Ask HN: What’s helpes you build a successful SaaS business? - deeplearningphd
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mrskitch
I agree with what @codegeek has said, and would like to outline a few more
pointers:

\- It's important to solve a problem you've either deeply experienced or
passionate about. Having a deep passion will help you build something that
others will more-than-likely use. This passion also lends itself well when it
comes to selling (people tend to buy _you_ just as much as the product).

\- If you don't know what to build, go to your favorite open-source project
and do some sorting (comments or reactions). This is likely an indicator of a
larger issue, which means people are looking for a solution.

\- Definitely listen to your customers. Sometimes it's a simple bug that needs
fixing, other times it's a feature that will not only make them happy, but
help make your business more attractive to future clients that might be facing
similar.

FWIW I'm running a successful (by my terms) side-project called
[https://browserless.io](https://browserless.io). I've also done an interview
on IndieHackers and you can see more about it here
([https://www.indiehackers.com/product/browserless](https://www.indiehackers.com/product/browserless))

~~~
AznHisoka
For your service, browserless.io, can I bring my own proxy? In other words,
can I pass a proxy IP/credentials to your Headless Browser to visit a webpage?

~~~
mrskitch
Definitely: [https://docs.browserless.io/docs/chrome.html#launching-
with-...](https://docs.browserless.io/docs/chrome.html#launching-with-a-
proxy). I still need to write some form of docs on how to handle the auth
window properly in puppeteer, but it's definitely possible

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bsears
To build on what everyone else is saying:

\- Make sure your tiers make sense: The features each tier unlock should be
logical, with the goal being to build a "value ladder". Give your customer
just enough value to be successful and show them how the higher tiers will
make them even more successful

\- Charge money ASAP: I've talked to a lot of SaaS startups which are in
"beta" and don't want to charge money until they've built up a user base or
"finish" the product to be "sellable". What they don't realize is that the
quality of potential customer goes down because people don't take free things
seriously. Another thing is there is valuable data around how to price your
SaaS. Free trials will give you all the "beta users" you want, with a
potential to convert if they find value in what you are providing.

\- Get Onboarding right: The process of a customer seeing the pricing,
subscribing, getting started, to the eventual goal of the customer finding
value in the product and converting should have a very clear path. When a
customer signs up for a free trial you need to be able to show them that your
product provides the value they were looking for quickly or they will most
likely wont convert. Step-by-step forms as well as actual meetings with
customers can go a long way to improving conversions. A/B test this process
for best results.

