
I stopped setting a financial goal for my SaaS - craftzdog
https://blog.inkdrop.info/i-stopped-setting-a-financial-goal-for-my-saas-a92c3db65506
======
jmduke
This post resonates a lot with me!

I've got a side project that's current bringing in around ~2-3K MRR
([https://buttondown.email](https://buttondown.email)).

I spent a long time daydreaming about having it hit four-digits in recurring
revenue — it felt like such an accomplishment that if I were able to crack it,
it'd be a dream come true. It's certainly not enough to live off of
(especially living in Seattle), but it's a non-trivial amount of money and
gives me a great source of pride.

The idea of doubling that amount, though, seems — well, if not _exhausting_,
certainly unappealing. I can't think of a way in which my life would be
improved by additional revenue, but I can think of a lot of ways it would be
hampered by having twice the customer base:

1\. More customer support and time spent writing emails

2\. More time working on features that aren't what I care about

3\. Less freedom to experiment with other projects or ideas

One of the joys of having a project that is truly _yours_ is that you alone
get to dictate your terms of success.

~~~
rubicon33
Can I ask - how do you send emails programmatically? Every time I've done this
for personal projects, I run into issues. Whether it's auth blocking from
GMail or whatever. Seriously would appreciate even just a nudge in the right
direction.

~~~
wdewind
Not OP but I've spent a lot of time setting up email sending for SaaS apps. It
shouldn't be too difficult, just use a third party provider like sendgrid and
make sure your DKIM and SPF records are setup properly and you should be good
to go. I've also used stuff like Amazon SES and it's not worth the trouble for
side projects (or even medium sized, real businesses, honestly). If you have
specific questions feel free to ask.

~~~
lonelycss
(Email noob here) I'm writing a very low traffic web app, and I was thinking
about SES, mostly because it's free for small volumes. What's wrong with it?
Would you recommend sendgrid (or something else) instead?

~~~
saimiam
I recently set up SES for my own projects so some this info is fresh in my
mind. I’m not an SES power user so ymmv.

My only real, big issue with SES is with email templates as in I don’t know of
any way to view templates in SES.

So, if you create an email template and want to preview it, you’ll have to do
it locally/off-SES. If you need to handle hundreds of templates, this can get
tedious.

The other minor tech issue is that SES needs you to work out of one of three
regions - US east, west, and EU (if I recall correctly).

If, for legal or hygiene purposes you need your data anywhere else in the
world, you’re SOL.

Other than these two, SES has been amazing. It costs pennies and I host all my
email, both transactional and personal, with them. Worth noting that my
transactional email is in the order of a few hundred per month, if that.

------
mobitar
I had a similar experience growing my company (funnily enough, also a note
taking app). When I reached the point where I had everything I needed, I had
to ask myself, why keep going?

The answer for me was a custom-fitted realization that building a company is
to be treated no different than a game. A factory building simulation game,
like Factorio. The goal isn't to achieve operational bliss, because that goal
is wickedly unattainable (or also extremely attainable, but would mean you'd
accomplish that goal by simply just not playing at all). It is instead to
grow, build, scale, solve, for no reason other than it being enjoyable to do
so. Because playing the game, for problem-solving minded individuals, is a lot
more stimulating than not playing it.

I wrote more about my personal experience with this here:

[https://listed.to/@mo/2476/play-the-game](https://listed.to/@mo/2476/play-
the-game)

~~~
huherto
Nice Post. Now you are making me question if I should play the game.

------
Crazyontap
I guess this applies to solo founders (like me) and micro teams but after
making a decent livelyhood from SaaS too, my experience is that a lot of
people confuse product and project.

I mean a project is something you do in your leisure time (like on a weekend)
and it's meant more to show off your coding skills or scratching your own itch
or maybe like gaining the pleasure a painter gains from drawing a picture.

A product otoh is a very different beast. It does need a project but that is
like may 10-15% of it. The rest is a whole new world of selling, maintaining,
growing which has things like content marketing, link building, SEO,
optimizing Salescopy, sending out emails, building an affiliate program,
recruiting affiliates, A/B testing, conversion optimization, reducing
attrition, giving bonuses, doing discounts and coupons, cross-selling,
upselling, funnels, analytics and a hundred different things.

The product makes you money, the project gives you pleasure of coding. For new
founder and especially programmers trying to make a buck selling online
services it can be a easy pitfall.

