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How We Bootstrapped Our SaaS Startup to Ramen Profitability

603 points by a13n 9y ago

sulam 9y ago
Currently HN DDOS'd, I do not have an archive link. :/
- a13n 9y ago
  Oh no! Looking into it.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - a13n 9y ago
    Fixed!
    - sulam 9y ago
      Thank you, and now that I can read it -- nice post. I like how you covered a lot of the "wow that didn't work at all" stages. You didn't downplay it, which I see a lot of posts of this sort do.
      - a13n 9y ago
        Thanks! It was 1.5 years of making no money, so it's definitely been a grind... Feels good that something's working, and would love to save others the trouble we went through!
quickthrower2 9y ago
"How we Bootstrapped Our SaaS Startup to Ramen Profitability" Or as they called it in the 80s: "How we Started a business"
- boymeetsworld 9y ago
  I'm dumb and wasn't alive in the 80's. Can someone explain this joke to me?
  - jsjohnst 9y ago
    I'm not sure there was a "joke". Basically GP's saying that the marketing speak laden title is an artifact of our times. Really what does all those words mean that "we built a business" doesn't communicate?
  - breckinloggins 9y ago
    The joke is that "start small and keep expenses low; focus on making enough money to live" was known in the past (and outside of the tech bubble) as simply "starting a business". The title is a bit buzzword-laden, and GP is calling that out.
    - boymeetsworld 9y ago
      That would make sense. Thank you!
    - batiudrami 9y ago
      I actually couldn't tell if the title was a joke or not.
  - j45 9y ago
    Not much of a joke that I think.. For some VC's have a stereotype of looking down on ramen profitability because it gets in the way of convincing young people to burn / spitball / "innovate" a decade of their lives away their 20's swinging for low percentage 100x returns in exchange for burn out, etc... The alternative of say, 10x, can be very profitable and stable and enable just as much. Said differently.. For some, largely on the funded side, everyone's a statistic, and after generally "going hard", they inevitably "go home" because they're told there's no more money from investors, and not enough paying customers. On the self-funded / lean / boot-strapped / ramen profitable side, you get to earn your keep to stay in business so no one can tell you to go home except your customers who stop paying you.
AndrewWarner 9y ago
Stop what you’re doing and link this post to your product. Multiple times. The logo at the top should take me to your product’s homepage, not your blog. The article should link to it, every time you mention it. In the end, recommend that I go see the product you mentioned. I loved this article but realized I never bothered to see your site. It didn’t occur to me.
- hguhghuff 9y ago
  THE Andrew Warner is giving you product advice.... listen up! One of the primary goals of any new startup should be to get Andrew Warner to notice you. I agree with the comment re logo... it just drives me crazy that people don't understand the mechanism of blog post lures people to the product site via the logo link.
- a13n 9y ago
  Interesting, we actually consciously didn't promote because of your interview with Eoghan. He said the more you try to make content convert, the worse it does. The blog post wasn't about us getting customers, it was about helping people startup. We still got 25% of blog traffic to our homepage anyway. Would you still make the change?
  - DanBC 9y ago
    I'd politely ask that you have one link to your product page, and the blog logo is a good place to put this link. When I click Start I'd logo I expect to be taken to their product website, not to the root of their blog. I have nothing to support my opinion, and maybe most people use the web differently to me.
    - dhimes 9y ago
      I'm with you. If I read a blog and am interested in the product, please don't make me work to find it. I expect that clicking on the logo will take me to the product website.
- as1mov 9y ago
nathan_f77 9y ago
Congrats, that's awesome! I think $3,500 per month might be ramen-profitable in the Bay Area, but that's pretty much retirement money if you're living in Spain or Thailand. But seriously, that MRR graph is very impressive!
- a13n 9y ago
  Hey Nathan! Thanks. :) I definitely don't think we'd be breaking even if we were still in SF.
- sergiotapia 9y ago
  You live really well with that in Bolivia. Definitely comfortable enough to retire and have screwing around money.
- juliangoldsmith 9y ago
  That'd be a reasonably income in most of the United States, as well. NYC and the Bay Area aren't exactly representative of the rest of the country.
  - a13n 9y ago
    Keep in mind we have 2 co-founders, so this is about $10/hr working full time. Definitely not a crazy amount of money, just a big milestone for our startup.
- pascalxus 9y ago
  Congrats on getting out of the Bay Area. Getting out the Bay area is a like a million dollar starting bonus!
  - a13n 9y ago
    We'll be back someday. :)
evaneykelen 9y ago
Tip: add a link somewhere on your blog to https://canny.io https://canny.io. I had to manually enter the URL in a new tab to look at your site. For some strange reason many blogs forget to include a link to the Real Thing.
- a13n 9y ago
  Fixed! Thanks for the protip. :)
  - iloveneptune 9y ago
    looks like Canny takes customer feedback to heart :)
    - davidpelayo 9y ago
      it's the minimum a smart entrepreneur should do, I think
      - Kiro 9y ago
        I think you missed the point.
    - a13n 9y ago
      You bet we do!
- hanley 9y ago
  This drives me nuts. I don't understand why it's so commonly missed.
  - osrec 9y ago
    Lol yes. I've often seen the logo on a blog post link to the blog homepage rather than the product homepage. Sort of defeats the purpose of the blog post (which is presumably to drive traffic to the product)!
nik736 9y ago
Where do you pay your taxes?
- a13n 9y ago
  We're a US corporation, so we file there.
  - adrianmsmith 9y ago
    Do you have any problems living in Spain and paying taxes in the US? I mean, does Spain require you to pay taxes because you're living there?
amasad 9y ago
It's been awesome to follow Canny's story from the start. The founders faced incredible skepticism from "experts" early on but they soldiered on and against all odds they're making it! Repl.it has been one of the earliest users of the product and we couldn't be happier. It's embedded here: https://repl.it/feedback https://repl.it/feedback
- a13n 9y ago
  Hey Amjad, thanks for chiming in! It's definitely been awesome watching our companies grow together.
- photonios 9y ago
  Quick piece of feedback (and yea, I'll submit it), is that when I go to repl.it/feedback, the only visual clue that I am on the feedback page is the URL. Maybe it should say "REPL.IT Feedback" in the header, as a visual clue?
