
Show HN: Revenue Forecasting for SaaS Apps - Doches
https://saascast.io
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erikrothoff
Bit of pricing advice: businesses making a lot of money don’t mind paying for
software. I think the $10 flat fee will come back and bite you in the future.
SaaS metrics was so important for us and we were dropping $150 a month on
ChartMogul when our MRR was only $3000.

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hartator
Interesting. Did it help figuring it out your pricing?

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erikrothoff
I wouldn't say we used Chartmogul as a basis for our pricing. I do think a
forecasting feature in Chartmogul would have helped us realise much quicker
that our current pricing had us on an unsustainable path.

We got Chartmogul to be able to gauge the health of our startup, and for that
it's been worth every penny. I can't sing their praises enough.

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hartator
Interesting. Why it was an unsustainable path?

I am trying to figure out pricing for my own startup and it’s no easy task.

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huac
a bigger player is
[https://www.zodiacmetrics.com/](https://www.zodiacmetrics.com/), who have
many peer-reviewed papers and are thus transparent with their (general)
forecasting approach. i would love to see some model details given the
maturity of other teams.

(disclosure: i took a class with the prof whose research drives zodiac)

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jdwyah
Zodiac is definitely worth a look. They did a pretty good job of predicting
our long-term user’s future revenues. Also all of the academic papers around
it are good reads.

That said, that didn’t solve our problem because what we really wanted was
predictions of our new customers. So we could quickly see whether or not their
quality was changing. I just wrote something up about where we landed.
[https://engineering.ezcater.com/early-prediction-of-
customer...](https://engineering.ezcater.com/early-prediction-of-customer-
lifetime-value)

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ianhawes
One feature that I think will help smaller SaaS businesses: Revenue Calendar.

For example, on Jan 1, $500 will be charged, Jan 2, $250 will be charged,
etc..

Sure, it's great that in a given month you will process X in MRR, but knowing
when that ends up being charged is always a plus for SMBs.

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codingdave
Does this do anything more than just chart some KPIs and extend a trendline
from your revenue?

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thenaturalist
Out of curiosity: Did you try to validate your hypothesis that people will
find this useful?

No need to share juicy detials, I'm genuinely wondering. I'm very much
thinking about "on top feature" small SaaS projects and Stripe is a prime
candidate, but I wonder if I would use this.

General Stripe reporting solutions are there. I'm having a hard time seeing
how nominal revenue predictions are actionable. In case things go up I should
be able to gauge by actionable metrics (churn, sign up rate, conversion
rates), and wouldn't care to end up with $ estimates (will be slightly off
either way).

Would love to chat about the idea/ topic in general in case you're interested.

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mcgarnagle
I believe there are already many solutions for this,
[https://baremetrics.com/](https://baremetrics.com/) offers a paid service for
reporting churn, sign up rates, conversion rates etc,
[https://clearbanc.com/](https://clearbanc.com/) offers a free solution for
the same metrics. I believe they both support stripe data as well.

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thenaturalist
Yup, I kno of baremetrics and the like; hence I would use them to check on
general, actionable SaaS metrics and am wondering about the perceived value of
Saascast for customers of those tools that already have a feeling where their
business might be going in the next one to three months.

With changes in the product I'm not sure whether longer time horizons make
sense.

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02thoeva
I believe ChartMogul are adding revenue forecasting to their product shortly.

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erikrothoff
Really?? That would be great! What’s your source?

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Mr_Ed
Yep, forecasting in ChartMogul is coming.

Source: I looked at our backlog :)

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k1ns
Great name, rolls of the tongue.

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stocktech
What problem does this solve?

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wheresvic1
You should consider using a production build of react for your front-end!

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tarr11
Staring at a blank screen, wondering why.

2.3MB JS on your home page...

