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Heck no I don't regret it. Just over three years ago I left my cushy job at Facebook to start a company. It took a year and a half of grinding to make our firs

by a13n 8y ago

Heck no I don't regret it. Just over three years ago I left my cushy job at Facebook to start a company. It took a year and a half of grinding to make our first dollar. Now we're ramen profitable and still growing strong. [1] The reason it took so long is because I was an inexperienced founder. I could build the product, but stuff like getting customers, pricing our product, writing a landing page... These are not things that software engineers at big companies have to worry about. It took years for me to pick up these skills, and I'm still learning loads. And I'm so glad I learned them because now if I started all over again, it'd take a fraction of the time to build something successful. Now, different people are different. If you really love solving technical problems and don't really care about sales/marketing/business, being a founder might not be right for you. If you have a low risk profile, or care a lot about work/life balance and comfort, big companies can be great for that. [1]: https://canny.io https://canny.io

riku_iki 8y ago
> I could build the product, but stuff like getting customers, pricing our product, writing a landing page... It would be extremely interesting to read what lessons you learned on this road :-)
- a13n 8y ago
  Ask and you shall receive! https://canny.io/blog/saas-startup-ramen-profitability/ https://canny.io/blog/saas-startup-ramen-profitability/ https://canny.io/blog/lessons-learned-bootstrapping-saas/ https://canny.io/blog/lessons-learned-bootstrapping-saas/
  - riku_iki 8y ago
    Oh, thanks!
justboxing 8y ago
How are you just 'ramen profitable' when your lowest / basic plan to track just 100 users costs a whopping 50$ / month [1] ? Don't mean to come off as snarky, but, unless you are targeting corporations and enterprises for your service, your pricing model [2] would be too much for most bootstrapped companies and early stage startups... [1], [2] https://canny.io/pricing https://canny.io/pricing
- a13n 8y ago
  We don't target bootstrapped and early stage startups. Our target audience is B2B software companies with 10-1000 employees. We don't sell to enterprises. We've thought about introducing a free tier for smaller companies!

by a13n 8y ago

riku_iki 8y ago

> I could build the product, but stuff like getting customers, pricing our product, writing a landing page... It would be extremely interesting to read what lessons you learned on this road :-)

a13n 8y ago
Ask and you shall receive! https://canny.io/blog/saas-startup-ramen-profitability/ https://canny.io/blog/saas-startup-ramen-profitability/ https://canny.io/blog/lessons-learned-bootstrapping-saas/ https://canny.io/blog/lessons-learned-bootstrapping-saas/
- riku_iki 8y ago
  Oh, thanks!

justboxing 8y ago

How are you just 'ramen profitable' when your lowest / basic plan to track just 100 users costs a whopping 50$ / month [1] ? Don't mean to come off as snarky, but, unless you are targeting corporations and enterprises for your service, your pricing model [2] would be too much for most bootstrapped companies and early stage startups... [1], [2] https://canny.io/pricing https://canny.io/pricing

a13n 8y ago
We don't target bootstrapped and early stage startups. Our target audience is B2B software companies with 10-1000 employees. We don't sell to enterprises. We've thought about introducing a free tier for smaller companies!