~~~
bredren
This makes some sense of it. The author has a project that happens to have
some financial reward.

A startup SaaS is a product, and while a project can become a product, I think
it is better to set out from the beginning as a product. And for projects to
remain so and be treated that way as the author describes.

Projects are great, but revenue is the primary metric for most SaaS products,
and and if you follow YC school of thought you should be chasing growth of
that metric.

------
FpUser
Congrats to authors and good luck.

Have a question. I do pay for few things (netflix, amazon prime and couple of
others). Their services are natural candidate in my opinion for being billed
monthly.

Now everyone my cats included are trying to sell their wares however small
they are as a service. If I've paid monthly fee for every notepad sized
program I use I'd be out of commission.

How does this business model manage to survive is puzzling to me.

~~~
meesles
I agree, it's ridiculous! Not to mention that many app developers (as
mentioned in the post) can't grind along on a single app for 10 years, so you
most likely are not getting $5/mo (or more!) of value out of the product for
10 years.

Sublime did it best, IMO. Charge a non-negligable amount ($70) for an
individual, but pennies to a company. That's how many of us got our licenses.
That $ should be enough to run their business if it's a good product, and when
the $ dries out because of competition, make something new! Seems greedy that
everyone who writes a note-taking app thinks they deserve a subscription in
perpetuity.

~~~
msvan
The flip side of the story is that Sublime died. I know they have had some
updates recently, but for years it was completely stagnant. The hole that was
left by Sublime was filled by VS Code. Maybe Sublime would've survived with a
subscription model?

When you're paying a subscription you are paying for the maintainer's
continued interest in the product over time, which is not to be
underestimated. Software rots quickly.

~~~
naringas
did sublime die? I use it everyday. and I am looking forward to sublime merge
with plugin capabilities

~~~
msvan
None of my colleagues or friends are using Sublime anymore. I think that
there's a chart somewhere at Sublime HQ that looks like a ski slope.

~~~
lifty
If they implement a sane plugin system I will switch to Sublime. Currently it
takes too much effort to use Sublime as and IDE when you compare it to
something like VS Code.

------
aresant
The most important thing a SAAS founder can do is to clearly understand their
own goals (which is exactly what this article's OP did) and then develop a
realistic plan of achieving it.

I bumped into a tool recently that helps simplify some basic financial
modeling and goal setting for SAAS companies called
[http://www.Simsaas.co](http://www.Simsaas.co)

I'm always surprised how little financial modeling and goal setting is baked
into the "side project hustle" mentality.

I've watched a lot of companies wind up on a treadmill - pumping dollars into
marketing acquisition for non-sticky customers vs. focusing on product side
improvements to extend retention.

Or stagnating at a level BELOW that "hey I'm making enough to live on forever"
and letting a project deteriorate vs figuring out how to drive a little more
marketing.

------
criddell
> _Make it better rather than bigger_

Yes! I wish more developers would heed this. There have been quite a few apps
that I started using when they were new, simple, and focused. Then feature
after feature gets added and over time the app becomes less attractive and
less fun to use.

Jamie Zawinski once said _every program attempts to expand until it can read
mail. Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can._

These days that could probably be updated to say _every app expands until it
can share to social media._

~~~
usaphp
> Yes! I wish more developers would heed this.

