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I have a similar long history of failures, though my failures did generate income - just nowhere near enough to give up the day job. €20k a year at their highes

I have a similar long history of failures, though my failures did generate income - just nowhere near enough to give up the day job. €20k a year at their highest point, €5k a year at other times. I notice similarities in what you're describing, particularly when it comes to your target market and products. B2C not B2B. And generic, anyone products, rather than targeted niche products. A lesson that took me a long, long time to learn. Targeting consumers over businesses is doomed to failure unless you strike the Facebook / Instagram lottery. Consumers don't buy software or pay for SaaS apps, businesses do. Netflix and Spotify are exceptions, not the rule. Building a generic app for consumers is futile. Far better to build a targeted app for a niche business use case.

start123 5y ago
Yes, this is so true. B2B and targeted niche product is what I did after successive failures. Yesterday a business bought a premium $50pm plan after a quick discussion with the founder. There is so much money lying around with businesses that they don't mind spending on a tool that solves their problems.
noogle 5y ago
Agree. I would add the Netflix/Spotify are more in the content business rather than software (a huge chunk of Spotify revenues actually goes to paying royalties, and Netflix spends substantial amounts on original productions). So indeed, consumers do not buy software - they buy other things (that businesses do not buy): Services and solutions to "real-world" problems.
adventured 5y ago
The primary exception to consumer targeting (other than entertainment as you mentioned) is in the ecommerce space where consumers do spend very large amounts of money (Netflix falls under that broadly, though I'm speaking more towards traditional retail goods, shops, clothes, just about anything and everything that can be sold online to consumers).
- moneywoes 5y ago
  Aren’t physical products a whole different ball game? I imagine the B2C app market may be an exception as well
moneywoes 5y ago
Is it not a lot easier to market and sell to consumers instead of businesses? The CaC is lower correct?
- runako 5y ago
  Depending on the niche, this can be true. But it's also generally true that low CaC equals low per-unit pricing and margins. Very difficult to run a business at a consumer-friendly price point without getting to really substantial scale. For example, Netflix has all the benefits of scale, low cost of capital, etc. and their profit margin is 11% on a service that starts at $9/mo. So if your service has similar pricing power to Netflix, you might need order of 10,000 individual customers to cover a single engineer. And that's after the frequently massive investment required up front to build a product to B2C standards. In B2B, it's often easier to find some niche that a) is underserved or not served at all, b) is relatively valuable to some set of customers, and c) can be served with a lower quality of finish because it's a business app. In the B2B space, it's much easier to charge $49/mo, $99/mo, or higher because businesses tend not to be price sensitive in that range. Also, businesses often will need SSO or other "Enterprise" feature and so then you have a $10k+ annual contract for the same service. In this band of self-service B2B SaaS, there is typically not much of a "sales" process. Just post the info on the site and let prospects choose. You can do demos when it makes sense. But nothing like a 1-year intensive sales process. The sales process is closer to B2C, but for more money and less churn. It's much easier to build a business when you only need to make 50 or 100 sales (and support 50 or 100 customers) to get to profitability. Honestly, having bootstrapped & sold a SaaS myself, I would not consider bootstrapping anything with a starting price point of less than about $49/mo. And I would only go that low if customers were encouraged to land on a plan at $99/mo or higher.
13415 5y ago
> Building a generic app for consumers is futile. But can this really be true? Plenty of B2C software companies make good and continuous revenue. Take for instance the German company Ashampoo. Their products are not exceptionally original and they were always in a crowded market. Yet this company is everywhere in the low-cost consumer desktop software space. I know this company even though I've never even used one of their products. There are many companies like that. Remember OO Defrag? Well, I just checked, OO Software is still around, located in Berlin, Germany. Ever written a novel in German? Papyrus Autor is used by enthusiasts and professional writers since the 80s. These are just examples from Germany off the top of my head but there are similar companies in nearly every country. Perhaps what you say is true for "web apps" with subscription model, it seems very hard to reach private users and convince them to pay a monthly fee. But I doubt it's true for desktop applications and I'm also not sure it's true in general for mobile apps.

start123 5y ago

Yes, this is so true. B2B and targeted niche product is what I did after successive failures. Yesterday a business bought a premium $50pm plan after a quick discussion with the founder. There is so much money lying around with businesses that they don't mind spending on a tool that solves their problems.

noogle 5y ago

Agree. I would add the Netflix/Spotify are more in the content business rather than software (a huge chunk of Spotify revenues actually goes to paying royalties, and Netflix spends substantial amounts on original productions). So indeed, consumers do not buy software - they buy other things (that businesses do not buy): Services and solutions to "real-world" problems.

adventured 5y ago

The primary exception to consumer targeting (other than entertainment as you mentioned) is in the ecommerce space where consumers do spend very large amounts of money (Netflix falls under that broadly, though I'm speaking more towards traditional retail goods, shops, clothes, just about anything and everything that can be sold online to consumers).

moneywoes 5y ago
Aren’t physical products a whole different ball game? I imagine the B2C app market may be an exception as well

moneywoes 5y ago

Is it not a lot easier to market and sell to consumers instead of businesses? The CaC is lower correct?

runako 5y ago
Depending on the niche, this can be true. But it's also generally true that low CaC equals low per-unit pricing and margins. Very difficult to run a business at a consumer-friendly price point without getting to really substantial scale. For example, Netflix has all the benefits of scale, low cost of capital, etc. and their profit margin is 11% on a service that starts at $9/mo. So if your service has similar pricing power to Netflix, you might need order of 10,000 individual customers to cover a single engineer. And that's after the frequently massive investment required up front to build a product to B2C standards. In B2B, it's often easier to find some niche that a) is underserved or not served at all, b) is relatively valuable to some set of customers, and c) can be served with a lower quality of finish because it's a business app. In the B2B space, it's much easier to charge $49/mo, $99/mo, or higher because businesses tend not to be price sensitive in that range. Also, businesses often will need SSO or other "Enterprise" feature and so then you have a $10k+ annual contract for the same service. In this band of self-service B2B SaaS, there is typically not much of a "sales" process. Just post the info on the site and let prospects choose. You can do demos when it makes sense. But nothing like a 1-year intensive sales process. The sales process is closer to B2C, but for more money and less churn. It's much easier to build a business when you only need to make 50 or 100 sales (and support 50 or 100 customers) to get to profitability. Honestly, having bootstrapped & sold a SaaS myself, I would not consider bootstrapping anything with a starting price point of less than about $49/mo. And I would only go that low if customers were encouraged to land on a plan at $99/mo or higher.

13415 5y ago

> Building a generic app for consumers is futile. But can this really be true? Plenty of B2C software companies make good and continuous revenue. Take for instance the German company Ashampoo. Their products are not exceptionally original and they were always in a crowded market. Yet this company is everywhere in the low-cost consumer desktop software space. I know this company even though I've never even used one of their products. There are many companies like that. Remember OO Defrag? Well, I just checked, OO Software is still around, located in Berlin, Germany. Ever written a novel in German? Papyrus Autor is used by enthusiasts and professional writers since the 80s. These are just examples from Germany off the top of my head but there are similar companies in nearly every country. Perhaps what you say is true for "web apps" with subscription model, it seems very hard to reach private users and convince them to pay a monthly fee. But I doubt it's true for desktop applications and I'm also not sure it's true in general for mobile apps.