  - amasad 9y ago
    Ah thanks, will do
- cbhl 9y ago
  +1 -- I will admit to being one of the early skeptics. Looking forward to seeing Canny grow.
Tehchops 9y ago
I'm curious if the $3,500 figure is raw monthly revenue, profit, or monthly take home for the two founders. If it's raw corporate revenue, then their take home should be much less than that after taxes.
- a13n 9y ago
  Hey! Author here. It's monthly revenue. You get to write off expenses from your revenue before paying taxes. Also for our bracket, tax is only 15%.
  - Tehchops 9y ago
    Thanks for the reply! Is the corporation listed as a C-Corp? Doesn't the business have to pay taxes on profits, then pay employment taxes on what it pays to employees as well, on top of what the employee must pay?
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - robterrin 9y ago
      C corps pay taxes on operating profits which are gross revenues (that is, revenue less cost of goods sold, which for software companies is usually 0) minus operating expenses. Operating expenses include salaried employees. Then you take out interest from any debt you have and pay a percentage on that towards taxes, to get your net profit. Net profit is the amount available to actually take home for shareholders. Once you make your distributions to shareholders, you are left with retained earnings. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_profit#Example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_profit#Example
  - Kiro 9y ago
    How can it be so low? What about social security fees?
    - davedx 9y ago
narvind 9y ago
Great job, guys! Best wishes! One of my friends is building a feedback system like this called qna.dog The key thing is to use AI to come up with the right survey question to ask the user.
gnufied 9y ago
Clicking on "See Board" doesn't do anything on Chrome+Linux.
- a13n 9y ago
  Looks like a bug! Thanks for the report. Will get that fixed asap.
  - a13n 9y ago
    Fixed.
gameguy43 9y ago
Sales funnel feedback: I want to know what this will look like on my website to my users. That screenshot on the top isn't quite enough--I'm not sure which parts of that are my website and which are your widget. Is your widget always a big brick like that, or does it collapse into a little icon (like intercom + others)? Why not just put the actual widget on your homepage? So I started the trial setup, but I bounced at step 1/3. Didn't want to write 5 feature ideas. And I still don't know what it'll look like on my site. (Small side thing: I wanted to use the sample "board" name that you gave, but I couldn't just hit enter--I had to re-type it into the text field.) Good luck! Looks interesting, from what I can understand so far.
- a13n 9y ago
  Hey! This is great feedback, thank you. The widget is always a full page. Here's a public example: https://kitsu.io/feedback/feature-requests https://kitsu.io/feedback/feature-requests We've heard that "small side thing" a few times before so we'll fix that soon. Happy to answer any other questions on our intercom chat!
  - brianbreslin 9y ago
    Could you build a "show me what this would look like on my site" feature that takes their site, and fakes a version on your server (maybe in an iframe or using javascript)?
  - martinml 9y ago
    I know it's my fault and probably obvious but that site doesn't load on Chrome if you have disabled third-party cookies. You might want to show an informative message instead of an infinite spinner :( https://www.chromium.org/for-testers/bug-reporting-guidelines/uncaught-securityerror-failed-to-read-the-localstorage-property-from-window-access-is-denied-for-this-document https://www.chromium.org/for-testers/bug-reporting-guideline...
    - a13n 9y ago
      Known problem: https://feedback.canny.io/bug-reports/p/fix-widget-for-users-with-third-party-cookies-disabled https://feedback.canny.io/bug-reports/p/fix-widget-for-users...
jorts 9y ago
Tracking feature requests is a huge pain for most companies. A few pieces of feedback after dealing with this for years: The Customer Support teams of your customers are going to be one of the main channels for capturing feature requests. We use Zendesk and have custom fields for categorizing and sub-categorizing requests along with a brief description. We do this so that the PMs don't have to read the entire Support ticket if one sentence is about the feature request out of 10 pages of text. If you could build an integration with Zendesk and other major ticketing tools that tie support tickets directly into your product it'd be an easy way to get your customers to have a huge influx of important data. Sales will also provide lots of feature requests as they are also talking to many customers. You have to make this as seamless and as easy as possible otherwise they won't use it. Setting up a Salesforce integration is probably your only way to do that. Tracking feature requests for strategic customers need to be treated differently than for other customers. There needs to be a system to categorize tickets by customer cohorts. If you can tie ARR, deal-breakers or other metrics to feature requests, that will help PMs prioritize them. For your customers, publicly exposing feature requests is a double-edged sword. You're going to capture a lot of feedback. Some of it is good, some is bad. Not taking action on customer feature requests can build negative sentiment in the community.
- a13n 9y ago
  Hey, thanks so much for this. Zendesk + intercom + salesforce integrations, plus segmentation (by MRR, etc) are all on the roadmap. Feedback that internal teams track (opposed to users voting) is kept internal, so users can't see stuff that sales/support adds. A few companies are using us entirely internally. The internal use case is definitely interesting but then we lose the nice organic channel. Thanks again for your insight! Really appreciate it. Say hi on our intercom chat sometime.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - kamilszybalski 9y ago
    Nice product, just gave it a quick try. Some off the cuff thoughts, - Consider a Zapier integration, might save you some time and make delivery/adoption faster - In step 3 of onboarding you ask me to share a url with team members. Can I make this url private/sso? If yes, make the discovery of that immediate. If no, that's going to be a blocker for any internal adoption. - PMs tend to organize their internal priorities and roadmaps in specific ways. I like that I can sort by "coming soon" "done", etc, in your list BUT, what I really want is a consistent visual delivery, this seems to usually be a kanban style board. - Internal teams and stakeholders need to understand why what you're working on right now is the single most important thing that the teams need to be working on. It's important that this assessment criteria is clearly communicated, visually, and understand.
