4 ms·

The advice in this article is fairly solid and has been said and done quite a lot. Like many general-business advice articles posted here, it does seem to lack

by samtho 3y ago

The advice in this article is fairly solid and has been said and done quite a lot. Like many general-business advice articles posted here, it does seem to lack substance or really any actionable advice, so here is some based on my own experience: A medium to very large company will spend $0.95 to save $1.00. Because of tax incentives and business performance metrics, any opportunity to grow for the future is usually capitalized on so all you have to do is find a pain point for a company and pledge to solve it cheaper than they can, which is usually through headcount. In fact, an easy way to find ideas (to the point where it kind of feels like a cheat code) is to see what companies in a given industry are constantly hiring for. If you can replace 10% of a job that companies pay $65,000 per year per head, you can pretty easily demand $6,500 or more. Unlike a W-2 employee, Your company does not cost your customer a full-time manager, nor does it increase administrative burden for HR, IT, or facilities, and does not incur costs such as benefits, payroll taxes, or accounting fees associated with personnel - which will undoubtedly be higher than the flat monthly or yearly line-item on the expense sheet that your business represents. Choose an industry, pick a pain point, build the product, price it according to what it costs, and sell to them. You typically won’t find super interesting problems to solve here but it will be reliable as long as they don’t build it themselves.

cosmodisk 3y ago
This is good advise. A lot of devs, or techies in general, often live in a bubble,so end up thinking that if their standard dev shop has all the integrations, automations,and whatnot,so it should be the same everywhere else too. It blows my mind when see businesses operate in a way as it was 1900. I still remember how I told a business owner with 50 people or so how they could use shared mailbox in the operations, so it's easier to pickup the inbound emails as multiple people work on it.. It was as I just showed the path to enlightenment. However, it's difficult to see these problems when you are an outsider,so my advice is to go out and speak with many people who work in different sectors and face very different problems than an average HN reader.
mvkel 3y ago
"Cost savings" is the first benefit any B2B SaaS trots out in any sales pitch. It's not as compelling as you say. The rest of your advice I find rock solid!
nadam 3y ago
"Choose an industry, pick a pain point" This is solid advice, but for me it is very hard. I always found finding pain-points in an industry as an outsider (not working in the industry day-to-day) very hard. (Living in a relatively small and culturally isolated Eastern European country does not help either.) By the way the only industry I know well (from the inside, as software engineer) is "big software product development". Nowadays I invest a lot in public markets, so I learned a lot about other industries from an investment perspective, but it is not enough to find pain-points.
- bergerjac 3y ago
  I've lived in Serbia, Croatia, and Hungary... The key is to go to networking events. (Or co-working spaces, or just show up at their company and say you're interested in working there as an engineer and ask if you could get a quick tour) If networking events don't happen in your country, then become the organizer. You'll instantly be seen as a leader and attendees will eventually want to talk with you. When you organize regularly, they'll start talking about you. Then you're "in". If you don't live in the capital city, then it's worth the time & money to travel 1x a month or every 2 weeks. Ask attendees if anyone has a spare couch for you to stay on. Themes for events you can use the major happenings like AI. Or 'duplicate' Meetup events in other cities. Post flyers near companies doors, make event on FB & Meet-up, find developers on LinkedIn, there are so many options to get the word out. Split Test and discover which one is most effective (ask attendees where they heard about it)
  - 1231112315123 3y ago
    My network creepingly broke away over the past three years and I didn't bother to re-build it. Your post reminds me of the great discussions I've had at networking events. Time to start that again!
    - moneywoes 3y ago
      May I ask how it broke away and what did you to remedy it
- 3y ago

by samtho 3y ago

cosmodisk 3y ago

This is good advise. A lot of devs, or techies in general, often live in a bubble,so end up thinking that if their standard dev shop has all the integrations, automations,and whatnot,so it should be the same everywhere else too. It blows my mind when see businesses operate in a way as it was 1900. I still remember how I told a business owner with 50 people or so how they could use shared mailbox in the operations, so it's easier to pickup the inbound emails as multiple people work on it.. It was as I just showed the path to enlightenment. However, it's difficult to see these problems when you are an outsider,so my advice is to go out and speak with many people who work in different sectors and face very different problems than an average HN reader.

mvkel 3y ago

"Cost savings" is the first benefit any B2B SaaS trots out in any sales pitch. It's not as compelling as you say. The rest of your advice I find rock solid!

nadam 3y ago

"Choose an industry, pick a pain point" This is solid advice, but for me it is very hard. I always found finding pain-points in an industry as an outsider (not working in the industry day-to-day) very hard. (Living in a relatively small and culturally isolated Eastern European country does not help either.) By the way the only industry I know well (from the inside, as software engineer) is "big software product development". Nowadays I invest a lot in public markets, so I learned a lot about other industries from an investment perspective, but it is not enough to find pain-points.

bergerjac 3y ago
I've lived in Serbia, Croatia, and Hungary... The key is to go to networking events. (Or co-working spaces, or just show up at their company and say you're interested in working there as an engineer and ask if you could get a quick tour) If networking events don't happen in your country, then become the organizer. You'll instantly be seen as a leader and attendees will eventually want to talk with you. When you organize regularly, they'll start talking about you. Then you're "in". If you don't live in the capital city, then it's worth the time & money to travel 1x a month or every 2 weeks. Ask attendees if anyone has a spare couch for you to stay on. Themes for events you can use the major happenings like AI. Or 'duplicate' Meetup events in other cities. Post flyers near companies doors, make event on FB & Meet-up, find developers on LinkedIn, there are so many options to get the word out. Split Test and discover which one is most effective (ask attendees where they heard about it)
- 1231112315123 3y ago
  My network creepingly broke away over the past three years and I didn't bother to re-build it. Your post reminds me of the great discussions I've had at networking events. Time to start that again!
  - moneywoes 3y ago
    May I ask how it broke away and what did you to remedy it
3y ago