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Hey guys, My name is Mike. I'm co-founder and product at Everhour. I'd be happy to answer your questions if any. Feel free to ask here or on Medium.

adventured 8y ago
What's the venture capital market like in Belarus? What kind of options are there for a growing SaaS business, in regards to either angel investors or traditional venture capital firms?
- evermike 8y ago
  Generally speaking, the are no VC is Belarus. However, we do have some great success stories (e.g. AIMatter (was acquired by Google), MSQRD (was acquired by Facebook)). Most promising startups incorporate in US from day one and raise money there. In addition, there are number of funds in Russia or Ukraine. In other words, if you have an interesting idea, you will find money or money will find you :)
  - qaq 8y ago
    Can’t believe you didn’t mention wargaming they are actually a unicorn.
    - evermike 8y ago
      I agree. I have not listed many cool companies. It is a long and IMHO impressive list. TargetProcess, PandaDoc, FriendlyData, Eightydays.me, Maps.me (was acquired by Mail.Ru Group), SplitMetrics etc. Plus the biggest company is Epam (Market Cap, 7.406B).
stevoski 8y ago
FTA: > 5) The advantages of annual billing How do you encourage customers to choose annual billing?
- jaxn 8y ago
  I'd love to know the same question. We are making our way to $1mm ARR and have very low churn, but no annual billing option. Do you give a discount at all?
  - Cthulhu_ 8y ago
    Not an entrepreneur, but, 12 months at 10 months of subscription fee is still more than 6 months at 6 months of subscription fee. Always offer a "loyalty discount" if it means they commit to paying for a minimal amount of time.
    - jaxn 8y ago
      But our churn is really really low with an average subscription length several years long. So 12 months at 10 months fee is less than 12 at 12. There is work to help people update info, etc. And an annual check or ACH would save card fees. But it doesn't sound like OP offered a discount, so just curious.
      - scrollaway 8y ago
        At the end of the day, you know your customer base better than anyone on HN, so you are the best-placed to do this research. I will say that in SaaS, unless you're extremely enterprise, a several-years-worth LTV is very rare. If you are in enterprise, you might gain customers by having annual billing at all. If you're unsure then I second the other commenters' opinions, do 12 months at full price. If you want to try a discount for some time to see if it helps conversion, that gives you a comparison point. There are advantages in annual billing beyond "it's cheaper", so you can't compare directly to monthly billing.
  - evermike 8y ago
    We don't offer a discount except for volume. If the client has 50+ employees, then we negotiate.
  - option_greek 8y ago
jsprenne 8y ago
Hey, congrats! We are going a similar path with https://fulfilli.com/ https://fulfilli.com/. We haven't raised funding to this day, hence a few questions: 1) do you plan to raise money from now on? 2) Do you have any traction in the US and is your ambition to become a market leader there? 3) Do you think it's possible to get a significant traction in the US without "being local"?
- evermike 8y ago
  (1) We do not consider investments ATM. We have enough cashflow to implement all short-term ideas. But of course I do not exclude such an opportunity in the future. We always start with small experiments and increment. (2) We have no ambitions to market leadership. Moreover, I'm not sure that this is possible. The requirements for ideal time tracker are very different based on industry and company size. If we want to be a leader, we will have to add all the features. But then we will become difficult to use and this will have a negative impact on existing customers. While our main market is the US, we have customers from 70 countries. We will continue our expansion on top markets, instead of focusing on one. (3) I think it depends on the product. We have a fairly low ARPU - about $50. Our main client is SMB. They don't visit us and no personal meetings required. If you do enterprise - I think it makes more sense.
welder 8y ago
Ever thought about a WakaTime integration?
- evermike 8y ago
  Unfortunately no. But I will be grateful if you briefly explain why it's worth doing. What benefits it can bring?
debacle 8y ago
Mike, thank you for all of this. 1. Can you talk more about the ramp up from the idea of Everhour to actually working on the project full time. Did you guys slowly wean yourself off of consulting work, or was there a decision to jump into Everhour as a SaaS early on? 2. How do you handle nonpayment for annual subscription renewal? Do you reach to the company, or shut them down immediately? 3. What kind of features do a free vs paid userbase generally request?
- evermike 8y ago
  1) It was a gradual process. We would not have enough money for the whole team, besides, we could not at one day say goodbye to our existing clients. We had quite interesting companies. Therefore, we gradually ceased all new quotes and when some project was ending, we switched employees to the product. 2) We contact them, ask what was the reason, but in general, if they don’t renew, they no longer use the product. Often there is no such a company anymore. 3) Well, for example internal invoicing. They ask better design, more templates, while larger ones used Xero or Quickbooks and they just need integration.
jorisw 8y ago
Hi Mike! Thanks for sharing your story and congratulations on your success. I have two questions: 1 - How should I reconsile your statement that you should be the user of your own product, with pivoting several times due to misunderstanding market demands? Were you still your own customer after those pivots? 2 - Since you mention pivots, have you been applying lean startup / customer development practices?
- evermike 8y ago
  Great question. 1. Let me give you an example. We were using GitHub and all the embed functionality was working fine because we were using it every day. But we did not use Asana or Trello. Then we decided to use this platforms as well in order to check UX there. And as soon as we did it, we've noticed performance issues, bugs etc. As soon as we redo those integrations, we noticed better conversion. Besides, it happens that an external tool changes something in their interface and our embed controls may disappear or simply will look bad. We can't wait for customers to point on this. In addition, we asked e.g. Asana to include us into an early adapters list when they do some A/B testing or release Beta feature. 2. I can not say that we strictly adhere to some methodology. Just trying to think over any new feature, ask the opinion of our customers, early release with the limited functionality. If there is a demand - we are refining. If not, we think what we did wrong and can redo it completely or even deprecate.

