
Ask HN: Is it finally time to quit? - throw_your_boat
Using throwaway for obvious reasons...<p>I&#x27;m feeling pretty bad. Until now (I&#x27;m 45, SE for 20 years) I&#x27;ve been able to be successful by working hard and never quitting but I think that personality trait has been my demise this time.<p>I&#x27;ve worked full-time on a bootstrapped SaaS (niche academic domain) for over 3 years now. Went live on January 1 with 50 or so beta testers (free account and support for a year) which gave me plenty of encouragement, feedback, features, etc. Officially launched in July and everything has gone silent. I don&#x27;t think I can convert any of the original testers as they&#x27;ve all gone to ground.<p>I&#x27;ve produced some excellent content and tried my best to get it out there but it seems no one is interested (plenty of reads but no sharing, no likes, no backlinks, no conversions, no comments, nothing). I&#x27;m 100% sure we offer a way better solution than our other competitors (there are two serious competitors) and the small number of people that have stuck around absolutely love it (however, let&#x27;s see what happens when their free accounts come to an end on December 31st).<p>I&#x27;m not sure I even have a question to ask, other than &quot;How do I know when it&#x27;s time to quit?&quot;.
======
buboard
Hint: people in academia are struggling. And they re not really used to paying
for online services (i mean, hell they are giving their work away for free).
That's why all the saas startups are targetting the cash-rich startups. You
might want to think of an alternative funding model. Or maybe that the project
is unmonetizable, but the experience will make your next project so much
easier to build

~~~
throw_your_boat
Thanks. You're probably right. Academics are probably not a good target
market.

------
impendia
Math professor here, at a large public US university. I think that academia
presents a large, but challenging, market. My university has recently
purchased huge amounts of software, not all of it of high quality.

Two questions for you:

(1) Who are the people whom you hope will buy your product? What positions do
they hold? Are they professors? Administrators? Something else?

(2) Of these people, where will the money to buy your product come from?

For example, if it aids research, then it might come from individual
professors' NSF or NIH grants. These can be large, and they are at individual
faculty members' discretion. But they tend to require a lot of advance
planning.

If it aids teaching, then you probably need to sell to an entire university at
once. Department budgets tend to be meager, and the money is often spoken for
in advance.

In any case, budgets tend to be idiosyncratic. It might be that your target
audience is willing in principle to pay for your software, but that there is
no suitable pipeline of money.

I recommend this website

[https://academia.stackexchange.com/](https://academia.stackexchange.com/)

to get a further sense of how academia "works", to whatever extent you don't
already know.

Best of luck to you.

~~~
throw_your_boat
Thankyou. 1. My target is researchers in psychology, sociology, and similar
fields.

2\. I've tried to price the product so that the individual could make a
discretionary purchase (have discussed the pricing with quite a few people
with positive responses). The simplest plan is $480 per year and the next plan
up is $780 and comes with a second account for an RA or student. I only need a
couple of hundred users to be quite comfortable and successful do from done
number crunching at the beginning I was pretty confident that that was a small
% of TAM.

So far the software been used for both research and teaching but the teaching
part was an unexpected bonus.

Thanks very much for the thoughtful reply. Excuse my terse response as I'm
typing on a phone.

~~~
impendia
One further thought. I am in mathematics, which is not the same as psychology
or sociology, so take this with a grain of salt. That said ---

I think your pricing plan is wrong. Don't price based on a subscription model.
Instead, sell your software outright, perhaps include more licenses (e.g. for
all students and postdocs under the PI's direct supervision), and charge
closer to $3-5K for it.

Here is why. First I recommend this entertaining article by Joel Spolsky on
how to price software:

[https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2004/12/15/camels-and-
rubber-...](https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2004/12/15/camels-and-rubber-
duckies/)

The idea is the same, and the details are totally different. In academia,
funding tends to be feast or famine.

I would _never_ buy software that cost $480 per year. I'd be too scared that
my funding source would dry up. Granting agencies and deans are way too
capricious. If I got used to it and came to rely on it, I might end up needing
to pay out of pocket. Which I'd probably do for $100, but not for $480.

Conversely, when funding does come, it tends to come in larger chunks. For
example, my dean has a "small equipment purchase support" program, where I can
apply for funding to buy equipment. Never mind the details (I'm not sure if
software is covered, and apparently there is a _minimum_ of $5,000, but let's
pretend otherwise). If I were going to apply for $500, then I may as well
apply for $5,000 instead. It's same amount of work, my chances are roughly as
good. Looks the same to me, puts 10x as much food on your table.

An even better source of money is expiring grants. Often, if you haven't spent
a source of grant money by a certain date, it goes away. So researchers will
say to themselves "Shit. I have $7,000 I need to spend within the next three
weeks. Is there anything I can justify spending it on?" If you're in the right
room at the right time, then you will get $X, where X is the price of your
software, as long as it is less than however much money they have left. At
least in my field, somewhere in the low to mid four figures would probably
maximize your expected value.

Good luck!

