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I wrote a SaaS product because the internet made me believe it'd make me rich
- codenesium 6y agoI think everybody has to learn this lesson. Treat it like a learning experience and you haven't lost anything but time hopefully. Earlybrd.io is currently down and I wanted to check it out. Hug of death.
- stets 6y agoYeah, I am getting pwned pretty hard. Thanks for your kind words -- putting up a temp page now
- _bxg1 6y agoIt's nice to see a more "normal" anecdote about this process. Usually you only see the SaaS equivalent of unicorns.
- stets 6y agoThanks :-) Semi-failures are interesting as well
- polote 6y agoGoing to be down voted for that but after all those discussions of HN readers it is disappointing to see that click-bait titles works the same here than everywhere else
- bdcravens 6y agoWell site guidelines say to submit the original title, not a clickbait alteration. Mods are good about enforcing that.
- stets 6y agoForgive me -- I really didn't know. I've updated the destination article's title.
- polote 6y agoWait 1 minute for author to update the original title to the click-bait version
- stets 6y agoDone, actually. I just thought it was a good title, did not mean to mislead or direct to something that wasn't relevant.
- _bxg1 6y agoMaybe it's changed, but the title I see doesn't feel clickbait-y. It actually made me think the author was going to have completely failed; I'm glad to see there was some modest success.
- stets 6y agoThanks :-) I think my success is about equal to my work. It is hard to work on something when you're unsure if it will succeed.
- BubRoss 6y agoThey work even better here I would say, people just eat them up. The shorter and more ambiguous the title, the better. No description necessary and you can link straight to a press release.
- bdcravens 6y agoEditorialized title (even if OP is the author). Should be: "Thoughts on Learning To Design, Build and Launch A SaaS"
- bdcravens 6y agoNote that author changed the title on the website to match what they submitted here after discussion. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23344422 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23344422
- jaequery 6y agoOne of the better clickbait titles I've come across on HN
- stets 6y agoCopywriting is one tool of many in a bootstrapper's arsenal.
- craze3 6y agoI thought this was a pretty good article that didn't over-sensationalize SaaS products, while still explaining how they can lead to success. It sucks that the OP's website didn't "blow up", but then again, most micro-SaaS's are not meant to go viral like that. One point I would add is that there should be more promotion other than just posting on HN + PH. If that's where your launch stops, you may not be realizing your full potential. Another little nitpick; The domain they used (EarlyBrd.io) was kinda weird due to the unconventional spelling. Yes, you don't need a dot com, but it should still be something you can mention in conversation and have the other party instantly understand & be able to spell, without you spelling it out for them. Lastly, why does everyone here seem to care more about post titles than actual posts nowadays?
- stets 6y agoThanks for your comments. I am OP :-) My site went down for a bit while this is front-paged, but is back up now. Definitely I think it could be more of a success if I put more effort in (duh?). Definitely there is a need to promote across multiple channels and ideally own your audience/create your own content because then you have traffic generation on demand. The name is weird, I shipped anyways. earlybird.com and earlybrd.com were not free. I have spelled it out many times. It's annoying and sucks.
- cmdshiftf4 6y agoHire people on upwork to promote it for you and when you've connected with them sell them the same tool for their own needs.
- stets 6y agoInception! Love it.
- jrumbut 6y agoLove the commitment to shipment, an inspiration to us all. I also liked the post title and thought it was fun but also made it clear what to expect. Have you thought about whether you could expand the service to provide more value (and get paid more) by freelancers or considered other avenues where you could turn "RSS + notifications" into another business with a minimum of effort (other job sites, auction listings, it seems like there could be a lot)?
- peterwwillis 6y agoEarly 2000s: Remember when everyone wanted to try to build a business on the idea that "internet + non-technical-business = $$$$$" ? Early 2020s: Remember when everyone wanted to try to build a business on the idea that "internet + some software a random person might pay $5 for = $$$$$" ?
- quidsentio 6y agoI like (and agree with) the learnings. I don't understand why the cynic(?) tone at the beginning.
- stets 6y agohow do ya mean? I don't put out a lot of content so any feedback is good.
- rodolphoarruda 6y agoI was following this same path until yesterday, when I gave up. I have the mock-ups and all the notes with me, but I won't go ahead because I know it would be too much of an effort. Web dev has become rocket science for those who started in this business in the late 90's, at least IMHO.
