

Ask HN: One man bootstrapped SAAS business, do you disclose that to clients? - codegeek

If you are the only one primarily running your SAAS business, do you disclose that information to your clients ? Do Clients care ? Would love to hear from single person bootstrappers.
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patio11
I don't throw it in people's faces, but equally don't attempt to hide it. I
was very self-conscious about it years ago, but clients have by-and-large
responded very positively to it.

My favorite way for massaging the issue is: "Yep, at present I'm the only
person working on this full-time. There are plusses and minuses to this. For
example, we can't offer round-the-clock phone support standard with our plans.
That's a minus. On the plus side, any time you have a problem, it gets dealt
with by me, who built the software and has all necessary authority to fix your
problem, rather than somebody reading from a script in a call center
somewhere. Your call on who you want to rely on when it's something critical
to your business." (I stole this line from Jason Cohen and oh boy does it
work.)

I would encourage you, if you deal with larger companies, to be able to walk
the professionalism walk while you're talking the professionalism talk. When I
started by business ~8 years ago I was a kid with a web app. These days, I
might think of myself like that, but when I'm talking to the IT department at
a hospital words like "designated HIPAA compliance officer" and "errors &
omissions insurance policy" and "LLC" come up a lot.

~~~
codegeek
"On the plus side, any time you have a problem, it gets dealt with by me, who
built the software and has all necessary authority to fix your problem"

This is excellent advice. I am going to use this on my bootstrapped SAAS from
now on. thx :)

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dangrossman
If they ask, sure.

With over 100,000 accounts across 3 SaaS businesses, maybe a dozen people have
ever asked, or clued themselves in after realizing I personally responded to
all their support requests for years. I don't know of any paying customers
I've lost over it. If the product works and they get good support, they're
happy.

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Terpaholic
As a one man bootstrapped SAAS business, I generally omit that information
unless asked. If the question is asked, I answer truthfully. The hardest part
about being a one man startup in my experience actually is getting press
coverage. When they ask you about your "Team" and you say it's you and a
freelancer, the conversation seems to end pretty quickly.

I'd love to hear others opinions on how to approach the press as a one-man
bootstrapped SAAS startup?

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drsim
I'm a one man bootstrapped business (at the moment). Judging by my help@
emails, most customers perceive my company to be a bunch of people. I don't
hide it but I don't shout it out either.

My customers tend to be small too, so it has been much more of a positive if
they find that I'm similar to them. I can't always respond to email within a
day in which case I'm up-front about my limitations.

And who likes the copy/paste responses you get from many SaaS, especially the
likes of PayPal/eBay/Amazon/Google et al? You have a massive advantage to
build loyalty and relationships by stamping your personality and
approachableness on your comms.

That said, maybe if you're shooting for monthly subscriptions from enterprise
clients $1k+ it can hobble you. Patrick at Kalzumeus seems to know that area
well.

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MattBearman
I bootstrapped and run BugMuncher on my own, and while I don't shout it from
the roof tops, I do have a few rules:

\- Never use the "royal we"

\- Always sign emails personally from me - No making up fake employee names or
'BugMuncher Team' sign offs

\- If someone asks then I'll tell them.

So far I've not had any issues because of my one-man-band status.

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cygnus_x1
I wouldn't go out of my way to disclose unless in someway it's an advantage
(it usually isn't).

If you do need to disclose, I found some solid responses to "It's just you?"
are at
[https://training.kalzumeus.com/newsletters/archive/enterpris...](https://training.kalzumeus.com/newsletters/archive/enterprise_sales)

~~~
adiian
Great link

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rabidonrails
This probably makes a difference based on the level of availability that your
clients expect from you and based on how "corporate" they are.

Corporate clients like working with bigger companies. Why? Because the person
making the decision doesn't want to have to justify the decision to use a
startup. Even thought the payoff might be greater to go with the startup, it's
the _easy_ decision to justify by going with a large, established company.

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scottmcquin
I don't think they should care.

Would you care if the owner of a restaurant showed you to your table, took
your order, cooked the meal and then cleaned the table after you left?
Probably not.....as long as the quality is high.

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1123581321
It depends on what the customers think and if what they think is why they
subscribed. If they think that the business is larger and more stable, and
value that, they won't be happy.

Personally, I prefer to be visible as an opinionated single founder from the
start because it attracts customers who want me to 'win' along with them. I
like the model of Brennan Dunn's Planscope in this respect.