~~~
throw_your_boat
Thanks (for both replies)! I do have a lab plan as well (6 transferable
accounts at $2460 per year) but as you've pointed out, that isn't a one off
cost. The problem I have with the one-time purchase is recurring costs for
storage, hosting, etc. as it's a web based SaaS. Nevertheless, excellent
advice... I'm going to have to start researching my options on one-time
pricing. Thankyou!

------
eiovas
If you build it, they won't necessarily come; as you're seeing now.

I think you need to stop development. Don't put another minute into dev work
until you've found someone to pay for this.

Sometimes it's helpful and motivating to approach the first few sales in a
completely non sustainable way. Don't try to establish a customer acquisition
funnel - try to find one single person willing to pay.

It sounds like your December 31 users are a good place to start. Send each one
of them an email and give them an incentive to renew before the accounts
expire. Offer them a discount or something for every referral they bring in
for a trial or as a new customer or a discount that is a bit higher for every
trial day they have left so people feel an urgency to move on it now. Try to
convert ONE trial customer into a paid customer over the next three or four
weeks. If you fail, it's not your software, it's your sales and marketing
skills. Take that as a hint that you might need to bring in a new person to do
that for you.

It sounds like you're quite adept at building product but it's not a business
yet. It's time to stop building and learn to convince people to part with
their money. Building a better tool isn't enough. You have to build a better
tool, educate them on why its worth it, eliminate their reasons not to buy,
and then ask them to take action.

I recommend taking a break and then consider bringing in some outside
expertise. Someone who knows how to sell online.

Nobody builds an empire alone. It just can't be done.

~~~
eiovas
Whatever you do though don't be discouraged.

It cost me a $200,000 investment to learn this lesson - the longer you spend
building something without convincing someone to open their wallet the more
risk that you could be building something nobody wants.

Once I emotionally recovered from that failure, my next project started with a
very tiny goal: earn $150 within two weeks on a new idea to afford motorcycle
Insurance.

My approach meant that I spent literally all my time on marketing, and
developed the product I was selling specifically for my first customer. That
also means the scope was super small.

The experiment was a big success, and over the next two years I had trained 5
contractors to keep the machine running while I focused on finding people who
wanted to pay someone to solve their problem.

I couldn't have been comfortable trying to sell the absolute bare minimum
product as fast as possible without being very familiar with the pain of
spending years on a product that nobody wanted.

Either you start getting excited about learning how to sell it, or you start
looking for one of those people.

~~~
marapuru
Thanks for this. Great advice.

------
rdiddly
If you weren't sounding so tired and burned out I would recommend that you
double down on marketing and promoting. I wouldn't give up until I had given
it a good flogging! But, if you're burned out you're going to find that
difficult and probably it won't work with that kind of mindset. Either farm
out the marketing to a new partner or wait and do it yourself but either way
take a few months off!

~~~
throw_your_boat
Thanks. I do need to market hard. I think I need a break and then do as you
suggest. Thanks.

~~~
codesternews
You can start by providing link here. It might help.

~~~
throw_your_boat
Thanks for the suggestion but I don't think it's appropriate right now.

~~~
p0d
Are you being too nice not posting a link (or maybe you have a technical
reason)? I was a little hurt when a friend said I wouldn’t be a good business
man as I wasn’t cut throat enough. My friend wasn’t being entirely wise but
there was a little truth in there.