nickporter 9y ago
Congrats guys :) Also good call on the name change!
- a13n 9y ago
  Right??! I can't hear Product Pains without cringing.
ankyth27 9y ago
Superb write-up Andrew, I would recommend you to read this awesome book called Traction, it has definitive ways to market any digital product. Would love to read more about your journey as you progress, keep us posted.
- a13n 9y ago
  Hey there, I have read Traction! Definitely a great way to brainstorm channels that might work for your product. Revolutionary when it came out. Marketing is hard. I think we had a good day!
  - ankyth27 9y ago
    Awesome, I wish you get most sign ups today than ever before. Best of luck.
jaoued 9y ago
Congratulations Andrew. Really great to hear about your journey thus far. You're most welcome to come & visit us in Barcelona, Casablanca or London. NB: your FB and linkedin links at the end of your post do not work.
- a13n 9y ago
  Thanks! Just removed those FB + LinkedIn links... Dunno why they were broken. Will keep you in mind if we visit one of those cities. :)
CodeWriter23 9y ago
I'm guessing by the result I obtained trying to read your post (see below), that somewhere in your article there's a paragraph about running the entire operation on a single 2GB DigitalOcean Instance. https://imgur.com/a/7vCyx https://imgur.com/a/7vCyx
- a13n 9y ago
  Actually it was a 500MB instance, upgrading to 2GB now. Hang tight.
  - CodeWriter23 9y ago
    500MB??? You are much braver than I, good sir. At least 4x as brave. It's back up BTW.
    - a13n 9y ago
      Yep, moved it over to the 2GB server. :) Looks like we didn't have enough confidence in our marketing capabilities! Wasn't expecting #1 on HN for one of our first posts.
  - CodeWriter23 9y ago
    Funny how I have been recently thinking we will need a way to open up feature requests to our customers for a bootstrapped project I'm working on. We can't take the $50/mo. rate just yet. Canny will be in when we get there. We're probably not ready for this just yet. We're currently in a good place with a) solving a problem we have and b) a couple dozen paying customers who are helping us see the cracks in our MVP. Some of whom we can work with face-to-face. That's huge considering our target market isn't the best at articulating the challenges they are facing, so watching them use the app is a great insight vector. It's also really motivating to hang out with people who are excited about using our product.
    - a13n 9y ago
      We've toyed with the idea of introducing a limited free tier. Shoot us a message on Intercom and we may be able to make something work!
fusionflo 9y ago
Blog not loading. HN DDos!
- grzm 9y ago
  A term of art sometimes affectionately employed is "hug of death". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slashdot_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slashdot_effect
- a13n 9y ago
  Fixed! Sorry about that.
buf 9y ago
I have raised money for a company and I have boostrapped a company. Both have their perks, but bootstrapping makes me feel so damn proud. Here are my numbers: https://i.imgur.com/rm5ChOD.png https://i.imgur.com/rm5ChOD.png Solo founder. Saas product. 70k users all word of mouth. Congrats to the folks at Canny.
- a13n 9y ago
  What a beautiful chart you've got there. Congrats to you too!
- aphextron 9y ago
  What's your product?
  - arosier 9y ago
    https://www.castingcall.club/ https://www.castingcall.club/ >https://twitter.com/_buf/status/895078527917203457 https://twitter.com/_buf/status/895078527917203457
  - buf 9y ago
    Community marketplace for amateur YouTube talent. I'd been an amateur voice actor for 10 years so I had a lot of contacts and felt like I was intimate enough with the industry to build something they wanted. The other person linked to it already.
- Cenk 9y ago
  Congrats! That’s amazing. How did you make that graph?
  - buf 9y ago
    https://chartmogul.com https://chartmogul.com
- AhtiK 9y ago
  Looks good! Where's this MRR/etc dashboard coming from? Something built into Google analytics?
franciscop 9y ago
I am originally from Valencia! I'll post this into the Slack tech group there.
- andruby 9y ago
  Valencia is awesome. I lived their cheaply while studying there for a year. We spent €500 per month on a tiny rooftop apartment on the main city square with beautiful views over the city. OP: Contact me if I can help you out there.
- a13n 9y ago
  Cool! We're currently staying in Ruzafa and loving it. One of our favorite cities in Europe so far.
  - franciscop 9y ago
    How long will have you been in Valencia/will you stay around? I can give some tips if you are interested, both about just nice living/food places or the tech community: public@francisco.io
    - a13n 9y ago
      We've been here for a few weeks, and are leaving in a week. Headed back to North America for an undetermined amount of time. We'll definitely be back though! Valencia has been great. This cafe, Cafe ArtySana, is one of my favorite spots to work in the whole world! Great coffee + food, great wifi, plenty of outlets, and they don't mind if you work all day.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- esteban85 9y ago
  awesome I'm in seville getting my own product of the ground http://documize.com http://documize.com, if you every come around it would be great to catch up , or if you make it to the WebSummit in Lisbon in November I'd love to trade notes with you, or any other startup that goes there. Awesome growth graphs and congrats on the early success
vmarsy 9y ago
Interesting post! About living nomad, is there any pain points regarding the management of the company from anywhere? I read the post linked[1] in this blog post which talks about day to day life, even if work-life balance can be tough, it must be awesome for you guys! But what about administrative paperwork or hurdles (IRS, legal mail, and whatnot)? Was there anything different due to the fact that you guys are digital nomads? [1] https://blog.canny.io/building-startup-digital-nomads/ https://blog.canny.io/building-startup-digital-nomads/
- a13n 9y ago
  Right now we're just 2 co-founders. We don't have employees, investors, or an office. So there isn't much management that we can't do online. We talk to our customers using Intercom and email. Most of them are in the US, so being in Europe works well. I don't think we could go to Asia because we'd be sleeping while the US is working. Or we'd have to pull off a crazy sleep schedule. We use a family's place for our business address. Filing taxes isn't any different really.
shusson 9y ago
