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> Sell enough annual SaaS plans and you get cash before your future costs That might be true if you only need to pay for the operational costs, but someone has

> Sell enough annual SaaS plans and you get cash before your future costs That might be true if you only need to pay for the operational costs, but someone has to develop that service first, don’t they? How do you sell annual SaaS plans without spending a huge chunk on development first?

robocat 4y ago
You are asking about what I would call founding/inception costs. I was replying to an absolutely wrong comment that was about scaling/growth/marketing costs. From my own experience, I helped cofound a now-successful small business that we retain 100% ownership of. Founders used <1> the “sweat equity” of our own time (even with kids and mortgages), and <2> one person did some consultancy work, and <3> we had one initial large-business customer (although nowhere enough to pay our usual wages, it helped a little). There is a lot of “bootstrapping-pr0n” videos and websites with a variety of techniques to build a business without extreme inception costs (e.g. techniques to avoid requiring paid staff when starting - staffing being the main cost for most software startups). The fabulously good video I linked alludes to some of that, and you can find other videos from those conferences. If you do want to get initial funding, I think that ycombinator is an astonishingly valuable deal. Even applying should get you back more value than the time it costs you: https://www.ycombinator.com/apply/ https://www.ycombinator.com/apply/ Edit: I strongly recommend you avoid the “go big or not at all” culture/mentality: most founders fail and the median payoff for founders is quite negative. Venture capital and startup-pr0n encourages you to aim for billions: VCs can spread their bets; VCs have asymmetric information and payoffs; VCs only invest in less than 1% of the potential businesses they see; VCs get paid a base rate by their limited partners; VCs get preferential shares. For an individual it is more like a lottery because an individual’s risk profile is absolutely different from a VCs.
- toomuchtodo 4y ago
  Excellent advice in this sub thread.

robocat 4y ago

You are asking about what I would call founding/inception costs. I was replying to an absolutely wrong comment that was about scaling/growth/marketing costs. From my own experience, I helped cofound a now-successful small business that we retain 100% ownership of. Founders used <1> the “sweat equity” of our own time (even with kids and mortgages), and <2> one person did some consultancy work, and <3> we had one initial large-business customer (although nowhere enough to pay our usual wages, it helped a little). There is a lot of “bootstrapping-pr0n” videos and websites with a variety of techniques to build a business without extreme inception costs (e.g. techniques to avoid requiring paid staff when starting - staffing being the main cost for most software startups). The fabulously good video I linked alludes to some of that, and you can find other videos from those conferences. If you do want to get initial funding, I think that ycombinator is an astonishingly valuable deal. Even applying should get you back more value than the time it costs you: https://www.ycombinator.com/apply/ https://www.ycombinator.com/apply/ Edit: I strongly recommend you avoid the “go big or not at all” culture/mentality: most founders fail and the median payoff for founders is quite negative. Venture capital and startup-pr0n encourages you to aim for billions: VCs can spread their bets; VCs have asymmetric information and payoffs; VCs only invest in less than 1% of the potential businesses they see; VCs get paid a base rate by their limited partners; VCs get preferential shares. For an individual it is more like a lottery because an individual’s risk profile is absolutely different from a VCs.

toomuchtodo 4y ago
Excellent advice in this sub thread.