I have been selling a subscription service to schools now for 10 years, enough
for me to work part-time on the project. Biggest leap in customers I had was
through an educational fare. It cost about £6000 to exhibit if I remember.

------
quaquaqua1
You know its time to quit when you:

1) Need the money that comes from a day job.

2) No longer like the work you are doing, and can afford to stop doing it.

3) Can think of something better to do.

For me I was working very hard on something I enjoyed but nobody else cared
about. I needed money, so I went and got a day job. If I didn't need money, I
would have kept doing my project.

~~~
throw_your_boat
Thanks.

I'm now buried so deep in this domain it feels like it's supposed to be a long
term career. I enjoy my work and it's the best and most valuable (IMO) work
I've ever produced.

We don't _need_ the money as we live a very simple life, but not being able to
earn a living is having an effect on my self-esteem.

~~~
quaquaqua1
Good luck to you!! If you are willing to risk the peoject, you could go after
revenue more aggressively.

If it works, great! If it doesn't work, the consequence will be based on how
deeply you care about this project and if you can just transfer your skills to
something new or not.

Wishing you the best :)

------
ebcode
It almost sounds like you're experiencing a kind of post-partum depression.

I would recommend that you not "quit", but rather "step back." If you've
launched the project, and it's being used, then how much more do you really
need to do?

You must have monitoring that you can check occasionally, so maybe you can
just let the thing simmer[0] for a while. Take your mind off it, do some other
stuff that you enjoy, then take a look at your logs in December. The watched
pot and all that.

[0] [https://chefmimiblog.com/a-basic-
omelet/](https://chefmimiblog.com/a-basic-omelet/)

~~~
throw_your_boat
Thankyou.

Perhaps I am a bit burnt out. It's practically dominated my waking life for
the past 3.5 years. Maybe I should have a break.

~~~
ebcode
You'rewelcome. :)

You know one thing that's helped me live a more balanced life (I think) has
been exploring the lessons of the tarot deck. I just pulled the 10 of wands,
and thought of you.

This site has some good interpretations:
[http://learntarot.org/](http://learntarot.org/)

------
seanrrwilkins
Agree with @buboard below that academics likely aren't the right target
audience.

Before giving up, I recommend testing two paths to validate whether there's
real opportunity or not.

1\. User Research: if you haven't already, reach out to your user base to get
real input and guidance from them on how they use the tool, the value they see
in it, how they would promote it and what $ they would pay for it log-term. I
recommend doing this a 1:1 conversations on a platform like Zoom so you can
chat live and record the conversation for further review. You'll likely
uncover some gems on positioning, utility and organic marketing opps. You'll
be surprised how much people love to participate in these kinds of sessions as
it's a validation for them and stroked the ego a little bit.

I would lead with a personal email invite asking for the time. If that doesn't
work you can always default to a survey.

2\. Rethink the solution. Take academics out of the picture and strip back to
the basic functionality, features and solution you provide. What are other
verticals or user audiences that could benefit from it? What are competitive
companies doing in that space that you could improve on or offer something
totally different?

3\. Bonus thought...look back at your competition. What are they doing that's
driving their success? Sure, they make have an inferior product from your POV,
but they're doing something right to be winning. What are they doing that's
winning? Can you emulate that at all as another final validation on the
vertical and audience?

Good luck!

~~~
throw_your_boat
Thankyou. Plenty of good advice there.

~~~
seanrrwilkins
Absolutely, happy to help. Feel free to ping me if you have any more
questions.

------
TickMark
Is it me or is there a worryingly large amount of these kinds of posts. Where
people feel tired, lost or straight out depressed.

I don't see this that often on designer or some other professional forums.

I am not complaining, I am just worried is there some underlying problem with
this profession? We are worried about technical debt accumulates in our
codebase, we might forget about social debt that accumulates in our life.

~~~
buboard
i think everyone over ~35ish is quietly desperate in a corporate job (not just
tech people). The fact that there are now more opportunities for remote/self-
employment may make more people turn to it

~~~
TickMark
That's true. I suppose some professions do not have propers venues and forums
to vent their frustrations.

There's definitely a trend though, it could be that this is the first wave of
internet age IT professional hitting mid-life crisis.

