
Ask HN: I made a SaaS prototype. What now? - pesfandiar
Hi fellow HNers,<p>In the past few months, I&#x27;ve been spending a few hours a week to create a Twilio-based virtual phone number web app. I knew there was enough demand for this product since there are a host of similar companies out there, and one of them (Grasshopper) was recently acquired too. I was mainly interested in the technology so I picked a few features for an MVP and started coding.<p>I launched the app a couple of weeks ago, and bought some ads to see if it gets any attention. The landing page isn&#x27;t optimized, and it looks rough at this time, so it didn&#x27;t get any paying customers. As I was considering different ways of marketing it, I found the typical tasks too menial or daunting, and realized I don&#x27;t have enough passion&#x2F;drive to actually run the SaaS as a side business.<p>I even tried listing it on Flippa, hoping an interested folk might find it interesting and take over. It got some attention there, but since this service is in a low-margin commodity market and there were a couple of more mature similar websites, none of the prospects placed a bid.<p>Now, my question is what would you do if you were in my shoes? Do you think it&#x27;s worth giving a shot? Should I open-source and write about it to get some technical credit out of it? Should I be looking for a partner that can run the business side while I further develop it?<p>Thanks!<p>PS: If you&#x27;re curious, the website is www.phonjour.com. Please be gentle since everything is hosted on a single AWS micro instance!
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ramon
I think you need to get customers in order to get a feeling of how you should
proceed forward. What can you get from Open-Sourcing? Do you want a community
of developers? For what?

Best Regards,

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pesfandiar
Not looking for a community. I meant as a portfolio item, and someone might
actually use it as a template to start their own app.

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ramon
If you just want to do it for a free will, ok.