(I started a SaaS which makes it easier to manage a SaaS,
[https://servicebot.io](https://servicebot.io) )

~~~
palidanx
I second the comments about charging money ASAP. Really the success of your
SAAS is going to be managing your recurring revenue (and once you get
subscriptions, managing your churn).

A second thing I would encourage is never to be pricing information in
marketing e-mails, and instead link back to your website. On the start of my
SAAS I thought how much I would pay for the service as baseline pricing.

Really that type of thinking is incorrect as you want to price relative to
your market, meaning how much your customers are willing to pay.

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yomansat
Beneficial and reliable software, and spend as much effort on marketing [1].
Also listen to your users (by talking to them or tracking their behaviour
through different tools [2]).

1: [https://www.sideprojectchecklist.com/marketing-
checklist/](https://www.sideprojectchecklist.com/marketing-checklist/)

2: [http://webdevchecklist.com/](http://webdevchecklist.com/)

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codegeek
Depends on the definition of "success". For a bootstrapped business, it is
mostly about profits. For high growth startups, not so much at least for first
few years where growth is a bigger metric than profits.

I run a moderately profitable bootstrapped SAAS business so I will share my
thoughts based on my own experience:

\- Product Market Fit: This is huge because if you cannot prove the market
fit, you cannot build a successful business of any type

\- solve one main problem: If your product does not solve one main core
problem, it will ultimately lose out either to bigger players or just fail. A
SAAS with too many features which does a little for someone is always less
than a SAAS with few great benefits that does a lot for most.

\- Cashflow In > Cashflow out: Simple math. If you are not able to make more
revenue than your costs, you will eventually fail. So the goal is to not only
maximize revenue but also reduce costs as much as possible.

\- Listen to existing customers: Keep an eye your customers and where their
struggles/issues are if any. Don't ignore them.

\- Ability to sustain good customers: Very important. There will always be
churn but as long as you are able to keep and sustain your good customers,
that always helps.

\- Make more from existing customers/up-selling: I realized that a lot of
existing customers who are happy with the product are willing to pay more to
get a few custom features from time to time. That adds to the revenue as well.

\- Fire the bad customers quickly: Bad clients take more support time and
expect to pay less. Fire them if needed. You can never grow your business with
bad customers.

\- Sales, Sales, Sales. Learn how to sell and go sell the thing. Without
sales, there is no business.

\- Marketing and Branding: Important but I put this after sales at least in my
case. You need to spend time working on your branding even if small.

\- Most importantly, learn to build a small team and delegate tasks. 1 person
cannot do everything.Yes there are 1 man indie hacker type SAAS out there but
they cannot scale beyond a certain point. But with a team of 2-5 people, you
can do a lot more scaling.

EDIT: I realized that most of these points are applicable to any business so
let me add a few more SAAS specific ones :

\- Customers should be able to upgrade or downgrade their plans without much
friction. A lot of SAAS businesses miss out on ability to make more because
their upgrade process requires human touch. For enterprise, I can understand
but for most regular SAAS businesses, make it easy to upgrade or even
downgrade

\- Grandfather the good clients if you are taking away any key features or
raising prices significantly. Be careful about pissing off good customers. If
do you have to take away something, please communicate in advance and set the
right expectations. Nothing pisses me more than a sudden email that says
"sorry bro. gotta pay more and we are doing this next week to you"

\- Backups, servers, monitoring: Get the technical stuff in control and
automate the hack out of things as much as possible.

\- Cancellation and feedback: If a client is cancelling, try and get as much
feedback from them as possible. A lot of times I have been able to win back
cancelling clients because we addressed something they needed and did not know
that they could ask us for that extra help/work.

~~~
graystevens
I’m going to be cheeky and call out one of your edited points as something I
focused on from the start.

As a bootstrapped SaaS owner myself, automating almost everything has been
key, giving me time to go and work on other things that simply aren’t easily
automated (I’m looking at you sales).

Somethings I have automated:

\- Onboarding should be hassle-free with very little interaction needed from
myself, unless they are after something bespoke. \- Infrastructure is handled
by Ansible, so I can easily (manually) scale up should I ever get a hug from
HN. Also means I can rebuild from scratch relatively easily - just a few
ansible commands. \- Silly things that are easily forgotten like LetsEncrypt
renewals, backups etc.

I’m sure there are other things but they evade me currently.

~~~
atmosx
Regarding DR, have you actually _tried_ rebuilding your entire infrastructure?
Do you do that regularly as you add more playbooks?

If not, I'd say that your DR is more of a wishful-DR that real DR. Not bashing
on you, it's just that we're all prone to believe that everything will work
but most of the times it doesn't because <reasons>.

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iosdevelprss
I've been super happy with
[http://www.fairpixels.pro](http://www.fairpixels.pro) (had seen them around
here a few times). I've been engineering my way up, but never realised how key
design can be in converting traffic into users and turning users into fans.

~~~
dangrossman
I suppose if growth hacking via false social proof is a service you're in need
of, that's your team. I recall way too many Ask HN threads with that link in
one of the first or only comments recently.

~~~
digianarchist
2/5 comments by OP are plugging this site.

Nobody minds you plugging your service, just don't pretend you are a customer.

~~~
iosdevelprss
Not pretending

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titusblair
I have found spark.laravel.com to be a great template for a SAAS business. I
am looking for a good serverless SAAS template, anyone know of any?

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thrawaylost112
Cult like following. Infection like marketing. Biggest thing: Not trusting
people from other business.

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mr_spothawk
Make sure you're feasible. Build a Financial Model:

[https://medium.com/the-mission/simple-saas-financial-
model-f...](https://medium.com/the-mission/simple-saas-financial-model-for-
early-stage-startups-13895d07b2be)

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crb002
Media Rule: All media assets are hosted on AWS S3 buckets so your servers can
scale to tens of thousands of users.

