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I think I'll write about this in the future, because this describes my experience with Appointment Reminder, pretty much to a T. Do I have a magic answer to it

by patio11 12y ago

I think I'll write about this in the future, because this describes my experience with Appointment Reminder, pretty much to a T. Do I have a magic answer to it? No. Long, slow SaaS ramp of death all the way. http://businessofsoftware.org/2013/02/gail-goodman-constant-contact-how-to-negotiate-the-long-slow-saas-ramp-of-death/ http://businessofsoftware.org/2013/02/gail-goodman-constant-... Spoiling a bit of that eventual post: one of the hardest challenges for me with AR was keeping up motivation to grind-it-the-heck-out over the years, because AR was not an intrinsically motivating problem/market for me. It would probably be 10X larger than it is right now if it had attracted the requisite effort from me over the years by being interesting-in-the-absence-of-major-growth. The next time I do a business, it will be something which will be certifiably Fun to me every day, for some value of Fun. Incidentally: depression may be an orthogonal issue to this. Many of us in the community struggle with it. You're very not alone. Talk to someone -- me, if necessary.

sarciszewski 12y ago
> Many of us in the community struggle with it. You're very not alone. Very much this.
Chris_Newton 12y ago
I, for one, would be interested to read about your experiences when you have the time to write them up. I’m particularly interested in your comments about the problem of AR not being intrinsically motivating for you, because I’m in exactly the opposite position. My side business is in a field I very much care about, and on top of that it’s something I work on with my wife. It’s at the stage where it’s starting to pick up a little after a lot of work, but still a long way from overtaking what we can bring in from our established main business doing custom web/software work for commercial clients. We have absolutely no doubt that we could grow the side business faster if we could put more time and money into it. Unfortunately, I’m cursed with being someone who insists on things being done properly. That means as long as we have paying clients of our first business who need to be looked after to high professional standards, we can’t be working so much on the new business that we’re compromising our performance in the older one. We want to be building cool new stuff all night the way I could when I was 21. We have a zillion ideas, and we know how we’d implement some of them, and we know from very positive feedback what sorts of things our customers want to see next. But we have to force ourselves not to do that if it would mean not being able to concentrate on the day job properly tomorrow, and that can be very frustrating at times. The other downside of being Mr Every-i-dotted is that when you get silly amounts of new bureaucratic overheads to deal with — and we’ve had a particularly bad wave of that over the past year here in the UK — you want to make sure everything is above board and all the right records are kept and returns filed and so on. But if the same people are responsible for both doing all of that admin work and actually building what you’re building, that means you can wind up spending more of the limited time you have available on mundane things and less on what you really want to be doing to grow the business. Again, if what you’re building actually matters to you and you’re personally invested in seeing it develop to its full potential, that can be frustrating. The huge upside that, for us at least, outweighs all of the above is that as long as the new business is bringing in enough to cover its costs and we keep getting nice feedback from happy customers, we enjoy it enough to keep it going. An unexpected but very pleasant benefit of doing B2C in a hobbyist market is that it seems when people like what you’re doing, they often make the effort to tell you about it. It’s amazing how much difference getting one nice e-mail from someone whose day you made a little better can make to your own day. So in a way, whether it’s a modestly profitable side project or one day turns into something bigger, we still win and we’re still happy to be doing it. Though we do look forward to the day we can build the mansion, buy the yacht, and retire at ($current_age + $small_number_of_years). ;-)
bhayden 12y ago
Do you think it's more likely for a first-time entrepreneur working on SMB SaaS to find success with something that's not "fun"? I mean working on something fun is ideal, obviously, but the fun stuff is usually going to be much harder than building a simple web app. It will be nice to one day afford to work on something fun, but for now I need something that pays the bills.
curiously 12y ago
I look very much forward to your post! I don't think I have depression but it's energy sucking and morale crushing. Then there are days where everything goes well, and then getting crushed. It's like one step forward and three steps back. Slowly and I mean really subtly the momentum picks up but by no means is it a breeze. I've seen the slow ramp of death and thinking 'thats not me' boy am I learning it now.

by patio11 12y ago

sarciszewski 12y ago

> Many of us in the community struggle with it. You're very not alone. Very much this.

Chris_Newton 12y ago

I, for one, would be interested to read about your experiences when you have the time to write them up. I’m particularly interested in your comments about the problem of AR not being intrinsically motivating for you, because I’m in exactly the opposite position. My side business is in a field I very much care about, and on top of that it’s something I work on with my wife. It’s at the stage where it’s starting to pick up a little after a lot of work, but still a long way from overtaking what we can bring in from our established main business doing custom web/software work for commercial clients. We have absolutely no doubt that we could grow the side business faster if we could put more time and money into it. Unfortunately, I’m cursed with being someone who insists on things being done properly. That means as long as we have paying clients of our first business who need to be looked after to high professional standards, we can’t be working so much on the new business that we’re compromising our performance in the older one. We want to be building cool new stuff all night the way I could when I was 21. We have a zillion ideas, and we know how we’d implement some of them, and we know from very positive feedback what sorts of things our customers want to see next. But we have to force ourselves not to do that if it would mean not being able to concentrate on the day job properly tomorrow, and that can be very frustrating at times. The other downside of being Mr Every-i-dotted is that when you get silly amounts of new bureaucratic overheads to deal with — and we’ve had a particularly bad wave of that over the past year here in the UK — you want to make sure everything is above board and all the right records are kept and returns filed and so on. But if the same people are responsible for both doing all of that admin work and actually building what you’re building, that means you can wind up spending more of the limited time you have available on mundane things and less on what you really want to be doing to grow the business. Again, if what you’re building actually matters to you and you’re personally invested in seeing it develop to its full potential, that can be frustrating. The huge upside that, for us at least, outweighs all of the above is that as long as the new business is bringing in enough to cover its costs and we keep getting nice feedback from happy customers, we enjoy it enough to keep it going. An unexpected but very pleasant benefit of doing B2C in a hobbyist market is that it seems when people like what you’re doing, they often make the effort to tell you about it. It’s amazing how much difference getting one nice e-mail from someone whose day you made a little better can make to your own day. So in a way, whether it’s a modestly profitable side project or one day turns into something bigger, we still win and we’re still happy to be doing it. Though we do look forward to the day we can build the mansion, buy the yacht, and retire at ($current_age + $small_number_of_years). ;-)

bhayden 12y ago

Do you think it's more likely for a first-time entrepreneur working on SMB SaaS to find success with something that's not "fun"? I mean working on something fun is ideal, obviously, but the fun stuff is usually going to be much harder than building a simple web app. It will be nice to one day afford to work on something fun, but for now I need something that pays the bills.

curiously 12y ago

I look very much forward to your post! I don't think I have depression but it's energy sucking and morale crushing. Then there are days where everything goes well, and then getting crushed. It's like one step forward and three steps back. Slowly and I mean really subtly the momentum picks up but by no means is it a breeze. I've seen the slow ramp of death and thinking 'thats not me' boy am I learning it now.