Happy Canny user here. Do you have any plans to introduce a free tier (or almost free) plan? We have a low amount of traffic and compared to the other services we currently get for <$10 a month (hosting, auth0, sentry, github) I'm struggling to justify the cost we are currently spending on Canny.
- a13n 9y ago
  Hey Shane, we have toyed with the idea of introducing a free tier, but aren't 100% sure if that's the right move for us. Would love to chat more, want to message us on Intercom whenever you've got a few minutes?
  - shusson 9y ago
    Yeah will do
  - overcast 9y ago
    Offering a free tier, just invites freeloaders, who are THE WORST end users to deal with. They are the most demanding, and will tie up valuable support time. Do not do free anything for SaaS. If you're product is good enough, make them pay for it.
    - a13n 9y ago
      You should tell that to Slack! Clearly didn't work out for them. /s In all seriousness, ChartMogul wrote a great post about how freemium can work for SaaS https://blog.chartmogul.com/saas-pricing-two-sides-freemium/ https://blog.chartmogul.com/saas-pricing-two-sides-freemium/
- davidpelayo 9y ago
  what other services would you guys consider to use instead? Just curiosity!
soniawalker234 9y ago
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artur_makly 9y ago
recycled idea. this reminds me a lot of UserVoice https://techcrunch.com/2010/12/13/uservoice-brings-its-customer-feedback-service-to-facebook-pages/ https://techcrunch.com/2010/12/13/uservoice-brings-its-custo... and how they cleverly highjacked the brand’s main users.
- spraak 9y ago
  Most ideas aren't original, just executed in an original way
- artur_makly 9y ago
  actually i was wrong. i was thinking of GetSatisfaction. remember those guys? re: recycling ideas i guess if u are just starting on your first startup and just want to feel things out for the first time — its worth the toil. but life is short. better to focus on real innovate
  - Kiro 9y ago
    What is your point?
- simplysh 9y ago
  Nothing is original. It's more important to be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable. Originality is non-existent.
- a13n 9y ago
  You don't have to be first, just last ;)
fierro 9y ago
congrats guys! Cool write up
justhackedme 9y ago
Yeah.. those pictures aren't the ramen you're starving yourself with...
ivanzhao 9y ago
Such a humane way to describe your startup experience. I really enjoyed reading it! I also noticed in a linked article that you are using Notion. (I am the co-founder). Happy to give you guys a free account to help you bootstrap. You should receive a message from us shortly ;-)
- davidpelayo 9y ago
  I would be interested on that, btw
  - factsaresacred 9y ago
    Sorry pleb. The offer is only for SaaS startups that reach the frontpage. /s
  - ivanzhao 9y ago
    Sure. Sign up Notion (https://notion.so https://notion.so), reply with your account email down here, and we'll hook you up with a free Pro account. We'll check this thread periodically till this Friday EOD.
    - dubed1505 9y ago
      Hi ivanzhao, Looks like a promising product. Just signed up vincent@dubedout.eu
- a13n 9y ago
  Hey Ivan, we LOVE using Notion! We use it every day to plan our product and marketing roadmaps. I wrote the outline for this blog post in Notion. Thanks for the great product!
hn_hates_tor 9y ago
a13n is on a role, blog post makes it to the top of HN and he likely received an invite to YC W2018 (you did right?). Way to go!
- esteban85 9y ago
  if you did but congrats :)
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
pattle 9y ago
Congratulations on getting to this point. In the article it says > Canny spends hundreds a month, mostly on hosting and other SaaS What other SaaS do you use? Forgive me if this was mentioned and I've missed it.
- a13n 9y ago
  I mentioned that in the comments section: https://blog.canny.io/saas-startup-ramen-profitability/#comment-13 https://blog.canny.io/saas-startup-ramen-profitability/#comm...
erikb 9y ago
Happy to see that this kind of startup still exists. It feels so 2008.
jomkr 9y ago
I may be in Madrid next week, fancy a drink/bouldering sesh? I'm a 25 year old Amazon SDE from the UK.
- a13n 9y ago
  Would love to, but we'll be in Valencia for a few more days then leaving Europe. For now. Sidenote: have you climbed at the castle in London? That was such a cool gym!
tixocloud 9y ago
Congratulations on your early success and thanks for sharing your story. It's inspiring and I love your storytelling style. I don't think people realize that it takes awhile to get everything started and your timeline/decisions clearly show that. It's also a great product for us but as a fellow bootstrapper, the price range is out of our reach at the moment. We will be looking into when get more scale. We're building a simple CRM tool that tracks calls, meetings and all kinds of details for companies. It would be interesting if you already have an API available that we can integrate with. If you're ever in Edinburgh/Glasgow, be happy to take you and your significant other out for a coffee/beer.
- a13n 9y ago
  Yeah! Literally 18 months of making $0. Such a grind. At some point you just decide you're tired of making $0 and do anything and everything to not do that anymore. Reach out on our Intercom and we may be able to make something work. Would love to visit Scotland! Probably next year when it's warmer again. :)
  - tixocloud 9y ago
    Can't seem to figure out how to contact you on Intercom :( I don't blame you - it can get a little bit chilly in Scotland.
Kiro 9y ago
This is very meta but I want to post a feature request to Canny about allowing anonymous features requests but I can't since I don't want to create an account (hence the request).
- a13n 9y ago
  A lot of our customers are SaaS companies. To them, a feature request is worthless if they don't know who gave it. We don't plan on supporting anonymous feedback until we expand our focus to consumer apps. Also, if you don't leave your email, how will you know once the feature is built?
FidelCashflow 9y ago
S!=aS. I can't think of many instances where I'd pay a recurring fee for the use of a piece of code. Code to me is an end-product, meaning, I buy it then I own it in perpetuity. I still have my copy of XP from the Paleozoic era but it's still mine and if I choose, I could spin it up. I can only think of two instances where I'd agree S[is]aS; signing up for a full class, and buying tickets. I thought both of these were clever ideas but I'd still be hard pressed to agree to pay anybody else for this "service." That said, hat's off to those of you who make this work.
noir_lord 9y ago
Chrome says your site is using SFUI (which is beautiful) so I did some digging, it looks like that is the Apple San Francisco font, how the hell did you get a license for that as web font?.
- a13n 9y ago
  Download them for free here: https://developer.apple.com/fonts/ https://developer.apple.com/fonts/

