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This was the biggest take-away from this article, one I've learned after wasting much time building my own SaaS "products". Launching without an audience means

This was the biggest take-away from this article, one I've learned after wasting much time building my own SaaS "products". Launching without an audience means nobody shows up. It's a very true statement. One of my favorite sayings now, from Jason Cohen, is to get 30 people to fully commit to pay for your product before you even start coding it.

waterside81 13y ago
Cohen's advice is good for two reasons: 1) Obviously you see if there's any demand for your product but perhaps more importantly ... 2) It forces developers to put on their salesperson hat. Lots of us developers just like building products and just willfully ignore the other part - selling the darn things!
ronilan 13y ago
get 30 people to fully commit to pay for your product before you even start coding it. I can't think of any valuable product that was created this way.
- runako 13y ago
  That's quite the sweeping dismissal of Kickstarter.
  - logicallee 13y ago
    The level of work to do a successful Kickstarter is way in excess of "before you even start coding it." I can't imagine anyone who could do a successful kickstarter on a project that hasn't even begun (not even a line of code).
  - awj 13y ago
    ...I'd like to see this mysterious Kickstarter page that has had basically no work done in advance.
    - MattGrommes 13y ago
      You should probably revise that to 'successful Kickstarter page'. I've seen plenty of doomed Kickstarters that clearly had very little to no work done ahead of time. Which kind of shows the previous point. If you want to see lots of doomed Kickstarter campaigns, look at the local listings for your town. I live in San Diego and even for a big city there are tons of campaigns that maybe earn 1% of their goal and look thrown together with little planning.
- lifebeyondfife 13y ago
  Obviously it depends on your exit strategy. Do you want to (a) get a loss making but huge user base or (b) bootstrap a business that has cashflows from day 1? Sounds like that advice applies more to the latter route than the former.
- michaelbuckbee 13y ago
  Well Jason Cohen wasn't talking in the abstract, he's talked about how he got checks up front before starting WP-Engine.
- chrismorgan 13y ago
  Note the careful wording: "before you even start coding it". Coding is a time-consuming thing, very fragile (if you get it wrong, you may almost need to start over again) and brittle (making changes is, connectedly, hard). Very significant validation can be done without ever writing code. (That's a lesson that I've been learning this year, as one who delights greatly in coding.)
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
lifebeyondfife 13y ago
I likewise performed a detailed dissection of my previous failed website on my blog - very therapeutic. It still has one fairly regular user (me!) so I keep it going but I launched in much the same way: built it silently then managed to get about 10k+ visitors through HN. Only a few hundred gave it a go initially and within a fortnight or so, no tangible traffic at all. Great learning experience though, and this post is a reminder to me to make sure I don't repeat the same mistake.
awwstn 13y ago
get 30 people to fully commit to pay for your product before you even start coding it. This seems like sound advice, but I'd like to hear more on the execution of it. Do you actually get these people to sign contracts, or is it more of getting people to say "yeah, I'll pay you for that"? Do you let them know you haven't written any code, or just say it's "in development"? Etc., etc.
- kareemm 13y ago
  I wrote a post about how we got 8 commitments to pay before writing my current SaaS app. It has made well over 6 figures and counting: http://blog.reemer.com/how-to-get-paying-customers-before-you-start-writing-code http://blog.reemer.com/how-to-get-paying-customers-before-yo...
- wikwocket 13y ago
  Brennan Dunn and Nathan Barry have both appeared on HN a number of times, and their approaches to selling eBooks and SAASes have included the option to pre-order the book/prep-pay for the SAAS subscription at a discount. Something like this works great when you have an audience and/or have some decent previews to show. (btw, my takeaway here is not 'this only works for internet-famous people,' but rather, 'it's a great idea to build an audience for your idea and show them previews to keep the leads hot')
jenius 13y ago