adventured 8y ago

What's the venture capital market like in Belarus? What kind of options are there for a growing SaaS business, in regards to either angel investors or traditional venture capital firms?

evermike 8y ago
Generally speaking, the are no VC is Belarus. However, we do have some great success stories (e.g. AIMatter (was acquired by Google), MSQRD (was acquired by Facebook)). Most promising startups incorporate in US from day one and raise money there. In addition, there are number of funds in Russia or Ukraine. In other words, if you have an interesting idea, you will find money or money will find you :)
- qaq 8y ago
  Can’t believe you didn’t mention wargaming they are actually a unicorn.
  - evermike 8y ago
    I agree. I have not listed many cool companies. It is a long and IMHO impressive list. TargetProcess, PandaDoc, FriendlyData, Eightydays.me, Maps.me (was acquired by Mail.Ru Group), SplitMetrics etc. Plus the biggest company is Epam (Market Cap, 7.406B).

stevoski 8y ago

FTA: > 5) The advantages of annual billing How do you encourage customers to choose annual billing?

jaxn 8y ago
I'd love to know the same question. We are making our way to $1mm ARR and have very low churn, but no annual billing option. Do you give a discount at all?
- Cthulhu_ 8y ago
  Not an entrepreneur, but, 12 months at 10 months of subscription fee is still more than 6 months at 6 months of subscription fee. Always offer a "loyalty discount" if it means they commit to paying for a minimal amount of time.
  - jaxn 8y ago
    But our churn is really really low with an average subscription length several years long. So 12 months at 10 months fee is less than 12 at 12. There is work to help people update info, etc. And an annual check or ACH would save card fees. But it doesn't sound like OP offered a discount, so just curious.
    - scrollaway 8y ago
      At the end of the day, you know your customer base better than anyone on HN, so you are the best-placed to do this research. I will say that in SaaS, unless you're extremely enterprise, a several-years-worth LTV is very rare. If you are in enterprise, you might gain customers by having annual billing at all. If you're unsure then I second the other commenters' opinions, do 12 months at full price. If you want to try a discount for some time to see if it helps conversion, that gives you a comparison point. There are advantages in annual billing beyond "it's cheaper", so you can't compare directly to monthly billing.
- evermike 8y ago
  We don't offer a discount except for volume. If the client has 50+ employees, then we negotiate.
- option_greek 8y ago

jsprenne 8y ago

Hey, congrats! We are going a similar path with https://fulfilli.com/ https://fulfilli.com/. We haven't raised funding to this day, hence a few questions: 1) do you plan to raise money from now on? 2) Do you have any traction in the US and is your ambition to become a market leader there? 3) Do you think it's possible to get a significant traction in the US without "being local"?

evermike 8y ago
(1) We do not consider investments ATM. We have enough cashflow to implement all short-term ideas. But of course I do not exclude such an opportunity in the future. We always start with small experiments and increment. (2) We have no ambitions to market leadership. Moreover, I'm not sure that this is possible. The requirements for ideal time tracker are very different based on industry and company size. If we want to be a leader, we will have to add all the features. But then we will become difficult to use and this will have a negative impact on existing customers. While our main market is the US, we have customers from 70 countries. We will continue our expansion on top markets, instead of focusing on one. (3) I think it depends on the product. We have a fairly low ARPU - about $50. Our main client is SMB. They don't visit us and no personal meetings required. If you do enterprise - I think it makes more sense.

welder 8y ago

Ever thought about a WakaTime integration?

evermike 8y ago
Unfortunately no. But I will be grateful if you briefly explain why it's worth doing. What benefits it can bring?

debacle 8y ago

Mike, thank you for all of this. 1. Can you talk more about the ramp up from the idea of Everhour to actually working on the project full time. Did you guys slowly wean yourself off of consulting work, or was there a decision to jump into Everhour as a SaaS early on? 2. How do you handle nonpayment for annual subscription renewal? Do you reach to the company, or shut them down immediately? 3. What kind of features do a free vs paid userbase generally request?

evermike 8y ago
1) It was a gradual process. We would not have enough money for the whole team, besides, we could not at one day say goodbye to our existing clients. We had quite interesting companies. Therefore, we gradually ceased all new quotes and when some project was ending, we switched employees to the product. 2) We contact them, ask what was the reason, but in general, if they don’t renew, they no longer use the product. Often there is no such a company anymore. 3) Well, for example internal invoicing. They ask better design, more templates, while larger ones used Xero or Quickbooks and they just need integration.

jorisw 8y ago

Hi Mike! Thanks for sharing your story and congratulations on your success. I have two questions: 1 - How should I reconsile your statement that you should be the user of your own product, with pivoting several times due to misunderstanding market demands? Were you still your own customer after those pivots? 2 - Since you mention pivots, have you been applying lean startup / customer development practices?

evermike 8y ago
Great question. 1. Let me give you an example. We were using GitHub and all the embed functionality was working fine because we were using it every day. But we did not use Asana or Trello. Then we decided to use this platforms as well in order to check UX there. And as soon as we did it, we've noticed performance issues, bugs etc. As soon as we redo those integrations, we noticed better conversion. Besides, it happens that an external tool changes something in their interface and our embed controls may disappear or simply will look bad. We can't wait for customers to point on this. In addition, we asked e.g. Asana to include us into an early adapters list when they do some A/B testing or release Beta feature. 2. I can not say that we strictly adhere to some methodology. Just trying to think over any new feature, ask the opinion of our customers, early release with the limited functionality. If there is a demand - we are refining. If not, we think what we did wrong and can redo it completely or even deprecate.