603 points by a13n 9y ago

sulam 9y ago

Currently HN DDOS'd, I do not have an archive link. :/

a13n 9y ago
Oh no! Looking into it.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- a13n 9y ago
  Fixed!
  - sulam 9y ago
    Thank you, and now that I can read it -- nice post. I like how you covered a lot of the "wow that didn't work at all" stages. You didn't downplay it, which I see a lot of posts of this sort do.
    - a13n 9y ago
      Thanks! It was 1.5 years of making no money, so it's definitely been a grind... Feels good that something's working, and would love to save others the trouble we went through!

quickthrower2 9y ago

"How we Bootstrapped Our SaaS Startup to Ramen Profitability" Or as they called it in the 80s: "How we Started a business"

boymeetsworld 9y ago
I'm dumb and wasn't alive in the 80's. Can someone explain this joke to me?
- jsjohnst 9y ago
  I'm not sure there was a "joke". Basically GP's saying that the marketing speak laden title is an artifact of our times. Really what does all those words mean that "we built a business" doesn't communicate?
- breckinloggins 9y ago
  The joke is that "start small and keep expenses low; focus on making enough money to live" was known in the past (and outside of the tech bubble) as simply "starting a business". The title is a bit buzzword-laden, and GP is calling that out.
  - boymeetsworld 9y ago
    That would make sense. Thank you!
  - batiudrami 9y ago
    I actually couldn't tell if the title was a joke or not.
- j45 9y ago
  Not much of a joke that I think.. For some VC's have a stereotype of looking down on ramen profitability because it gets in the way of convincing young people to burn / spitball / "innovate" a decade of their lives away their 20's swinging for low percentage 100x returns in exchange for burn out, etc... The alternative of say, 10x, can be very profitable and stable and enable just as much. Said differently.. For some, largely on the funded side, everyone's a statistic, and after generally "going hard", they inevitably "go home" because they're told there's no more money from investors, and not enough paying customers. On the self-funded / lean / boot-strapped / ramen profitable side, you get to earn your keep to stay in business so no one can tell you to go home except your customers who stop paying you.

AndrewWarner 9y ago

Stop what you’re doing and link this post to your product. Multiple times. The logo at the top should take me to your product’s homepage, not your blog. The article should link to it, every time you mention it. In the end, recommend that I go see the product you mentioned. I loved this article but realized I never bothered to see your site. It didn’t occur to me.

hguhghuff 9y ago
THE Andrew Warner is giving you product advice.... listen up! One of the primary goals of any new startup should be to get Andrew Warner to notice you. I agree with the comment re logo... it just drives me crazy that people don't understand the mechanism of blog post lures people to the product site via the logo link.
a13n 9y ago
Interesting, we actually consciously didn't promote because of your interview with Eoghan. He said the more you try to make content convert, the worse it does. The blog post wasn't about us getting customers, it was about helping people startup. We still got 25% of blog traffic to our homepage anyway. Would you still make the change?
- DanBC 9y ago
  I'd politely ask that you have one link to your product page, and the blog logo is a good place to put this link. When I click Start I'd logo I expect to be taken to their product website, not to the root of their blog. I have nothing to support my opinion, and maybe most people use the web differently to me.
  - dhimes 9y ago
    I'm with you. If I read a blog and am interested in the product, please don't make me work to find it. I expect that clicking on the logo will take me to the product website.
as1mov 9y ago

nathan_f77 9y ago

Congrats, that's awesome! I think $3,500 per month might be ramen-profitable in the Bay Area, but that's pretty much retirement money if you're living in Spain or Thailand. But seriously, that MRR graph is very impressive!

a13n 9y ago
Hey Nathan! Thanks. :) I definitely don't think we'd be breaking even if we were still in SF.
sergiotapia 9y ago
You live really well with that in Bolivia. Definitely comfortable enough to retire and have screwing around money.
juliangoldsmith 9y ago
That'd be a reasonably income in most of the United States, as well. NYC and the Bay Area aren't exactly representative of the rest of the country.
- a13n 9y ago
  Keep in mind we have 2 co-founders, so this is about $10/hr working full time. Definitely not a crazy amount of money, just a big milestone for our startup.
pascalxus 9y ago
Congrats on getting out of the Bay Area. Getting out the Bay area is a like a million dollar starting bonus!
- a13n 9y ago
  We'll be back someday. :)

evaneykelen 9y ago

Tip: add a link somewhere on your blog to https://canny.io https://canny.io. I had to manually enter the URL in a new tab to look at your site. For some strange reason many blogs forget to include a link to the Real Thing.

a13n 9y ago
Fixed! Thanks for the protip. :)
- iloveneptune 9y ago
  looks like Canny takes customer feedback to heart :)
  - davidpelayo 9y ago
    it's the minimum a smart entrepreneur should do, I think
    - Kiro 9y ago
      I think you missed the point.
  - a13n 9y ago
    You bet we do!
hanley 9y ago
This drives me nuts. I don't understand why it's so commonly missed.
- osrec 9y ago
  Lol yes. I've often seen the logo on a blog post link to the blog homepage rather than the product homepage. Sort of defeats the purpose of the blog post (which is presumably to drive traffic to the product)!

nik736 9y ago

Where do you pay your taxes?

a13n 9y ago
We're a US corporation, so we file there.
- adrianmsmith 9y ago
  Do you have any problems living in Spain and paying taxes in the US? I mean, does Spain require you to pay taxes because you're living there?

amasad 9y ago

It's been awesome to follow Canny's story from the start. The founders faced incredible skepticism from "experts" early on but they soldiered on and against all odds they're making it! Repl.it has been one of the earliest users of the product and we couldn't be happier. It's embedded here: https://repl.it/feedback https://repl.it/feedback

a13n 9y ago
Hey Amjad, thanks for chiming in! It's definitely been awesome watching our companies grow together.
photonios 9y ago
Quick piece of feedback (and yea, I'll submit it), is that when I go to repl.it/feedback, the only visual clue that I am on the feedback page is the URL. Maybe it should say "REPL.IT Feedback" in the header, as a visual clue?
- amasad 9y ago
  Ah thanks, will do
cbhl 9y ago
+1 -- I will admit to being one of the early skeptics. Looking forward to seeing Canny grow.