- stets 6y agoGet after it! It's not too late and you don't need the latest *js to make something valuable. The effort can be worth it!
- rodolphoarruda 6y agoVue.js was part of the architecture -- no kidding! But hey, thanks for the encouragement.
- stets 6y agoFuck vue.js. Launch your thing. EarlyBrd only used jinja2 templates with Flask. Now I'm migrating to laravel and only use Blade templates. Prove your thing out first because most users don't really care unless you're making some kind of real-time data analytics bs (in which case inqtel or other prob wants to send you some money)
- pembrook 6y agoWhat did you find were the downsides of developing a product in Flask vs. Laravel? Curious as I've been debating about which direction to steer a friend who is a designer trying their build their own product. He's played around with python, and liked it, so I was going to suggest flask (since most of online tutorials start there). But I've also heard good things about PHP/Laravel for beginners.
- stets 6y agoI would recommend Laravel or even Rails for a beginner over Flask. Again, with Flask I was re-writing and implementing things I didn't need to. Like hashing passwords. Or building user scaffolding. Flask fans will argue that you can do all of these. Yes...but you probably are grabbing some module and reading the docs and then messing around with it for a while. My forgotten email system in flask was a celery task running in a sidecar container and using an additional redis container for queueing and grabbing that job. In laravel that looks more like one command. `php artisan ui vue --auth`. Maybe there is a better way but I found myself struggling for a lot. Yes I didn't need to use psycopg2 and make nasty raw SQL calls because SQLAlchemy exists. SQLAlchemy isn't built in though. Django has a lot of these features and much of flask's attractiveness is in being light-weight so I guess it makes sense. Today, I'd say for solo-founders, try out Laravel > Rails > Django > Flask > everything else
- HatchedLake721 6y ago“build and they will come”, a fallacy everyone falls into
- andreygrehov 6y agoBut why is the OP's website down? I get 403.
- stets 6y agoJust redirected to a temporary signup...tl;dr is that I was doing some funny stuff with Flask in a docker container...
- sky_rw 6y agoPeople seem to have forgotten or not realize that SaaS is just a sales model to sell a $2,400 software product for $100 on a payment plan without requiring manager approval. If you can't find anybody who will pay you $2,400 for this product, then you won't be able to build a business selling it for $100/month.
- triyambakam 6y agoI don't think it's quite 1-1 like that anymore.
- stets 6y agoYou're right and wrong. It can be that but I think SaaS can be nice because it puts some responsibility on the service provider to update things and add features. Or maybe we are moving to an MRR world and everyone is evil...
- sky_rw 6y agoThe fundamental concept that is missing from this post is that it's not the billing method that determines the success of the business, it's the value you bring to your customers. The service provider isn't going to update anything if they shut down 6 months after launch.
- stets 6y ago100%.
- asdf333 6y agocongratulations! that was quite an adventure you went on and it might feel discouraging now but you are essentially set up for success the next time you start a business. just keep those lessons in mind and if you don’t make those mistakes again, i think you will get to ramen profitability at least.
- stets 6y agoI have a few other projects generating some revenue but nothing SaaS just yet. My exp doing this will definitely help in the future
- throwaway391003 6y agoSure, blame the internet, rather than yourself
- stets 6y agothe internet is the reason I wrote it. My failures are my own :-) thanks though
- throwaway391003 6y agoHmmmm maybe I should retract my previous comment then
- triyambakam 6y ago> Go for B2B if you can. Freelancers aren't rich. I don't understand this... can anyone explain?
- adventured 6y agoI believe they're suggesting - in line with the point about not charging $5-$10 - that you should not build lower value SaaS products for eg freelancers (with the author implying that customer group doesn't have much money to spend). And that you should instead target larger business customers that will pay more.
- umvi 6y ago"Sell to businesses, not individuals. Businesses have deeper pockets than individuals"
- michaelbuckbee 6y agoB2B vs B2C aren't two starkly different things - it's a spectrum between them. Freelancers are a notoriously difficult market to sell to as they perceive every dollar spent as coming out of their wallet. Compare that to a large enterprise company where the person making the buying decision is going to take home the same salary at the end of the week whatever the decision ends up being.
- shkkmo 6y agoEven among freelancers, those who use upwork are probably far more strapped for cash.
