product and I'm doing everything myself after most investors panned the idea, despite decent user count :)
  - onlyrealcuzzo 9y ago
    Interesting. I'd love to learn more about your company and the journey! It sounds like you've already been where I am now [= Also, I'm unfamiliar with the term addressable market, but after Googling, it sounds like the TAM is closer to $500M annually (maybe). This is a new product in a new market. So I don't know if the TAM would be whatever I capture. But, given how fast somewhat similar products have grown, it seems like I would be able to capture around 10-15% of the total market by 2022. The total market being the number of software companies in the world, a somewhat easily estimatable number, multiplied by the price of my service. I don't know if that's how to calculate the TAM or not.
    - quuquuquu 9y ago
      Please drop me your contact info if you'd like :) Yeah the more I hear now, I think you should network with whoever will give you more solid advice from the Y Combinator network, or any of the other ones out there. Someone you trust can hopefully help you estimate the TAM, I think 10% capture is a good number to target. If it needs lots of enterprise sales and you need to grow quicker than your competitors, you will need outside capital of say 100-300k for salaries and etc to give it a shot!! Good luck :) You are definitely in a better place than people who only have an idea, or an MVP with no sales!
      - onlyrealcuzzo 9y ago
        Right on. Yeah, I'd love to hear more. My email is yahn007 at gmail.

onlyrealcuzzo 9y ago

Hey, thanks! It's closer to $2k a month than $10 a month. I'm 3 for 3 with companies I've propositioned. So I think if I had the connections to reach dozens of software companies, it's not unreasonable that I might have a dozen or so companies willing to sign up. I don't have those contacts, though. So I'm not there yet. I'm a 3. I still don't know what this means. Should I be thinking about an accelerator? Should I be thinking about raising a lot of money? Should I be thinking about hiring? Or am I still really early? Should my focus still be on talking to software companies and figuring out the distribution?

quuquuquu 9y ago
Sorry for the late reply! I'm going to continue to think outloud here for you, just my thoughts :) I think if the addressable market is only 54mm then an accelerator might not be too interested. You would also need a cofounder in their mind, someone who does the business stuff I guess, and success is not easily screenable there. It sounds like your product is quite niche and requires high touch enterprise sales? If your product is in maintenance mode only, then you could probably handle this yourself, even without many connections. If you have a multi billion dollar market to <<disrupt>> and a small team of people to do demos, contracts, support, etc, then you are a strong candidate for an accelerator I think, since in their mind it's all about growing or dying. But if not, then you can run a lifestyle business with a few dozen customers :) I currently am working on a b2c product and I'm doing everything myself after most investors panned the idea, despite decent user count :)
- onlyrealcuzzo 9y ago
  Interesting. I'd love to learn more about your company and the journey! It sounds like you've already been where I am now [= Also, I'm unfamiliar with the term addressable market, but after Googling, it sounds like the TAM is closer to $500M annually (maybe). This is a new product in a new market. So I don't know if the TAM would be whatever I capture. But, given how fast somewhat similar products have grown, it seems like I would be able to capture around 10-15% of the total market by 2022. The total market being the number of software companies in the world, a somewhat easily estimatable number, multiplied by the price of my service. I don't know if that's how to calculate the TAM or not.
  - quuquuquu 9y ago
    Please drop me your contact info if you'd like :) Yeah the more I hear now, I think you should network with whoever will give you more solid advice from the Y Combinator network, or any of the other ones out there. Someone you trust can hopefully help you estimate the TAM, I think 10% capture is a good number to target. If it needs lots of enterprise sales and you need to grow quicker than your competitors, you will need outside capital of say 100-300k for salaries and etc to give it a shot!! Good luck :) You are definitely in a better place than people who only have an idea, or an MVP with no sales!
    - onlyrealcuzzo 9y ago
      Right on. Yeah, I'd love to hear more. My email is yahn007 at gmail.