Tehchops 9y ago

I'm curious if the $3,500 figure is raw monthly revenue, profit, or monthly take home for the two founders. If it's raw corporate revenue, then their take home should be much less than that after taxes.

a13n 9y ago
Hey! Author here. It's monthly revenue. You get to write off expenses from your revenue before paying taxes. Also for our bracket, tax is only 15%.
- Tehchops 9y ago
  Thanks for the reply! Is the corporation listed as a C-Corp? Doesn't the business have to pay taxes on profits, then pay employment taxes on what it pays to employees as well, on top of what the employee must pay?
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - robterrin 9y ago
    C corps pay taxes on operating profits which are gross revenues (that is, revenue less cost of goods sold, which for software companies is usually 0) minus operating expenses. Operating expenses include salaried employees. Then you take out interest from any debt you have and pay a percentage on that towards taxes, to get your net profit. Net profit is the amount available to actually take home for shareholders. Once you make your distributions to shareholders, you are left with retained earnings. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_profit#Example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_profit#Example
- Kiro 9y ago
  How can it be so low? What about social security fees?
  - davedx 9y ago

narvind 9y ago

Great job, guys! Best wishes! One of my friends is building a feedback system like this called qna.dog The key thing is to use AI to come up with the right survey question to ask the user.

gnufied 9y ago

Clicking on "See Board" doesn't do anything on Chrome+Linux.

a13n 9y ago
Looks like a bug! Thanks for the report. Will get that fixed asap.
- a13n 9y ago
  Fixed.

gameguy43 9y ago

Sales funnel feedback: I want to know what this will look like on my website to my users. That screenshot on the top isn't quite enough--I'm not sure which parts of that are my website and which are your widget. Is your widget always a big brick like that, or does it collapse into a little icon (like intercom + others)? Why not just put the actual widget on your homepage? So I started the trial setup, but I bounced at step 1/3. Didn't want to write 5 feature ideas. And I still don't know what it'll look like on my site. (Small side thing: I wanted to use the sample "board" name that you gave, but I couldn't just hit enter--I had to re-type it into the text field.) Good luck! Looks interesting, from what I can understand so far.

a13n 9y ago
Hey! This is great feedback, thank you. The widget is always a full page. Here's a public example: https://kitsu.io/feedback/feature-requests https://kitsu.io/feedback/feature-requests We've heard that "small side thing" a few times before so we'll fix that soon. Happy to answer any other questions on our intercom chat!
- brianbreslin 9y ago
  Could you build a "show me what this would look like on my site" feature that takes their site, and fakes a version on your server (maybe in an iframe or using javascript)?
- martinml 9y ago
  I know it's my fault and probably obvious but that site doesn't load on Chrome if you have disabled third-party cookies. You might want to show an informative message instead of an infinite spinner :( https://www.chromium.org/for-testers/bug-reporting-guidelines/uncaught-securityerror-failed-to-read-the-localstorage-property-from-window-access-is-denied-for-this-document https://www.chromium.org/for-testers/bug-reporting-guideline...
  - a13n 9y ago
    Known problem: https://feedback.canny.io/bug-reports/p/fix-widget-for-users-with-third-party-cookies-disabled https://feedback.canny.io/bug-reports/p/fix-widget-for-users...

jorts 9y ago

Tracking feature requests is a huge pain for most companies. A few pieces of feedback after dealing with this for years: The Customer Support teams of your customers are going to be one of the main channels for capturing feature requests. We use Zendesk and have custom fields for categorizing and sub-categorizing requests along with a brief description. We do this so that the PMs don't have to read the entire Support ticket if one sentence is about the feature request out of 10 pages of text. If you could build an integration with Zendesk and other major ticketing tools that tie support tickets directly into your product it'd be an easy way to get your customers to have a huge influx of important data. Sales will also provide lots of feature requests as they are also talking to many customers. You have to make this as seamless and as easy as possible otherwise they won't use it. Setting up a Salesforce integration is probably your only way to do that. Tracking feature requests for strategic customers need to be treated differently than for other customers. There needs to be a system to categorize tickets by customer cohorts. If you can tie ARR, deal-breakers or other metrics to feature requests, that will help PMs prioritize them. For your customers, publicly exposing feature requests is a double-edged sword. You're going to capture a lot of feedback. Some of it is good, some is bad. Not taking action on customer feature requests can build negative sentiment in the community.

a13n 9y ago
Hey, thanks so much for this. Zendesk + intercom + salesforce integrations, plus segmentation (by MRR, etc) are all on the roadmap. Feedback that internal teams track (opposed to users voting) is kept internal, so users can't see stuff that sales/support adds. A few companies are using us entirely internally. The internal use case is definitely interesting but then we lose the nice organic channel. Thanks again for your insight! Really appreciate it. Say hi on our intercom chat sometime.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- kamilszybalski 9y ago
  Nice product, just gave it a quick try. Some off the cuff thoughts, - Consider a Zapier integration, might save you some time and make delivery/adoption faster - In step 3 of onboarding you ask me to share a url with team members. Can I make this url private/sso? If yes, make the discovery of that immediate. If no, that's going to be a blocker for any internal adoption. - PMs tend to organize their internal priorities and roadmaps in specific ways. I like that I can sort by "coming soon" "done", etc, in your list BUT, what I really want is a consistent visual delivery, this seems to usually be a kanban style board. - Internal teams and stakeholders need to understand why what you're working on right now is the single most important thing that the teams need to be working on. It's important that this assessment criteria is clearly communicated, visually, and understand.

nickporter 9y ago

Congrats guys :) Also good call on the name change!