I think a lot of us know this, but customers demand more...I am selling a
scheduling app for small businesses, and I wish I can just make the app better
instead of building new features, but if you have over 1000 customers chances
are you are constantly getting 10-15 new feature requests on a daily basis,
it's hard to ignore those, especially when some customers give low ratings to
your app with reasons like "missing feature X", even tho the feature was never
promised to them.

~~~
magicalhippo
> chances are you are constantly getting 10-15 new feature requests on a daily
> basis, it's hard to ignore those

What I've tried to do at work is to leverage other programs as much as
possible.

For example, many customers want our program to massage the data slightly, or
maybe augment it with some fixed values etc. Instead of making dozens of
different ways to do this, I focused on making it easy to export data to Excel
(or similar) and import it back in again. The import/export routine is generic
enough that it takes me 15 mins tops to add it to a new form if it needs a bit
of custom handling. If it's just a generic grid it's a one-liner.

Similar for file integrations. We can do (S)FTP, again with a reusable
framework making it a breeze to add. For anything else we just access a
(shared) directory and the customer can use what they want.

Fortunately for us though, we don't rely on ratings as such, so we can be a
bit more strict.

------
PerfectElement
I follow the same philosophy, but my side-project got out of my control and
its monthly profits now cover 12x my expenses.

Of course, maintaining it became a lot more stressful than when the MRR was at
$10k and I had to hire a small team to help.

I still try to keep things under control by spending most of our time on
product and customer support, and zero time/dollars on marketing/ads. This
keeps our growth rate manageable (3%-5% per month). I also ignore all
interested investors/buyers that want to scale the business.

At our revenue level, I realize I could probably sell the business and never
have to work again, but I'm enjoying the ride and afraid of what the pressure
to scale could do to our customers.

~~~
aantix
What's your project?

~~~
hinkley
Nice try, Mr Bezos.

------
ChuckMcM
One of the things I have observed over the years is that some people are
motivated to build technology because they like building things, and some are
motivated by the fact that builders of technology make money.

People who like the 'art' of building this stuff, are (again in my experience,
not an exhaustive study or anything) generally much better programmers and
engineers that the purely financially motivated folks.

~~~
n42
I don't disagree, but this romanticized view of the selfless visionary
engineer/designer/founder is counterproductive.

the truth is that moderation is important. you need both. do both. be
flexible. pay attention. know when to shift focus. getting stuck on one thing
at the wrong moment is how you go out of business. don't go out of business.

going out of business is decidedly the most anti-user thing your company can
do.

~~~
ChuckMcM
I think we're on the same page here, there is a reason that sociopaths who use
'money' as their scorecard do better (at least initially) as CEOs. It is also
this same principle that explains why startups with multiple founders have a
higher correlation with success than solo founders. Having the ability for one
person to both pay attention and recognize it is time to shift focus can be
rare.

~~~
n42
Definitely. I think we are, too. I worried that your original comment could be
misinterpreted.

------
crispyporkbites
1300 paying users for a markdown app, I'm actually impressed by the size of
that market. That's either a great job marketing or a much bigger market than
I realised.

~~~
hastes
It is a huge market, almost every single one of my colleagues uses the built
in MacBook note taking app on a daily basis (as do I).

Personally I have never found the need for a markdown editor (never really
liked markdown much for typing) but I can see clearly why lots of people like
it.

~~~
dewey
> It is a huge market, almost every single one of my colleagues uses the built
> in MacBook note taking app on a daily basis (as do I).

What makes this a "huge market" for a Markdown app if everyone uses the not
Markdown based note taking app shipping with macOS? I would guess that
dedicated Markdown based editors is mostly a niche market, even if it seems to
be common in the tech bubble.

~~~
hastes
I meant a note taking application in general is a huge market, I should have
been more clear. Think about the amount of non-tech users that still take
plenty of notes with a pen and paper (my parents for example), but in their
case (and mine) the notes app on Windows/macOS or pen/paper is sufficient
enough.

I would assume that the use for a Markdown based (developer focused, as it
seems from their landing page) editor such as this one would have a more niche
market. Without conducting market research into the topic myself, I would say
that his success with this product would serve as a pretty optimistic point
that there is a need and use for a product like this.

~~~
dewey
Ah yea, makes sense now. Thanks for the clarification!

------
juliansimioni
This is really great, and gives me something to look forward to.

Two years ago I started a company with a friend, and we are _nearly_ at the
point where our SaaS covers all our expenses. We do consulting to make up the
rest, which is not bad at all, but of course it would be nice if it was
completely optional.

I realized reading this post that I've definitely been focused on financial
goals for the last few months. It wears on you, and it's not the best long
term motivation.