------
quickthrower2
It would depend somewhat on if you can conclude there is absolutely no one (or
not enough people) who are willing and able to pay money for what you have
made. And also if you need to earn money again soon to live off.

Is there any avenues to find out from the market why they are not buying. I'd
suggest calling everyone who was on the trial and interviewing them. Come up
with a set of questions that is to discover why they didn't buy. Maybe they
loved it but couldn't get approval? Maybe they were just trying out because
they liked you or are friends but the product doesn't really solve a problem
for them?

I'd give it a deadline (3 months). Spent that time trying to proving beyond
any doubt the product is a failure so you can finally scrap it. If it isn't a
dud then use the information to form a plan to sell your solution to people.
Also keep an eye out for a pivot.

~~~
throw_your_boat
Thanks. I'll be doing some interviews. Good advice, thanks.

------
tmepdjdnn
I feel for you. I have been there as well. I knew it was time to quit when I
found out exactly why the idea wouldn’t work after taking to multiple people
in the industry and seeing it in real life.

So, my question to you is, do you still think you idea will work? If so, take
a break and come back to it in a few weeks and continue to try. You need more
feedback form people that will give it to your straight.

You already have a product so actively find the reason why just having a
better product won’t work. If you need someone to talk to, I can give you more
insight.

------
ajeet_dhaliwal
If you're saying you launched in July, that's like a couple of months. The
three years before doesn't matter, I mean it seems like a mistake, should have
launched something after 2-3 months but in any case that time is gone. It took
over a year after the launch of my SaaS to get the first paying customer. Need
to find a way to market to these academics.

~~~
throw_your_boat
Thanks. You're right.

------
Blakestr
You quit when the problem is solved where you find you don't care enough about
the problem. And if you allow yourself to feel the pain of the problem you
remember why you want to keep working.

you mention psychology and sociology researchers but can you be more specific
about the the pain point they're dealing with?

------
issa
"Build something that people want." It really is the best advice ever.

Maybe more specifically helpful, I would figure out a pivot. I bet there's an
idea that can build on the work you have so you're not throwing away all that
work. But, even if you are, better to do so sooner than later, if no one is
using it.

~~~
throw_your_boat
That's what I thought I was doing. Seriously. I talked to so many people that
had the same problem. Over and over again, throughout the entire process. I've
talked prices, solutions, everything with both people I know and people I
don't from students to RA's to professors.

The SV cliche of "get cash from them before building" wouldn't wash in this
niche and I wouldn't have been comfortable taking money for such an extended
period of time whilst creating the product.

Having said that, there are competitors (who I think I have a competitive
advantage over) and many OS/free/self-hosted alternatives (still missing the
competitive advantage).

I don't know if I just need to get well known (most people in the niche
probably don't know we exist) before I can even make a sale or what. Perhaps I
need my content to mature?

I just don't know any more.

Thanks for the advice!

~~~
issa
Based on my friends who are in academia, money might be a serious problem for
people. Even something better than other tools.

------
DoreenMichele
_(however, let 's see what happens when their free accounts come to an end on
December 31st)_

Set a deadline and set some goals for financial objectives. Start prioritizing
monetization.

If you can't meet those goals, then go get a job or do what you need to do to
take care of yourself financially.

~~~
throw_your_boat
Thanks.

------
Someone
> niche academic domain

> Officially launched in July and everything has gone silent

Of course I can’t tell whether it is a significant factor, but July and August
and even early September aren’t the busiest months in academia.

~~~
thrownthrow
Thankyou. I had forgotten that when I posted. The US is my main target market
and it is the quiet time of year.

------
ambivalents
Can you bring in someone with marketing/biz dev chops? You've hit a dip, it
sounds like someone new to the project with fresh eyes could give you and the
product a boost.

------
dlphn___xyz
i think tech is great career starting point but you should look to ‘exit’ at
some point - take skills you’ve developed and apply them to a different field.

~~~
throw_your_boat
I've done that somewhat with this venture. Sure there's plenty of tech
involved but it's also made me a domain expert in this (non-tech) niche (to
the point of writing journal articles).

Perhaps I need to turn my career now to marketing as another commenter has
suggested.

