I was a top 0.1% salesperson nationwide in car sales. I read a bunch of lean startup stuff, learned to make a minimum viable product, and then started selling to companies with 20-80 employees. I'm likable and good at selling, so I got 34 companies using this garbage I made. It's the worst nightmare ever to keep people motivated to use it, keep fixing things I made as a rookie developer, keep adding or saying no to features.
Overall the product isn't really needed, and sorta sucks too. If I was an typical developer trying to pitch a startup idea to businesses, it probably would have never got off the ground and nobody would have wasted any time. Maybe eventually the developer would have landed on an idea so good it had REAL PMF, and made that.
But no, instead I sold some garbage and now I'm stuck working on it. There is such a thing as being too good at sales. You don't want sales talking people into bad ideas.
Or maybe they're a bit disappointed it isn't that great, but who wants to onboard off back to hand made Excel sheets? Or spend time learning another tool. I've got very low churn so I guess it's all fine.
Hehe, reap what you sow :) But - you are not really stuck though. If you have managed to go from 0 to 34 customers before you can do it again. It is totally an option to drop that product and/or startup, and go with a better one (guided by your learnings). Up to you to decide what is the best way forward :)
Because there's a difference between selling a rough car you detail inside and out and sell for a good deal, versus selling a lemon.
Deep down I know the product isn't that well liked, and a lot of the renewals are based on my salesmanship. I know I have a chance at fixing the bugs, because I wrote everything, while someone else would be screwed IMO. It just wouldn't be fair to sell it to someone because I know they'd be making a mistake.
It sounds like you are underestimating pretty much this entire industry. Picking up codebases that are sketchy and new to us is just part of the job. Finding and fixing bugs is an exercise to get rolling, not an insurmountable challenge.
When people keep using software, it is because it solves a problem. They might not like the software but begrudgingly use it anyway because it solves that problem. So sure, pat yourself on the back for good salesmanship, but also realize that they keep using it because even if it is covered in warts, it still does the job.
While I agree professionals pick up codebases left behind by several iterations of developers, I think picking up a large PHP/Jquery PM tool written by a first time self taught via YouTube and stack overflow developer might be many peoples idea of a bad time.
It doesn't really solve a problem. Not really atleast. It's a little better than using 6 Excel sheets via a google drive honestly. The reason it got sold is because in theory it sounds a lot better than Google docs. But it's only a little better. And it has its own host of difficulties (can't modify anything for example.. don't even ask me to add a column or rearrange a table for you).
I know it's not great because if I get a company using it, but don't hand hold onboarding to an extreme level, they never even really get going with it.
When selling it, if I don't really lay it on thick and do a spectacular job, they don't buy.
The reason they don't quit once on it isn't that it solves a great problem or is much better than their previous solution (almost always just Excel sheets), but because switching back to their abandoned system is harder than the $300 a month is worth. So they just keep paying.
Also, I've contacted and pitched wayyy more than 34 companies. Many companies are/were smart enough to pass on it.
I'm not writing for a sob story or to talk up MY salesmanship for whatever reason, but I wanted to share my main takeaway from this project.
When doing lean startup and trying to get your first customers, don't think youve struck gold just because you had a great person schmooze a few people into using your MVP. It can be a false start just based on their persuasion. At this point I'd rather tone down salesmanship a lot and see if I can find a product that really strikes a cord with them instead. Less false starts that way IMO. I'd much rather have gotten 1-2 costumers only, not 34, and realized this isn't worth pursuing.
Well, I know several experienced software developers with good software ideas, but no clue how to sale them.
It sounds like bringing them and you together would basically be a guarantees success.
By the way; I am working as a self-employed developer and my favourite project is a software that has initially been written by a self-taught programmer who both started and ended his career with that software.
As far as I heard (he was already out when I joined) he got burned out and said that he never wanted to work with anything software related again.
He used PHP and jQuery.
I've mainly added new stuff instead of touching the old code, while only only refactoring the old stuff where necessary in very small increments.
Most other devs really hate to touch it, but I don't understand why.
Of course it would be better to replace it with a new version that has been built on top of a proper framework, but their management is too stubborn to understand that an incremental approach is the better way of handling this. So instead, they try to get a "complete understanding" of the project and try to create a completely new version in a "big bang" approach. This usually takes a few months or even a year until this new replacement project is considered a failure while I keep maintaining and cleaning up the old project.
It's been six years for now and even their most "optimistic" people currently say that the old software will be running for at least two more years.
Having built up a lot of knowledge over that time, I could easily create a new version in less than half a year (I actually think two months, but I'm tripling my estimation for safety), but that would make their management look bad (long story), so I don't get the green light to do that ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
"Two month sound too optimistic" you say?
Well it's an inbox, an outbox and one form with a few calculations in between.
I have created way more complex software than that in the last years.
If it was a real good idea, I'd argue it wouldn't be that hard to sell.
Reality would be that a combo of a good developer and a good salesperson would get into a similar situation that I got myself into, but with a better more manageable code base. Not the worst outcome in the world, that's basically most b2b saas technically.
imagine a software buying consultant. You could sell the service to your existing clients.
Long ago i made a few html websites for businesses then explained basic html and ftp to the owner. It was perfect except from other webdesign shops hammering my clients.
Overall the product isn't really needed, and sorta sucks too. If I was an typical developer trying to pitch a startup idea to businesses, it probably would have never got off the ground and nobody would have wasted any time. Maybe eventually the developer would have landed on an idea so good it had REAL PMF, and made that.
But no, instead I sold some garbage and now I'm stuck working on it. There is such a thing as being too good at sales. You don't want sales talking people into bad ideas.