Our dream has always been to be able to make our software better for a living,
but it's definitely easier to do that once the financial side is taken care of
:)

Sidenote, if anyone is looking for excellent geocoding with autocomplete, give
us a try over at [https://geocode.earth](https://geocode.earth).

~~~
rabidrat
$200/mo is quite a lot for "basic". I could see myself doing 2k or even 20k
requests per month, but nowhere near 200k. If there were a $20/mo option (or
maybe even $50/mo) I might consider it. But then of course you have to deal
with 10x of small-time users like me, who have limited resources and may have
problems getting set up. So it may not be worth it for you.

~~~
juliansimioni
We might add a smaller plan it someday, but you're right. There are enough
businesses that need that much geocoding, and it's much less work to support 1
$200/mo customer than 10 $20/mo.

Setting our lowest plan to $200/month was very intentional and has served us
well.

------
viiralvx
I can relate to this a lot. I'm working on something that brings around
$200-$400 revenue each both ([https://seeker.company](https://seeker.company))
and honestly, while I'd love for it to hit the $750 or even $1k range, it's
been hard dedicating time to it given the intensity of my day job. I'd love a
healthy buffer though for the monthly revenue, hopefully I get some breathing
room to do some more work on it in the future.

------
seanwilson
> Similarly, I feel so happy when I could build things, make progress or make
> things better. As it’s not a VC-backed startup, exponential growth is not
> mandatory for me. What I want to do is to make my product better instead of
> just making it bigger.

Great post! I can relate with growing my own paid side project
([https://www.checkbot.io](https://www.checkbot.io), a Chrome extension for
SEO). There's a big initial buzz with making the first sales as you never know
how it's going to be received when you first make it public. After you get
used to the sales getting more steady and predictable though, I don't find the
marketing and sales side that interesting - I'm more motivated by the feeling
I get from making something that people find useful and easy to use.

Having a project that I can manage myself is also much more appealing than the
stress of e.g. having to get funding and hire people as well. I enjoy posts
about apps/startups that aim for and are satisfied with modest profits instead
growing huge. I can never relate to stories about mega rich people trying to
get even richer.

------
mpurham
Awesome write-up and this post resonated with me as I have run saas companies
in the past and while revenue was great it became a lot emailing customers,
marketing, sales etc. I now am working on
[https://mattebot.co](https://mattebot.co) where I am following the "Make it
'better” rather than “bigger”' motto.'

------
twooclock
Thank you for sharing! I have exact same experiance and I'm very uncomfortable
talking about it. I guess one has to experience it first hand to be able to
comprehend in full. Once I tried to explain, but I guess others mistook me for
either being arogant or plain stupid. Not wanting more money is beyond their
imagination. Thanks again, all the best in future endaveours!

~~~
melvinroest
Your comment reminds me of the fisherman and the business man:

> There was once a businessman who was sitting by the beach in a small
> Brazilian village. As he sat, he saw a Brazilian fisherman rowing a small
> boat towards the shore having caught quite few big fish. The businessman was
> impressed and asked the fisherman, “How long does it take you to catch so
> many fish?” The fisherman replied, “Oh, just a short while.” “Then why don’t
> you stay longer at sea and catch even more?” The businessman was astonished.
> “This is enough to feed my whole family,” the fisherman said. The
> businessman then asked, “So, what do you do for the rest of the day?” The
> fisherman replied, “Well, I usually wake up early in the morning, go out to
> sea and catch a few fish, then go back and play with my kids. In the
> afternoon, I take a nap with my wife, and evening comes, I join my buddies
> in the village for a drink — we play guitar, sing and dance throughout the
> night.” The businessman offered a suggestion to the fisherman. “I am a PhD
> in business management. I could help you to become a more successful person.
> From now on, you should spend more time at sea and try to catch as many fish
> as possible. When you have saved enough money, you could buy a bigger boat
> and catch even more fish. Soon you will be able to afford to buy more boats,
> set up your own company, your own production plant for canned food and
> distribution network. By then, you will have moved out of this village and
> to Sao Paulo, where you can set up HQ to manage your other branches.” The
> fisherman continues, “And after that?” The businessman laughs heartily,
> “After that, you can live like a king in your own house, and when the time
> is right, you can go public and float your shares in the Stock Exchange, and
> you will be rich.” The fisherman asks, “And after that?” The businessman
> says, “After that, you can finally retire, you can move to a house by the
> fishing village, wake up early in the morning, catch a few fish, then return
> home to play with kids, have a nice afternoon nap with your wife, and when
> evening comes, you can join your buddies for a drink, play the guitar, sing
> and dance throughout the night!” The fisherman was puzzled, “Isn’t that what
> I am doing now?”

