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The main point here seems to be that the failure to build a SaaS product is blamed in part on the compounding technical debt incurred due to a fast-moving softw

The main point here seems to be that the failure to build a SaaS product is blamed in part on the compounding technical debt incurred due to a fast-moving software ecosystem and the effort involved in keeping up. The point I think most people should consider instead, is that building an app is not the same thing as building a business. Building the app is comparably easy, once you've proven that you understand the market, your target buyer, and have a unique insight/tool/solution to offer that you can deliver via software. If you want to learn a technology, by all means build an app. But if you want to build a SaaS business, keep focused on building the _business_. The app, it turns out, is the easy part.

Alex3917 7y ago
> The app, it turns out, is the easy part. I dunno, I don't know anything about self-driving cars, but when the people making self-driving car SaaS say the software part is difficult I tend to be inclined to believe them. Even if these sorts of entrepreneurship cliches are true in most cases, I don't think it's a good idea to use them to write people off without doing any critical thinking.
- wolco 7y ago
  One person is making a self driving car company in the evenings and weekends and you think the software will be the hardest part? Someone could figure out the software perhaps but selling it to an existing car company would be near impossible but less impossible compared to creating brand new car company and getting them certified in a state.
throwno 7y ago
The only problem with not caring about the technology, is if your solution is trivial to replicate then anyone with a bunch of cash can come in with hired gun coders and out advertise you. Hard to replicate technology gives you some kind of a moat to at least slow down copy cats. edit: Oh, I see, the guy in the article was just throwing together random open source stuff not actually developing anything of value. Never mind.
- briandoll 7y ago
  I'm not sure "hard to replicate technology" is a moat I'd often bet on, given that by definition that does not deliver any specific advantage to your customer. User Experience. Developer Experience. Community. Those are moats you can bet on primarily because it takes so much dedication, expertise, and work. That's not easy to buy.
  - throwno 7y ago
    >User Experience. Developer Experience. Community. But that's what I'm saying. If you find some solution to a problem that's making decent money, some guy with big capital will just come in and "fast follow" you with better user experience and advertise the shit out of it until they have a better or at least more active community. Like suppose this guy's admissions scheduling app actually started making money. Why wouldn't some big player like Pearson just come in and roll him? They can easily hire a bunch of guys to copy what he's doing and then leverage their existing relationships with the education industry to lock him out.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - mrmanner 7y ago
      While Pearson have the advantage of some connections at universities and in the education sector, they also have the disadvantage of being a large and slow organization. Hiring 25 people won’t get you a better product than that lone wolf has, unless you (the one hiring the 25 people) have the vision and understanding of what those 25 people are going to build. And from what I’ve seen of Pearson, I highly doubt they have a clue. Their existing business survives due to market inertia, but they’re very far from delivering quality products.
      - __jal 7y ago
        Education is a very "enterprisey" market in which the purchasers are not the users, who are essentially powerless. Pearson doesn't need to deliver quality, they need to deliver functional + whatever sweetener on the rest of the contract to keep out the competition.
anon73044 7y ago
>But if you want to build a SaaS business, keep focused on building the _business_. The app, it turns out, is the easy part. This. The crux of his issue is focusing too much on tech and not enough on the end user along with the other "Big Design Up Front™" pitfalls.
mikesabat 7y ago
Yes. The other way to look at it is that #4 on his list is the only learning that truly mattered. >>Get your product to be something useful for others as fast as possible. Until you deliver something valuable, you only have a hobby. The other learnings are simply things that shouldn't be done at the expense of customer development.
mdorazio 7y ago
Wish I could upvote this twice. Roughly speaking, "building the product" is maybe 20-30% of the actual business. The other 70-80% is what makes or breaks an actual company - market research, customer discussion, sales, marketing, support, accounting/finance, etc.
mbesto 7y ago
> The app, it turns out, is the easy part. Automating existing Excel spreadsheets is much easier for solution creation success than automating what you perceive to be a business workflow.
jcadam 7y ago
Oh, I've fallen into this trap - not the technical debt so much as the getting so focused on building something cool that I ignore the business side of things (small things, such as, does anyone want this thing?). So in the end I wind up with something only I think is cool :) On the upside, my last failed SaaS product was at least partly responsible in landing me my current job. At the time of my interview I had not yet fully given up on it. I mentioned it (the failing SaaS) because I had learned a few relevant technologies while building it. One of the engineers interviewing me pulled it up on his laptop and said, "Show it to us." So most of the interview turned into a combination demo/technical discussion of the project. They ended up skipping the whiteboard/coding portion of the interview (which is good because I suck at those), and I ended up with a (very good) job offer. The job itself has turned out pretty good so far, too. So, I've got that going for me, which is nice.