a13n 9y ago
Right??! I can't hear Product Pains without cringing.

ankyth27 9y ago

Superb write-up Andrew, I would recommend you to read this awesome book called Traction, it has definitive ways to market any digital product. Would love to read more about your journey as you progress, keep us posted.

a13n 9y ago
Hey there, I have read Traction! Definitely a great way to brainstorm channels that might work for your product. Revolutionary when it came out. Marketing is hard. I think we had a good day!
- ankyth27 9y ago
  Awesome, I wish you get most sign ups today than ever before. Best of luck.

jaoued 9y ago

Congratulations Andrew. Really great to hear about your journey thus far. You're most welcome to come & visit us in Barcelona, Casablanca or London. NB: your FB and linkedin links at the end of your post do not work.

a13n 9y ago
Thanks! Just removed those FB + LinkedIn links... Dunno why they were broken. Will keep you in mind if we visit one of those cities. :)

CodeWriter23 9y ago

I'm guessing by the result I obtained trying to read your post (see below), that somewhere in your article there's a paragraph about running the entire operation on a single 2GB DigitalOcean Instance. https://imgur.com/a/7vCyx https://imgur.com/a/7vCyx

a13n 9y ago
Actually it was a 500MB instance, upgrading to 2GB now. Hang tight.
- CodeWriter23 9y ago
  500MB??? You are much braver than I, good sir. At least 4x as brave. It's back up BTW.
  - a13n 9y ago
    Yep, moved it over to the 2GB server. :) Looks like we didn't have enough confidence in our marketing capabilities! Wasn't expecting #1 on HN for one of our first posts.
- CodeWriter23 9y ago
  Funny how I have been recently thinking we will need a way to open up feature requests to our customers for a bootstrapped project I'm working on. We can't take the $50/mo. rate just yet. Canny will be in when we get there. We're probably not ready for this just yet. We're currently in a good place with a) solving a problem we have and b) a couple dozen paying customers who are helping us see the cracks in our MVP. Some of whom we can work with face-to-face. That's huge considering our target market isn't the best at articulating the challenges they are facing, so watching them use the app is a great insight vector. It's also really motivating to hang out with people who are excited about using our product.
  - a13n 9y ago
    We've toyed with the idea of introducing a limited free tier. Shoot us a message on Intercom and we may be able to make something work!

fusionflo 9y ago

Blog not loading. HN DDos!

grzm 9y ago
A term of art sometimes affectionately employed is "hug of death". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slashdot_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slashdot_effect
a13n 9y ago
Fixed! Sorry about that.

buf 9y ago

I have raised money for a company and I have boostrapped a company. Both have their perks, but bootstrapping makes me feel so damn proud. Here are my numbers: https://i.imgur.com/rm5ChOD.png https://i.imgur.com/rm5ChOD.png Solo founder. Saas product. 70k users all word of mouth. Congrats to the folks at Canny.

a13n 9y ago
What a beautiful chart you've got there. Congrats to you too!
aphextron 9y ago
What's your product?
- arosier 9y ago
  https://www.castingcall.club/ https://www.castingcall.club/ >https://twitter.com/_buf/status/895078527917203457 https://twitter.com/_buf/status/895078527917203457
- buf 9y ago
  Community marketplace for amateur YouTube talent. I'd been an amateur voice actor for 10 years so I had a lot of contacts and felt like I was intimate enough with the industry to build something they wanted. The other person linked to it already.
Cenk 9y ago
Congrats! That’s amazing. How did you make that graph?
- buf 9y ago
  https://chartmogul.com https://chartmogul.com
AhtiK 9y ago
Looks good! Where's this MRR/etc dashboard coming from? Something built into Google analytics?

franciscop 9y ago

I am originally from Valencia! I'll post this into the Slack tech group there.

andruby 9y ago
Valencia is awesome. I lived their cheaply while studying there for a year. We spent €500 per month on a tiny rooftop apartment on the main city square with beautiful views over the city. OP: Contact me if I can help you out there.
a13n 9y ago
Cool! We're currently staying in Ruzafa and loving it. One of our favorite cities in Europe so far.
- franciscop 9y ago
  How long will have you been in Valencia/will you stay around? I can give some tips if you are interested, both about just nice living/food places or the tech community: public@francisco.io
  - a13n 9y ago
    We've been here for a few weeks, and are leaving in a week. Headed back to North America for an undetermined amount of time. We'll definitely be back though! Valencia has been great. This cafe, Cafe ArtySana, is one of my favorite spots to work in the whole world! Great coffee + food, great wifi, plenty of outlets, and they don't mind if you work all day.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
esteban85 9y ago
awesome I'm in seville getting my own product of the ground http://documize.com http://documize.com, if you every come around it would be great to catch up , or if you make it to the WebSummit in Lisbon in November I'd love to trade notes with you, or any other startup that goes there. Awesome growth graphs and congrats on the early success

vmarsy 9y ago

Interesting post! About living nomad, is there any pain points regarding the management of the company from anywhere? I read the post linked[1] in this blog post which talks about day to day life, even if work-life balance can be tough, it must be awesome for you guys! But what about administrative paperwork or hurdles (IRS, legal mail, and whatnot)? Was there anything different due to the fact that you guys are digital nomads? [1] https://blog.canny.io/building-startup-digital-nomads/ https://blog.canny.io/building-startup-digital-nomads/

a13n 9y ago
Right now we're just 2 co-founders. We don't have employees, investors, or an office. So there isn't much management that we can't do online. We talk to our customers using Intercom and email. Most of them are in the US, so being in Europe works well. I don't think we could go to Asia because we'd be sleeping while the US is working. Or we'd have to pull off a crazy sleep schedule. We use a family's place for our business address. Filing taxes isn't any different really.

shusson 9y ago

Happy Canny user here. Do you have any plans to introduce a free tier (or almost free) plan? We have a low amount of traffic and compared to the other services we currently get for <$10 a month (hosting, auth0, sentry, github) I'm struggling to justify the cost we are currently spending on Canny.

