3 ms·

Lessons from my third year running a SaaS

89 points by rozenmd 3y ago

archeantus 3y ago
Great post. I love the idea of the product and have wondered why AWS doesn’t offer this level of convenience out of the box. Half-joking name suggestion: I recognize the domain probably isn’t available but wouldn’t “upordown.com” be slightly more slick? ;)
- rozenmd 3y ago
  Hah I actually love the name more and more as time goes on - I based it on the Australian-ism "Does it work or nah?"
psankar 3y ago
Why would the hetzner vm fail the uptime tests randomly ? Did you investigate it ? Could it be some kind of DDOS prevention on Hetzner ?
- rozenmd 3y ago
  Nah, to be honest at that point I just wanted to go back to AWS so I could get back to shipping features my customers asked for
cuu508 3y ago
I'm on a similar path. Out of curiosity, business-wise, where are you aiming long-term? When feasible, will you expand team, or would you rather stay solo? Would you potentially take investment, or rather stay bootstrapped? Why/why not?
- rozenmd 3y ago
  I'm planning on keeping it as a "two hours before work" thing. I try to document everything, and I started a YouTube channel with support videos to keep the support load low. I'm happy with where things are, I have a full-time job I love, and the challenge of shipping something valuable in the two hours I have before work is extra fun. I still see myself doing this, bootstrapped and solo in 10 years time. I tried taking one day off per week to focus on my projects full-time a couple years back, I didn't manage to accomplish much more. Maybe I'm more principled now, but I doubt it.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
jasfi 3y ago
How do you converse with your users?
- rozenmd 3y ago
  Email mostly, Discord increasingly, sometimes Twitter.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
sebnun 3y ago
As someone also building a SaaS, it's always nice to read this type of information. Subscribed to your newsletter :)
15457345234 3y ago
Sorry to be 'that guy' but is this an 'ultimately reliable service' for 'critical monitoring' or a lifestyle business that you run on the side? Because your marketing is saying both. Also, when did companies become so okay with their full-time employees having their own businesses? I worked for both a hosting provider and a large mainframe manufacturer and if I'd have had any sort of side business taking up my time that would always have been a contract violation due to conflict of interest. Let alone a business that relies on the services provided by a direct competitor...
- rozenmd 3y ago
  The awesome thing about software is that you don't actually need a human there to supervise software checking a website five million times per week. I have built a self-healing system with observability in place to catch and page me when there are issues that can't fix themselves - it works quite well. I can't speak to your personal experience, but I've never had a problem with an employer and running my own business. The idea that a single employee even shows up on the radar as a competitor to a multi-billion dollar corporation makes me laugh though.

89 points by rozenmd 3y ago

Great post. I love the idea of the product and have wondered why AWS doesn’t offer this level of convenience out of the box. Half-joking name suggestion: I recognize the domain probably isn’t available but wouldn’t “upordown.com” be slightly more slick? ;)

rozenmd 3y ago
Hah I actually love the name more and more as time goes on - I based it on the Australian-ism "Does it work or nah?"

psankar 3y ago

Why would the hetzner vm fail the uptime tests randomly ? Did you investigate it ? Could it be some kind of DDOS prevention on Hetzner ?

rozenmd 3y ago
Nah, to be honest at that point I just wanted to go back to AWS so I could get back to shipping features my customers asked for

cuu508 3y ago

I'm on a similar path. Out of curiosity, business-wise, where are you aiming long-term? When feasible, will you expand team, or would you rather stay solo? Would you potentially take investment, or rather stay bootstrapped? Why/why not?

rozenmd 3y ago
I'm planning on keeping it as a "two hours before work" thing. I try to document everything, and I started a YouTube channel with support videos to keep the support load low. I'm happy with where things are, I have a full-time job I love, and the challenge of shipping something valuable in the two hours I have before work is extra fun. I still see myself doing this, bootstrapped and solo in 10 years time. I tried taking one day off per week to focus on my projects full-time a couple years back, I didn't manage to accomplish much more. Maybe I'm more principled now, but I doubt it.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

jasfi 3y ago

How do you converse with your users?

rozenmd 3y ago
Email mostly, Discord increasingly, sometimes Twitter.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

sebnun 3y ago

As someone also building a SaaS, it's always nice to read this type of information. Subscribed to your newsletter :)

15457345234 3y ago

Sorry to be 'that guy' but is this an 'ultimately reliable service' for 'critical monitoring' or a lifestyle business that you run on the side? Because your marketing is saying both. Also, when did companies become so okay with their full-time employees having their own businesses? I worked for both a hosting provider and a large mainframe manufacturer and if I'd have had any sort of side business taking up my time that would always have been a contract violation due to conflict of interest. Let alone a business that relies on the services provided by a direct competitor...

rozenmd 3y ago
The awesome thing about software is that you don't actually need a human there to supervise software checking a website five million times per week. I have built a self-healing system with observability in place to catch and page me when there are issues that can't fix themselves - it works quite well. I can't speak to your personal experience, but I've never had a problem with an employer and running my own business. The idea that a single employee even shows up on the radar as a competitor to a multi-billion dollar corporation makes me laugh though.