Alex3917 7y ago

> The app, it turns out, is the easy part. I dunno, I don't know anything about self-driving cars, but when the people making self-driving car SaaS say the software part is difficult I tend to be inclined to believe them. Even if these sorts of entrepreneurship cliches are true in most cases, I don't think it's a good idea to use them to write people off without doing any critical thinking.

wolco 7y ago
One person is making a self driving car company in the evenings and weekends and you think the software will be the hardest part? Someone could figure out the software perhaps but selling it to an existing car company would be near impossible but less impossible compared to creating brand new car company and getting them certified in a state.

throwno 7y ago

The only problem with not caring about the technology, is if your solution is trivial to replicate then anyone with a bunch of cash can come in with hired gun coders and out advertise you. Hard to replicate technology gives you some kind of a moat to at least slow down copy cats. edit: Oh, I see, the guy in the article was just throwing together random open source stuff not actually developing anything of value. Never mind.

briandoll 7y ago
I'm not sure "hard to replicate technology" is a moat I'd often bet on, given that by definition that does not deliver any specific advantage to your customer. User Experience. Developer Experience. Community. Those are moats you can bet on primarily because it takes so much dedication, expertise, and work. That's not easy to buy.
- throwno 7y ago
  >User Experience. Developer Experience. Community. But that's what I'm saying. If you find some solution to a problem that's making decent money, some guy with big capital will just come in and "fast follow" you with better user experience and advertise the shit out of it until they have a better or at least more active community. Like suppose this guy's admissions scheduling app actually started making money. Why wouldn't some big player like Pearson just come in and roll him? They can easily hire a bunch of guys to copy what he's doing and then leverage their existing relationships with the education industry to lock him out.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - mrmanner 7y ago
    While Pearson have the advantage of some connections at universities and in the education sector, they also have the disadvantage of being a large and slow organization. Hiring 25 people won’t get you a better product than that lone wolf has, unless you (the one hiring the 25 people) have the vision and understanding of what those 25 people are going to build. And from what I’ve seen of Pearson, I highly doubt they have a clue. Their existing business survives due to market inertia, but they’re very far from delivering quality products.
    - __jal 7y ago
      Education is a very "enterprisey" market in which the purchasers are not the users, who are essentially powerless. Pearson doesn't need to deliver quality, they need to deliver functional + whatever sweetener on the rest of the contract to keep out the competition.

anon73044 7y ago

>But if you want to build a SaaS business, keep focused on building the _business_. The app, it turns out, is the easy part. This. The crux of his issue is focusing too much on tech and not enough on the end user along with the other "Big Design Up Front™" pitfalls.

mikesabat 7y ago

Yes. The other way to look at it is that #4 on his list is the only learning that truly mattered. >>Get your product to be something useful for others as fast as possible. Until you deliver something valuable, you only have a hobby. The other learnings are simply things that shouldn't be done at the expense of customer development.

mdorazio 7y ago

Wish I could upvote this twice. Roughly speaking, "building the product" is maybe 20-30% of the actual business. The other 70-80% is what makes or breaks an actual company - market research, customer discussion, sales, marketing, support, accounting/finance, etc.

mbesto 7y ago

> The app, it turns out, is the easy part. Automating existing Excel spreadsheets is much easier for solution creation success than automating what you perceive to be a business workflow.

jcadam 7y ago

Oh, I've fallen into this trap - not the technical debt so much as the getting so focused on building something cool that I ignore the business side of things (small things, such as, does anyone want this thing?). So in the end I wind up with something only I think is cool :) On the upside, my last failed SaaS product was at least partly responsible in landing me my current job. At the time of my interview I had not yet fully given up on it. I mentioned it (the failing SaaS) because I had learned a few relevant technologies while building it. One of the engineers interviewing me pulled it up on his laptop and said, "Show it to us." So most of the interview turned into a combination demo/technical discussion of the project. They ended up skipping the whiteboard/coding portion of the interview (which is good because I suck at those), and I ended up with a (very good) job offer. The job itself has turned out pretty good so far, too. So, I've got that going for me, which is nice.