Just this weekend, I started coding up a tiny "saas product" that I thought about last week. Nobody knows about it, and that certainly has no launch page or audience. I got most of it done over the weekend, and really enjoyed putting it together in my favorite stack (sinatra, roots, marionette) and doing some design work, which I don't often get a chance to do. I'll probably launch it late this week or next week. I have no audience, and don't expect massive profits either. I made it mostly because I want it. Since I plan on using it extensively, I honestly don't care if I have huge profits or a gigantic audience. I spent $5 on the domain name, am hosting it along with 10 other sites on a $5/month digital ocean box. I put in some great work this weekend, and am now going to end up with something that will fit nicely into my workflow. It will ship with a decent free plan, and a $5/month pro plan with some expanded capabilities. If one person signs up for the pro plan, that covers the cost of hosting for this site and 9 other sites (bonus!) If 2 people sign up for the pro plan, it's profitable. If zero people sign up, I paid a very small cost for something that's going to be really useful to me. Sometimes I wonder why so many developers gravitate towards huge ideas that they think other people might want rather than starting small, with things that you want. With this little thing I'm making, there's no risk. I've already won.
- sejje 13y ago
  Because so many developers want to build a business. You've aimed your sights at making $5/month.
  - jenius 13y ago
    You can move your sights after they are aimed. Let's start at $5/month then see how it goes : )
- bluedevil2k 13y ago
  What you've made is just a hobby then, not a business. (Not that there's anything wrong with programming being a hobby - it's more about managing expectations)
  - jenius 13y ago
chris-allnutt 13y ago
I disagree with this statement on the basis that this assumes all products are made with monetary profit in mind. I'm working on a product right now that is for myself and my spouse to solve a money management issue we have, it is something I will use even if nobody else does. I will be adding the ability to purchase it as a subscription so that if others want to use the product they can too, but ultimately I'm building something I want to use. Jason Cohen's statement is based on the idea that all software is written with profit in mind, and there are a good number of years in Open Source that prove that to not be true.
- bluedevil2k 13y ago
  I think all SaaS products (which this article is about) have monetary profit in mind.
- pjmlp 13y ago
  > Jason Cohen's statement is based on the idea that all software is written with profit in mind, and there are a good number of years in Open Source that prove that to not be true. Usually in most cases the code is not the direct source of income for the developers.
mipapage 13y ago
get 30 people to fully commit to pay for your product before you even start coding it. While I don't know about 30, we use some apps in house that clients began to use for their business. We're now looking at building those apps for ourselves and our clients are on board. We'll be saving the expenses, and have some folks on board before day one. Cool. Along the road we have had the clients ask us if we can extend the app for certain use cases they have. Since we built their web-presence and integrated those with other tools.. Lets just say things are developing. So maybe look to your existing clients (you know, the work you do during the tim you wish you were building your app). They are a great source for us, so far...
kpapke 13y ago
I have a question about the lesson here "don't write code without having committed customers first." Does this apply to a startup that is not a SaaS product? I am working on an app that has the chicken/egg problem where it can't make money straight away, it needs a strong user base to be effective. I have been working on this app for the past year it seems like, with development really amping up in the last 6 months. We just brought on another developer to help us finish up and get it out the door. I submitted my market information and business proposal to a university marketing research class, and they gathered data from a 50 person survey for us, which validated our ideas & assumptions. When we do launch it will be a quiet soft launch with friends & family trying it out first. Then we will tweak it with their feedback before we really try to make it public and do serious marketing efforts. All of that said, our monetization strategy won't be implemented until post-launch once we have this feedback from actual users and a good amount of them sticking around. The whole thing is bootstrapped and we haven't spent anything, aside from the weekend development hours. Does this seem like the right approach for launching our product?
- wikwocket 13y ago
  It sounds like you have some validation, which is a huge step in the right direction, but more is always better. One reason is that, if you ask someone if they would like to use/have product XYZ, you will get very different answers and feedback than if you ask, "Would you like to pay $NNN for Product XYZ right now?" Depending on your product, I might recommend starting to build an audience of people interested in your product. Try to interact with them as soon as possible. Get them interested. Then when you launch, you have a stable of warm leads, champing at the bit to go.
zachsnow 13y ago
I would rephrase as N customers, where N is enough to earn some significant percentage of your costs. For many kinds of businesses N might be only a handful, it completely depends on your market. For others 30 is nowhere near enough I'd imagine. Of course, determining significance is left as an exercise for the reader.