- shoo 6y agolarge enterprise companies can be reasonably challenging to sell things too, but for a whole range of different reasons ( not in sales, do work at an enterprise that will take 18 months to arrive at a decision that it is acceptable to start using a different vendor's monitoring tool )
- 0xEFF 6y agoB2B means selling to other businesses instead of to individuals.
- dvt 6y agoThis is a pretty good atticle, and the product is actually quite solid (maybe a tad overpriced), but this right here is a rookie mistake: > In January, 2019 I launched to HackerNews and some subreddits ... Really? That's a "launch" these days? At least scrounge up a few hundred bucks and throw up some Facebook ads. Reddit and Hacker News have some of the most cynical and thrifty readers out there. Networking and getting the word out is half the battle. With such little effort put into the launch, OP could have been selling a dollar for fifty cents and no one would've cared.
- cheez 6y agoThe best indie launch I've seen was the initial launch of Balsamiq. It was played off as "meh" by Peldi but it was masterful. I had launched a product 2 years before and until then, I couldn't understand what I did wrong. I obsessed over what he did. Every single thing. Trying to find where he got "lucky". There was no luck.
- dvt 6y agoCan I get some insight into this? What did Balsamiq do? I'm not familiar.
- cheez 6y agohard to really say, most of the stuff will be bitrotted. But, he networked VERY hard.
- Sophistifunk 6y agoHe was all over various Flex dev spaces, IIRC. Not only was Balsamiq written in Flex, we were all building the kinds of things it was perfectly suited for, too.
- onion2k 6y agoIt was an early wire framing tool for prototyping UIs. The clever bit (that seems obvious now) was that it looked intentionally rough so that clients would focus on the overall UI layout instead of the minor details. It was a great app.
- Androider 6y agoWriting the software is the easy part of SaaS.
- stets 6y agoone million percent true.
- ibejoeb 6y agoToward that... >Go for B2B if you can. Freelancers aren't rich. You might not love the b2b sales cycle either. Even if you get a whale of a client, you're gonna negotiate hard, probably fork your product for it, and get paid in 180 days if you're lucky.
- stets 6y agoOP here -- feeling that hard right now. I have another side gig (maybe I'll write about it soon). Working with a company that does ~300mm in revenue and date from contract sent to signed was around 45 days. I was blown away. still haven't been paid either. Hoping I'm embedded after this.
- petargyurov 6y agoYou're right. But that doesn't make it easy :P I think a lot of devs think that project management, business sense and marketing (basically everything but development) are easier. I used to think that too. Until I had to start thinking about business strategies, sharing my product and understanding my customers... If only I could install packages for that kind of stuff IRL.
- dragandj 6y agoBut you can install packages for that, too. It’s just that you’ve used the wrong terminology. Instead of “install”, it’s called “pay”, and instead of “packages”, it’s “professionals”.
- Strom 6y agoThat's heavily dependent on who we are talking about. A solo founder with 20 years of marketing experience but zero programming experience won't find writing the software to be the easy part.
- sokoloff 6y agoI enjoyed the article. I'll point out that you've got links to about 12 different external tools, but 0 links to the SaaS product you're talking about...
- stets 6y agoThanks! Yeah, I messed up. I wrote this in about an hour and posted it a few places not expecting the traffic I got!
- Ataraxy 6y agoLots of people can write an app. At the end of the day you either have to get lucky with organic traction or be a little less lucky but be a relatively skilled marketer that has a good command of how to convert paid traffic.
- stets 6y agoI'd argue organic traction can also be engineered. You are mostly correct though. It's a skill that can be improved on for sure.
- AlchemistCamp 6y agoFascinating. So, you don't think the quality of the product itself matters much?
- stets 6y agoYour product has to work and solve a real need. It isn't that hard to figure out how to create an app. Communicating how that product creates value for customers, marketing it and doing all of the rest of the grunt work is the hard, difficult bit.
- enraged_camel 6y ago>>It isn't that hard to figure out how to create an app. I think this totally depends on the app, and the problem domain. CRUD apps? Sure, those have very low barrier to entry. But they aren't the only type of app out there.
- stets 6y agoSure -- definitely true. But you can cover a TON of ground for b2b applications with basic CRUD operations.
