
Code to Write to Start a SaaS - DanHulton
https://nodewood.com/blog/the-huge-list-of-code-you-need-to-write-to-start-a-saas/
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quezzle
Edit: Dan has edited his blog post to address this comment ... good luck dan
with Nodewood! See comments below. We should support a fellow founder and HN
community member who is here and listening and working.

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Original comment:

It’s not clear until the end of the long post that this guy is selling and all
in one development package.

No problem with that but it feels disingenuous to make building a SAAS super
hard THEN say “he he I have the solution for you!”.

He’d have been better to say up front his product solves the development
complexity problem which looks like this....

Then at the end you’d say “gee this guy is right”, instead of “oh I’ve been
played”.

~~~
DanHulton
Fair point! One sec.

~~~
quezzle
I love it that the web makes live edits possible.

If your making adjustments then I applaud you.

~~~
DanHulton
Just did. Thanks for the advice! I spent so much time putting together the
list of code that when it came time to plug Nodewood, I didn't have much
mental oomph left, so I just put it at the end. Your suggestion is much
better.

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yellow_lead
This article vastly overestimates what you need to start a SaaS, which is in
the author's best interest.

Most of these don't fit into SaaS MVP at all...

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pnako
This is absurd. I've worked on very successful SaaS (B2B, not B2C) that
dominate their industry, it was started by a bunch of students writing shit in
PHP, then got rewritten in Java at some point. That's it. Along the lines it
picked more tools and techniques of course, but you don't have to do all that
in the first three months.

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ggregoire
If I had to build a CRUD-like SaaS tomorrow I'd probably choose

* postgreSQL

* postgREST

* React/TypeScript (with create-react-app)

Hosted on AWS for roughly $50/month (or for free with the Free Tier).

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ge96
My concern with SaaS's are the legal problems, need some blanket ToS I can
use, do I need an LLC? Etc... Like this rendering bug caused a seizure give me
money, sort of thing. Outlandish but yeah

~~~
redis_mlc
> My concern with SaaS's are the legal problems, need some blanket ToS I can
> use, do I need an LLC? Etc... Like this rendering bug caused a seizure give
> me money, sort of thing. Outlandish but yeah

In the US, anybody can sue you for anything. And if they do, you will have to
defend yourself in court.

No, you don't need a LLC, and it doesn't shield you from a lawsuit unless you
manage the LLC like a real corporation.

I see this type of comment on HN quite frequently. If you're that worried
about lawsuits, maybe starting a company isn't right for you.

~~~
ge96
Yeah do it or don't easy to talk, I'll probably just find some off-the-shelf
ToS/Privacy Policies to go with initially and if it happens to be profitable
worry about lawyers later when there is actually money to use.

edit: me focusing on the negatives

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randomsearch
For anyone actually serious about prototyping a SaaS, getting MVP out the
door, try firebase. It solves a lot of the problems in the article for you.
It’s flawed and annoying but I believe indie hackers still runs on it.

It’s relatively expensive, but if you consider productivity gains it’s
basically free for a long time.

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yhoiseth
Looks great — good luck!

For Rails, there’s [https://bullettrain.co/](https://bullettrain.co/). For
Django, there’s [https://www.saaspegasus.com/](https://www.saaspegasus.com/).
(I haven’t tried any of them.)

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MattGaiser
This is why I love Django. Most of this stuff comes included.

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theonething
> Some are going to be unavoidable, such as JavaScript if you have a web app
> with any serious browser interactions

With the rise of things like Phoenix LiveView, Blazor for c#, Turbolinks and
Stimulus Reflex for Rails, JS frameworks like React aren't unavoidable
anymore.

And I couldn't be happier about that.

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quezzle
I wonder what is the shortest path to deploying a web application that is
fully codable (as opposed to no-code), that includes user
database/management/auth.

I suspect the closest is the old school libraries like Ruby on Rails and the
equivalent in other languages.

~~~
MattGaiser
Django has all three built in.

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fimdomeio
One should be aware of all the things you'll need to build but balance that
with the amount of money available. It's probably still possible to create a
sass with just plain php and ftp uploads and that might enable you to get a
product out of the door fast enough so that money doesn't run out. If you have
the time and the money, sure, do the best solution.

Special if you're working on a very small scale but plan to hire sometime in
the future, remember every little piece of tech adds to the probability the
person you'll hire is not familiar with it, so more training will be involved.

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victor9000
If you're evaluating tools for building a SaaS app, you may also consider
using Laravel Spark. I recently used it to build an MVP for a client and was
able to wrap up the project in less than a month. The tool chain is pretty
robust, and the framework and ecosystem are both fairly mature.

~~~
DanHulton
Spark is absolutely one of my inspirations (and competitors). I figure there's
enough room in this market for a few solutions to this problem, and there will
likely be people who don't want to use PHP (for a variety of reasons) that
there'll be space for both of us.

~~~
victor9000
For sure, if anything you may want to address some of Spark's weaknesses and
use them as a way to differentiate your product.

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cutler
I'm exhausted before I've even got started. And to think all Zuck needed for
world domiation was a P4 with 256Mb RAM and procedural PHP. There's a lesson
somewhere.

~~~
redis_mlc
He wrote the initial version of the Face Book at university, but after he
moved to SV had about 4 developers working in a house with him.

My understanding was that he was very focused on reliability since some of the
other social media networks were so flaky at the time, like Friendster.

~~~
cutler
The P4 with 256Mb RAM I was referring to is the likely spec of the server Zuck
was renting for $85/month when Facebook launched. Amazing, considering the
spec we have available today for only a few $ per month.

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m3h
It would be awesome if the author could include some screenshots of what the
product looks like in action.

On side notes, is there any plan to support React components as well?

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bryanrasmussen
>Getting all these various tools set up to work together will take some time
as well. Just searching "configuring webpack for X" reveals a minefield of
blog posts written for various versions of webpack and X. Some will help, some
won't, and sometimes only experimentation will reveal which is which.

Yes, I too hate Webpack but it keeps getting pushed on me by companies where
they have set up Webpack because it is what everybody uses.

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quattrofan
Or you could just build serverless and use Lambda...

~~~
quezzle
That’s real fiction right there.

How did lambda manage to create this false idea that it makes everything
instantly easy? If anything in many ways it makes things much more complex and
harder and more expensive.

~~~
MattGaiser
It is easy when you are a novice and don't really comprehend anything other
than the seemingly really low price per call.

I've had friends propose serverless startups by comparing $5 a month in
hosting to the cents of serverless.