waterside81 13y ago

Cohen's advice is good for two reasons: 1) Obviously you see if there's any demand for your product but perhaps more importantly ... 2) It forces developers to put on their salesperson hat. Lots of us developers just like building products and just willfully ignore the other part - selling the darn things!

ronilan 13y ago

get 30 people to fully commit to pay for your product before you even start coding it. I can't think of any valuable product that was created this way.

runako 13y ago
That's quite the sweeping dismissal of Kickstarter.
- logicallee 13y ago
  The level of work to do a successful Kickstarter is way in excess of "before you even start coding it." I can't imagine anyone who could do a successful kickstarter on a project that hasn't even begun (not even a line of code).
- awj 13y ago
  ...I'd like to see this mysterious Kickstarter page that has had basically no work done in advance.
  - MattGrommes 13y ago
    You should probably revise that to 'successful Kickstarter page'. I've seen plenty of doomed Kickstarters that clearly had very little to no work done ahead of time. Which kind of shows the previous point. If you want to see lots of doomed Kickstarter campaigns, look at the local listings for your town. I live in San Diego and even for a big city there are tons of campaigns that maybe earn 1% of their goal and look thrown together with little planning.
lifebeyondfife 13y ago
Obviously it depends on your exit strategy. Do you want to (a) get a loss making but huge user base or (b) bootstrap a business that has cashflows from day 1? Sounds like that advice applies more to the latter route than the former.
michaelbuckbee 13y ago
Well Jason Cohen wasn't talking in the abstract, he's talked about how he got checks up front before starting WP-Engine.
chrismorgan 13y ago
Note the careful wording: "before you even start coding it". Coding is a time-consuming thing, very fragile (if you get it wrong, you may almost need to start over again) and brittle (making changes is, connectedly, hard). Very significant validation can be done without ever writing code. (That's a lesson that I've been learning this year, as one who delights greatly in coding.)

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

lifebeyondfife 13y ago

I likewise performed a detailed dissection of my previous failed website on my blog - very therapeutic. It still has one fairly regular user (me!) so I keep it going but I launched in much the same way: built it silently then managed to get about 10k+ visitors through HN. Only a few hundred gave it a go initially and within a fortnight or so, no tangible traffic at all. Great learning experience though, and this post is a reminder to me to make sure I don't repeat the same mistake.

awwstn 13y ago

get 30 people to fully commit to pay for your product before you even start coding it. This seems like sound advice, but I'd like to hear more on the execution of it. Do you actually get these people to sign contracts, or is it more of getting people to say "yeah, I'll pay you for that"? Do you let them know you haven't written any code, or just say it's "in development"? Etc., etc.

kareemm 13y ago
I wrote a post about how we got 8 commitments to pay before writing my current SaaS app. It has made well over 6 figures and counting: http://blog.reemer.com/how-to-get-paying-customers-before-you-start-writing-code http://blog.reemer.com/how-to-get-paying-customers-before-yo...
wikwocket 13y ago
Brennan Dunn and Nathan Barry have both appeared on HN a number of times, and their approaches to selling eBooks and SAASes have included the option to pre-order the book/prep-pay for the SAAS subscription at a discount. Something like this works great when you have an audience and/or have some decent previews to show. (btw, my takeaway here is not 'this only works for internet-famous people,' but rather, 'it's a great idea to build an audience for your idea and show them previews to keep the leads hot')