- Ataraxy 6y agoProduct definitely matters to a degree, but being able to sell people on it (ie. convince someone they need it) is a more important skill. That's obviously an insanely broad generalization, but so is me saying lots of people can write an app. You could argue that in a lot of domains you barely even need an app at all that requires more than wiring up google sheets to zapier or some such if you can cleverly package it up and target the right audience with it. SaaS products are merely an exercise in problem solving for people/businesses and there's a lot of ways you can usually solve these sorts of problems without needing to be super technical with it. At that point your bottleneck will always end up being acquiring and converting traffic.
- levig 6y agoGood article. Glad to see people doing what they enjoy in the it world
- stets 6y agothanks!
- weaselpus 6y agoNice article and have to agree: > Go for B2B if you can. Freelancers aren't rich. Even if freelancers have money they seem to spend less.
- unnouinceput 6y agoFreelancers spend money on what they want/need not on OP's crappy wishes.
- 4444 6y agoThanks for sharing it , really cool one, but > Framework / Language really doesn't matter that much. Choose what you're comfortable with, "even if it's php." I think modern php is able to manage almost anything, starting from facebook as well.
- stets 6y agoYep! Php ain't all that bad. I'm migrating earlybrd to laravel soon and enjoy it a lot. just poking a bit of fun because nerds like to hate on php.
- petargyurov 6y agoI have never used Laravel, but I am an avid user of Flask. In fact my current project is built in it. Do you mind expanding on why you're transitioning? I hope you don't mind me saying, but it sounds like you didn't have the best setup (i.e.: > raw SQL queries with psycopg2). With a couple of packages your environment and dev process would be a lot smoother.
- stets 6y agoFlask is great and could work fine. I just found that Laravel was easy enough to scaffold things out a lot easier (like user auth). I'm new to web app dev as well and have found MVC and other framework concepts making more since as I develop more in Laravel. SQL queries worked fine for me but a lot of people disagree with doing things that way. In contrast, though, eloquent is much simpler once you learn.
- tkainrad 6y agoNice article, fun to read! I think solo-founders should try hard to find a simple and efficient tech stack - including hosting. Why use containers and EC2 when you could just use a PaaS like Pythonanywhere and be done with it?
- robertlagrant 6y agoI love PA, but I wouldn't say that using them is "being done with it". Containers are pretty useful for all sorts.
- stets 6y agoIt's mostly familiarity. I was working on AWS as an infra guy and doing a lot of docker stuff. Python anywhere looks cool but I still wanna manage my servers. I'd prob go digitalocean or similar if launching today. (with my containers ofc)
- unnouinceput 6y agoQoute: "In the Fall of 2017 I'd done a ton of freelancing on the (garbage) website Upwork. Upwork is a bit of a grind. User's can search for a skill they'd like to freelance in ( Cisco Networking, Python programming, Painting Dogs, whatever) and apply for job's via proposals. The crappy thing about Upwork is that once a job is posted, the heat is on to apply. The longer you let the job sit, the more likely that other freelancers will apply for it and get the work. Being early was an extreme advantage, even if you are the best. After googling around a bit, I found that Upwork had no way for user's to get alerts on new jobs, even though many user's requested it. "Hmmm, I thought, a market need". There were, though, countless forum posts and low-quality YouTube videos explaining how to set up alerts via IFTTT and Upwork's RSS feeds feature. " As a long time Upwork freelancer (12 years now) - short answer would be that you're not cut for freelancer's market. Long answer is harder to stomach, so skip next paragraph: 1 - Being early is disadvantage actually. Being early means your bid gets dumped in job poster's email along with the others. You want to be 1st (hard to be and you'll never have the guarantee even with a fast notification) or let it sit for 24 hours. 2 - Rant about not having notifications then answering yourself about using RSS. If RSS is hard for you to make it work then I'll have to wonder about the rest of your skills as programmer. Personally I didn't like any RSS feed apps out there so I wrote my own, customized to my needs. You could've done the same, instead you made a Saas out of it thinking you'll strike gold.
- stetsonator 6y ago1 - maybe you’re right, I don’t know. Freelancers can find success on Upwork but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s a garbage website 2 - I don’t think I ever said RSS was hard to make work. My app is essentially a feed reader. I am also a shit developer, covered that one already Thank you for reading and your feedback, though!
- unnouinceput 6y agoThat garbage site is providing opportunities for millions of developers and clients, and personally feeding my family for over a decade. I tried freelancer.com, rentacoder.com, elance.com (before merging with odesk and the 2 of them becoming what is today's upwork), fiverr, peopleperhour and toptal. Of them all upwork is the best. Maybe you can make a better one, huh? where is dang when you need him, eh?