~~~
jessems
Love this one, heard a version before where the fisherman was a Greek and the
businessman was a German.

------
smnrchrds
Inkdrop was announced more than 3 years ago on HackerNews. I am happy for the
creator, and I am glad it is financially viable and going strong. But to be
honest, as someone who often muses about entrepreneurship and lifestyle
businesses, I find it a bit discouraging how long it takes to get to the point
of financial viability.

~~~
mobitar
Three years is typically just the tip of the iceberg ;) There's probably at
least a decade's worth of failures that lead up to finally having a successful
product.

~~~
jamil7
Any tips for staying motivated? I want to see my project through but it feels
like a real grind after the 1 year mark, every new signup makes me feel some
guilt because I feel the product isn't ready yet.

~~~
hinkley
You need perspective.

This is one of the biggest casualties of our industry's hyperfocus on software
all day, every day, and nothing else. Everything in the world is two
dimensional to us.

How many hobbies do you have?

Three years is only a long time if you are young or have never studied
anything longer than the time it took to get your CS degree.

In virtually any other hobby or pursuit, you have only just become interesting
to other people around the 3 year mark, and software developers are already
daydreaming about the Next Thing. If in fact they aren't already looking at
the Old Thing shrinking in the rear view mirror.

Pick something to try to get good at. It'll help reset your concept of 'a long
time' and your pain thresholds to something more compatible with the rest of
the world. An instrument. Crafting (wood, cloth, leather, beer). A sport.
Mushroom hunting. Learn to play Go (particularly good one for developers who
are uncomfortable picking up something too out of character). Stick around to
get properly good at it instead of simply conversation at parties good.

Slow down, and take a breath for fuck's sake.

~~~
jamil7
Thanks for the thoughtful reponse. I do have hobbies, I'm part of a road
cycling group and I learn my girlfriend's native language, I used to play
guitar but have less time for it now. You are correct though in that I hold
software and particully the software I produce to a different standard,
especially regarding the time I spend on it and what I expect. I guess maybe
it's a product of having invested so much in learning and building things.

------
transitivebs
Indrop looks really well done, and I agree with the author's motivation coming
from building core product as opposed to focusing on bizdev, marketing, and
growth.

I know a lot of open source authors and indie makers who have very similar
motivations, which is in large part why I decided to build
[https://saasify.sh](https://saasify.sh).

I'm hoping that it will help developers and makers like the author in this
article focus more on their core value proposition that drives their
motivation while being able to largely put aside the growth focused stuff that
most businesses need to focus on to be successful.

Saasify won't work for every project or for every author, but if it helps some
aspiring makers out there sustain their passion, then it'll have been a
success in my eyes.

------
flaxton
Great insight and a great app you’ve written! I am enjoying it on my Macs and
iPad Pro. And I’m glad to support your work, as I benefit from it ;-)

------
sharcerer
Inkdrop is really nice. Have just used the demo. Can't afford it right now as
a student,but really amazing product.

~~~
justaguyhere
Looks like he has a student discount, maybe that'll work for you?
[https://docs.inkdrop.app/student-discount](https://docs.inkdrop.app/student-
discount)

------
winrid
I love having goals. It keeps me focused especially when I fall behind.
Working on watch.ly (pivoting to chatbot that connects users to sales reps etc
via text) and Todo lists/financial goals keep me going. :)

------
dplgk
Getting redirected to a 404. Is there a cached version?

~~~
sdrothrock
It's up for me now, but in case it's still not available for you:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20191015012115/https://blog.inkd...](https://web.archive.org/web/20191015012115/https://blog.inkdrop.info/i-stopped-
setting-a-financial-goal-for-my-saas-a92c3db65506)

------
tuananh
i don't wanna be that guy but the demo app is almost 300MB - for a note app.
for comparison, vscode is 227 MB