a13n 9y ago
Hey Shane, we have toyed with the idea of introducing a free tier, but aren't 100% sure if that's the right move for us. Would love to chat more, want to message us on Intercom whenever you've got a few minutes?
- shusson 9y ago
  Yeah will do
- overcast 9y ago
  Offering a free tier, just invites freeloaders, who are THE WORST end users to deal with. They are the most demanding, and will tie up valuable support time. Do not do free anything for SaaS. If you're product is good enough, make them pay for it.
  - a13n 9y ago
    You should tell that to Slack! Clearly didn't work out for them. /s In all seriousness, ChartMogul wrote a great post about how freemium can work for SaaS https://blog.chartmogul.com/saas-pricing-two-sides-freemium/ https://blog.chartmogul.com/saas-pricing-two-sides-freemium/
davidpelayo 9y ago
what other services would you guys consider to use instead? Just curiosity!

soniawalker234 9y ago

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artur_makly 9y ago

recycled idea. this reminds me a lot of UserVoice https://techcrunch.com/2010/12/13/uservoice-brings-its-customer-feedback-service-to-facebook-pages/ https://techcrunch.com/2010/12/13/uservoice-brings-its-custo... and how they cleverly highjacked the brand’s main users.

spraak 9y ago
Most ideas aren't original, just executed in an original way
artur_makly 9y ago
actually i was wrong. i was thinking of GetSatisfaction. remember those guys? re: recycling ideas i guess if u are just starting on your first startup and just want to feel things out for the first time — its worth the toil. but life is short. better to focus on real innovate
- Kiro 9y ago
  What is your point?
simplysh 9y ago
Nothing is original. It's more important to be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable. Originality is non-existent.
a13n 9y ago
You don't have to be first, just last ;)

fierro 9y ago

congrats guys! Cool write up

justhackedme 9y ago

Yeah.. those pictures aren't the ramen you're starving yourself with...

ivanzhao 9y ago

Such a humane way to describe your startup experience. I really enjoyed reading it! I also noticed in a linked article that you are using Notion. (I am the co-founder). Happy to give you guys a free account to help you bootstrap. You should receive a message from us shortly ;-)

davidpelayo 9y ago
I would be interested on that, btw
- factsaresacred 9y ago
  Sorry pleb. The offer is only for SaaS startups that reach the frontpage. /s
- ivanzhao 9y ago
  Sure. Sign up Notion (https://notion.so https://notion.so), reply with your account email down here, and we'll hook you up with a free Pro account. We'll check this thread periodically till this Friday EOD.
  - dubed1505 9y ago
    Hi ivanzhao, Looks like a promising product. Just signed up vincent@dubedout.eu
a13n 9y ago
Hey Ivan, we LOVE using Notion! We use it every day to plan our product and marketing roadmaps. I wrote the outline for this blog post in Notion. Thanks for the great product!

hn_hates_tor 9y ago

a13n is on a role, blog post makes it to the top of HN and he likely received an invite to YC W2018 (you did right?). Way to go!

esteban85 9y ago
if you did but congrats :)

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

pattle 9y ago

Congratulations on getting to this point. In the article it says > Canny spends hundreds a month, mostly on hosting and other SaaS What other SaaS do you use? Forgive me if this was mentioned and I've missed it.

a13n 9y ago
I mentioned that in the comments section: https://blog.canny.io/saas-startup-ramen-profitability/#comment-13 https://blog.canny.io/saas-startup-ramen-profitability/#comm...

erikb 9y ago

Happy to see that this kind of startup still exists. It feels so 2008.

jomkr 9y ago

I may be in Madrid next week, fancy a drink/bouldering sesh? I'm a 25 year old Amazon SDE from the UK.

a13n 9y ago
Would love to, but we'll be in Valencia for a few more days then leaving Europe. For now. Sidenote: have you climbed at the castle in London? That was such a cool gym!

tixocloud 9y ago

Congratulations on your early success and thanks for sharing your story. It's inspiring and I love your storytelling style. I don't think people realize that it takes awhile to get everything started and your timeline/decisions clearly show that. It's also a great product for us but as a fellow bootstrapper, the price range is out of our reach at the moment. We will be looking into when get more scale. We're building a simple CRM tool that tracks calls, meetings and all kinds of details for companies. It would be interesting if you already have an API available that we can integrate with. If you're ever in Edinburgh/Glasgow, be happy to take you and your significant other out for a coffee/beer.

a13n 9y ago
Yeah! Literally 18 months of making $0. Such a grind. At some point you just decide you're tired of making $0 and do anything and everything to not do that anymore. Reach out on our Intercom and we may be able to make something work. Would love to visit Scotland! Probably next year when it's warmer again. :)
- tixocloud 9y ago
  Can't seem to figure out how to contact you on Intercom :( I don't blame you - it can get a little bit chilly in Scotland.

Kiro 9y ago

This is very meta but I want to post a feature request to Canny about allowing anonymous features requests but I can't since I don't want to create an account (hence the request).

a13n 9y ago
A lot of our customers are SaaS companies. To them, a feature request is worthless if they don't know who gave it. We don't plan on supporting anonymous feedback until we expand our focus to consumer apps. Also, if you don't leave your email, how will you know once the feature is built?

FidelCashflow 9y ago

S!=aS. I can't think of many instances where I'd pay a recurring fee for the use of a piece of code. Code to me is an end-product, meaning, I buy it then I own it in perpetuity. I still have my copy of XP from the Paleozoic era but it's still mine and if I choose, I could spin it up. I can only think of two instances where I'd agree S[is]aS; signing up for a full class, and buying tickets. I thought both of these were clever ideas but I'd still be hard pressed to agree to pay anybody else for this "service." That said, hat's off to those of you who make this work.

noir_lord 9y ago

Chrome says your site is using SFUI (which is beautiful) so I did some digging, it looks like that is the Apple San Francisco font, how the hell did you get a license for that as web font?.

a13n 9y ago
Download them for free here: https://developer.apple.com/fonts/ https://developer.apple.com/fonts/