- the_dripper 6y agois there any reason that my company blocked this website for "copyright infringement" ?
- skc 6y agoI'm struck by two things as I mull over how I'll monetize my own SaaS app that I've started ideating. Firstly, the author says to rather sell to businesses than to individuals. Fine. Secondly, one of his links (https://makebook.io/ https://makebook.io/) says monetize by asking users for money, and makes a point of saying don't use ads anywhere. But if my product is aimed at consumers, why not monetize with ads if it's notoriously difficult to get users to pay 5 or 10 bucks?
- t0mas88 6y agoBecause $10 is roughly 10,000 ad views (unless you have a specific high demand audience that people find hard to reach somewhere else then you get paid more per view). A typical user will not view 10,000 ads on your app/site in their lifetime.
- pembrook 6y agoAdvertising doesn't become viable until you're getting 50K+ visitors a month, and in a niche where people will actually click ads. And even then, if it's an unprofitable niche (like say, home cooking), you'd have to multiply that by 10X to reach a good six figure income. By viable, I mean making more money than you would working as a software engineer in a big city.
- maltelandwehr 6y ago„Just ship it“ does not mean spending 9 months(!) building something that should have been a no-code MVP built in 2 weeks max.
- pell 6y agoI get the sentiment, but this was the first project of this kind for the author. I think "just ship it" sometimes means "get it done despite all the doubts".
- speedgoose 6y agoI agree 9 months is way too long but do you think you could build it in 2 weeks with no-code ? I can see an experienced developer doing that in 2 weeks with little code, but no code ? If so, can you tell me what kind of products would you use ? I'm interested for some personal projects.
- stetsonator 6y agoThis was my first SaaS project ever. A friend and I later wrote a bitly clone in one overnight pie programming session with Laravel. Sure, ideally you launch your stuff in 2 weeks but when you’ve never done it and you think it sucks, it might take 9 months. Just make sure it doesn’t take 9 months twice.
- jwdunne 6y agoHrm, you identified your target market within the first tens of words: freelancers working on UpWork. But you launched on HackerNews. Why didn’t you seek out communities that freelance, especially on UpWork? That’s where you plug your product, after becoming a valuable member of the community. And becoming a valuable member of that community IS something you can do: you can give free advice on winning UpWork jobs, how to increase chances, etc.
- stetsonator 6y agoI did indeed later launch to Upwork specific communities. Subreddits and Facebook groups.
- Jack000 6y agoSome products are inherently difficult to monetize. I wouldn't give up yet, but another approach is to make the product free and use it as lead-gen for something else (an affiliate product, your own product in a separate niche, or even ads) if you corner the market for the free product it can bring a lot of valuable traffic.
- textread 6y agoI love your idea of using a free product as a marketing tool. Are there any resources/case studies to validate: "if you corner the market for the free product it can bring a lot of valuable traffic."
- redis_mlc 6y agoPlentyoffish.com broke Google's Adsense payout system - the monthly checks were too large to process! (#1 dating site, monetized with Google ads. Ugly. Markus Frind later sold it for $575 million.) https://www.businessinsider.com/how-markus-frind-bootstrapped-plentyoffish-and-sold-it-for-575-million-2015-7 https://www.businessinsider.com/how-markus-frind-bootstrappe...
- stetsonator 6y agoThat’s one I somehow haven’t been suggested at all since doing this. Definitely some room to create an ebook or other thing and sell it on the “backend”
- doctorhouse1 6y agoSaaS is awesome. I too want to build one.
- yoshyosh 6y agoGrats on shipping! Highly recommend testing positioning this as a B2B product for monitoring companies that I could use as sales leads. For example it would be great to get alerted from all the diff job boards when different companies are trying to hire for what our product solves, similar to how Reilly is using your product.
- stets 6y agoSolid idea. I think he mentioned that to me and I didn't take it in fully that other people could monitor WHAT people on Upwork wanted without wanting to work for them.