jenius 13y ago

Just this weekend, I started coding up a tiny "saas product" that I thought about last week. Nobody knows about it, and that certainly has no launch page or audience. I got most of it done over the weekend, and really enjoyed putting it together in my favorite stack (sinatra, roots, marionette) and doing some design work, which I don't often get a chance to do. I'll probably launch it late this week or next week. I have no audience, and don't expect massive profits either. I made it mostly because I want it. Since I plan on using it extensively, I honestly don't care if I have huge profits or a gigantic audience. I spent $5 on the domain name, am hosting it along with 10 other sites on a $5/month digital ocean box. I put in some great work this weekend, and am now going to end up with something that will fit nicely into my workflow. It will ship with a decent free plan, and a $5/month pro plan with some expanded capabilities. If one person signs up for the pro plan, that covers the cost of hosting for this site and 9 other sites (bonus!) If 2 people sign up for the pro plan, it's profitable. If zero people sign up, I paid a very small cost for something that's going to be really useful to me. Sometimes I wonder why so many developers gravitate towards huge ideas that they think other people might want rather than starting small, with things that you want. With this little thing I'm making, there's no risk. I've already won.

sejje 13y ago
Because so many developers want to build a business. You've aimed your sights at making $5/month.
- jenius 13y ago
  You can move your sights after they are aimed. Let's start at $5/month then see how it goes : )
bluedevil2k 13y ago
What you've made is just a hobby then, not a business. (Not that there's anything wrong with programming being a hobby - it's more about managing expectations)
- jenius 13y ago

chris-allnutt 13y ago

I disagree with this statement on the basis that this assumes all products are made with monetary profit in mind. I'm working on a product right now that is for myself and my spouse to solve a money management issue we have, it is something I will use even if nobody else does. I will be adding the ability to purchase it as a subscription so that if others want to use the product they can too, but ultimately I'm building something I want to use. Jason Cohen's statement is based on the idea that all software is written with profit in mind, and there are a good number of years in Open Source that prove that to not be true.

bluedevil2k 13y ago
I think all SaaS products (which this article is about) have monetary profit in mind.
pjmlp 13y ago
> Jason Cohen's statement is based on the idea that all software is written with profit in mind, and there are a good number of years in Open Source that prove that to not be true. Usually in most cases the code is not the direct source of income for the developers.

mipapage 13y ago

get 30 people to fully commit to pay for your product before you even start coding it. While I don't know about 30, we use some apps in house that clients began to use for their business. We're now looking at building those apps for ourselves and our clients are on board. We'll be saving the expenses, and have some folks on board before day one. Cool. Along the road we have had the clients ask us if we can extend the app for certain use cases they have. Since we built their web-presence and integrated those with other tools.. Lets just say things are developing. So maybe look to your existing clients (you know, the work you do during the tim you wish you were building your app). They are a great source for us, so far...

kpapke 13y ago

I have a question about the lesson here "don't write code without having committed customers first." Does this apply to a startup that is not a SaaS product? I am working on an app that has the chicken/egg problem where it can't make money straight away, it needs a strong user base to be effective. I have been working on this app for the past year it seems like, with development really amping up in the last 6 months. We just brought on another developer to help us finish up and get it out the door. I submitted my market information and business proposal to a university marketing research class, and they gathered data from a 50 person survey for us, which validated our ideas & assumptions. When we do launch it will be a quiet soft launch with friends & family trying it out first. Then we will tweak it with their feedback before we really try to make it public and do serious marketing efforts. All of that said, our monetization strategy won't be implemented until post-launch once we have this feedback from actual users and a good amount of them sticking around. The whole thing is bootstrapped and we haven't spent anything, aside from the weekend development hours. Does this seem like the right approach for launching our product?

wikwocket 13y ago
It sounds like you have some validation, which is a huge step in the right direction, but more is always better. One reason is that, if you ask someone if they would like to use/have product XYZ, you will get very different answers and feedback than if you ask, "Would you like to pay $NNN for Product XYZ right now?" Depending on your product, I might recommend starting to build an audience of people interested in your product. Try to interact with them as soon as possible. Get them interested. Then when you launch, you have a stable of warm leads, champing at the bit to go.

zachsnow 13y ago

I would rephrase as N customers, where N is enough to earn some significant percentage of your costs. For many kinds of businesses N might be only a handful, it completely depends on your market. For others 30 is nowhere near enough I'd imagine. Of course, determining significance is left as an exercise for the reader.