- ChrisMarshallNY 6y agoI have not had any success on Upwork. 100% of the “leads” I got there were scams. Not 75%, not even 99%. 100%. Not one single honest job. Some were requests for me to participate in scams, but I don’t roll that way. I’m sure that my experience was unique, and that my profile must have had some “scam flag,” so I won’t write off the platform in its entirety. I heard good things about the site from friends, but every single person that extolled its virtues had used it to find contractors. Not one had used it to find work. The couple of people that I know that used it to seek work had experiences similar to mine, and nothing good to say about it. But that is small-sample anecdotal data. Not something that I would say should be used to provide any meaningful recommendations or reviews. But for me, the site is worthless. I was pretty appalled at the brazenness of some of the approaches. No one seemed to be worried that I would refer them to the FBI, so I guess I don’t come across as a snitch; just a chump. A couple of years ago, I decided to “refactor” myself back to full-time engineering. My ultimate goal was to specialize in Swift development (what I do, now). Until then, all my work was part-time, on open-source projects; equal parts PHP server stuff, and Swift apps. So the first thing I did, as a “self-training” project, was design and build a multipurpose, secure application SaaS backend, in PHP, because I didn’t want to waste time learning up on my JavaScript, which I planned to abandon. This was just the first-stage booster. This was what I wrote: https://riftvalleysoftware.com/work/open-source-projects/#baobab https://riftvalleysoftware.com/work/open-source-projects/#ba... It’s not something that folks are interested in, probably because it was written in PHP, and doesn’t really tick many boxes on a “Buzzword Bingo” card, but it accomplished its purpose. I’ll be happy to never write PHP again, but I’m glad it was there for the experience. And I nuked my Upwork account months ago.
- shp0ngle 6y agoPHP is still big in the publishing business. WordPress alone is bigger than HN would lead you to believe. Lots of business runs on PHP. And not just running Drupal from inertia; Laravel is a new shiny thing.
- luckylion 6y agoCan confirm. PHP/WP is easily 70% of my business. Virtually all of the affiliate/SEO business runs on WP, and so do basically all individual company websites. And they all need help.
- a_imho 6y agoHow much did it cost you to launch? Did you manage to turn a profit?
- stets 6y agoHardly anything. $5/mo or so for a VPS, my time and energy. Maybe $100 in programming courses. I made TENS of dollars.
- zeroc8 6y agoThe problem we have is market saturation of basically everything. The winners take it all. If I had a chance to do it all over again, I'd probably just learn a trade, like electrician, bricklayer or plumber. They don't seem to run out of work.
- eternauta3k 6y agoI'm not sure I understand. If you're a programmer, that's a trade and there's work out there.
- pdubs1 6y agoIf you're in the USA, you're in luck-- We have data to demonstrate whether or not that occupation, this, that, or the other... is a good choice-- Behold: The Bureau of Labor Statistics!!! 10 Fastest Growing jobs in the USA-- https://www.bls.gov/ooh/fastest-growing.htm https://www.bls.gov/ooh/fastest-growing.htm IT Security & App Developer occupations have approximately 30% growth rates over the next 10 years. Wages and projected openings by occupation-- https://www.bls.gov/careeroutlook/2019/article/wages-and-openings.htm https://www.bls.gov/careeroutlook/2019/article/wages-and-ope... IT & Computer related occupations, in aggregate, have 250k-300k openings each year in the USA. (Note: You can find those other occupations in the 2nd link-- it shows wages vs. job openings for many types of occupations)
- ilamont 6y ago> Solve a real need and research it prior to building. Either build something tiny and get feedback or get feedback before you even start building! I've run into the situation of people eagerly telling you they want something, but when it comes time to pay for it they vanish.
- pembrook 6y agoRead The Mom Test for a quick overview of how to avoid this problem.
- mft_ 6y agoFun article - thanks. The reference to Flask being a pain in the arse made me chuckle. I am a hobbyist python author and have been using Flask for years, doing exactly what you wrote about, with awkward front-end templates and handwritten SQL queries and the rest. I did some basic tutorials on Vue a few weeks ago and it was absolutely mind-blowingly straightforward in comparison!
- nonines 6y agoExcuse my naive question but how do the 2 compare? Flask == backend, Vue == frontend. Am I missing something here?
- monocularvision 6y agoYou can use Flask to render your friend-end HTML and handle form submissions. JavaScript doesn’t have to be involved at all. You can also render your friend end using JS and interact with services written in Flask.
- nonines 6y agothanks
- kumarvvr 6y agoTo be fair, I would re-phrase the author's thought as "I wrote an SaaS product because I believed it would get me rich and I went and scoured the internet for a well that echos my thoughts" The author speaks about exactly one example, that,I guess I can say inspired him to get going with his idea. No, The internet did not convince him. He convinced himself using the internet to find evidence for a conclusion he already reached.
- mellosouls 6y agoIf you rephrased his thought like that you would take all humour out of it; humour being clearly the intent of his chosen phrasing.
- kumarvvr 6y agoMaybe I am wrong, but the article doesn't come off as satirical.
- mellosouls 6y agoThe title is just intended as a good-natured dig at his own experience (I made literally TENS of dollars) drawing on the gullible-get-rich-quick trope, nothing more.
- kumarvvr 6y agoOhh ok. But I cannot edit / remove my original post, it has too many votes. :-D
- rohan1024 6y agoOfftopic: The Internet is the place where one can always find well that echos one's thoughts. I wonder if that is the reason our society has become so polar. It's not even limited to specific country, this can be observed throughout the world.
- 6y ago
- laurentdc 6y ago> Don't hire people for stupid things. Adobe cloud is 20 bucks a month, read a few books, watch a few videos and make simple designs yourself. If your thing takes off, you can always hire for better later. This resonates so much. My company hires and outsources for the most stupid things, like, we need to change colors on a design file or move some buttons around? Let's go on Upwork or through our address book, write a RFQ, have a meeting to evaluate the quotes, set up payment and contract, then in two or three weeks the "refresh" is done. I mean, just open Figma or whatever tool and do it yourself. Or ask a colleague for 20 minutes of help. It doesn't take Van Gogh to pair two colours and fonts.
- worble 6y agoAnd even if that doesn't work out, you'll have a lot more domain knowledge than you did before, so if you do hire someone else you'll be able to work with them easier, understand the work they're doing, and have a better chance of noticing if you're being taken for a ride.
- mynegation 6y agoIt is OK to contract things out, it is not OK that every time that requires RFQ and the lengthy process.
- SamuelAdams 6y agoBut then how do PM's (or scrum masters) justify their 6 figure salary? /s
- WrtCdEvrydy 6y agoFind a color wheel or coolors.co. Picking colors is pretty easy now
- watwut 6y agoCountrepoint: Played with coolors.co now and I would rather want someone who knows what he is doing picking them. Also, there is more to picking colors then color wheel.
- AdriaanvRossum 6y ago> Reilly uses EarlyBrd to find folks who need help with Ubiquiti Wi-Fi gear and tell them about Hostifi. This should be on your home page. It made me want to buy your product.
- stetsonator 6y agoHe is on my testimonials but we’ll be getting a refresh soon :-)
- slynn12 6y agoThis: "Don't charge 5-10 bucks for your product. It's not really worth it and the customers who pay that are generally cheap-asses anyway." That ^! Learned it the hard way myself.
- QuadrupleA 6y agoHas SaaS become a washed-out gold rush at this point, like the app stores?
- stets 6y agoNah, what makes you think that?
- novaleaf 6y agoIs there any "SaaS as a Service" that can be used to put up a MVP of your SaaS idea? Basically a whitebox SaaS open source that you can use? I only know of KongHQ but that's a SaaS marketplace, I don't think that's a good idea because with that you are treated as a vendor (no control of your users/ecosystem).
- stets 6y agoThere are a few templates and things if you google 'saas boilerplate'. Most I've found are specific to languages and require a lot of setup. It's an ok idea, just needs to be executed correctly. Laravel really handles a lot of this well and they even developed a paid boilerplate that claims to do billing and other things easily https://spark.laravel.com/ https://spark.laravel.com/
- novaleaf 6y agothank you, I will check it out.
- mleonhard 6y agoIf growth is slow, how about spending more money on marketing? Hire a part-time online marketing specialist and give them money to spend on ads.
- lamby 6y ago> Ferreira spent less time doing labour-intensive web design and more time searching for the cold fusion of internet marketing: "passive income." — Corey Pein: How to get rich quick in Silicon Valley (https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/apr/17/get-rich-quick-silicon-valley-startup-billionaire-techie https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/apr/17/get-rich-quick-...)
- ozfive 6y agoIt looks as though this (https://earlybrd.io/ https://earlybrd.io/) is down. I was headed there to sign up since I see this as very useful after reading the blog post. I use Upwork at times myself.