Wholeheartedly concur. I'm yet another datapoint for this statement. I picked up programming, picked up a tech stack, found jobs, and launched profitable sideprojects, all with the help of this site.

It's mostly seen as a jumping board for them to quickly get going, compared to finding idea, building it, getting some SEO footing, etc. That's just my anecdotal experience btw.

I didn't have any particular expectation per se, any x arr with the potential baked in is fine. But the most conversations I've had are bog-standard x months of profit and people looking to acquire it as an asset, which makes sense for them, but doesn't for me as I mentioned before the risk is pretty low in keeping it myself.

Also, the whole selling process was a huge turnoff for me as the offers were at most 3x arr and lots of tirekickers when I posted on acquire.

But then, only when I received good feedback I thought to proceed with it.

I won't deny, the new thing is definitely appealing because it's new. But you make a good point about finding myself in the same place again.

I've had some good options presented here and I'm leaning towards focusing on rosterbird and try to get a growth engine going and then, maybe, once it's sustainable, I can try new things if I still wanted to.

I've built a SaaS app (rosterbird) that has grown organically to $1600/MRR without any marketing from my side. This was over a period of over 3(!) years and has been a sideproject all that time.

This obviously exhibits (very early) signs of a Product Market Fit and the gut feel is telling me to focus on the business which seems to have found a footing on its own. But, the few times I’ve tried to focus on it in the past, I’ve been turned off by my own inability to understand the product exactly and the target audience I should focus on, and learn what exactly the next step I should take with it.

So, everytime I’d think of and plan multiple possible things (marketing, sales, pivoting, positioning, etc) and ultimately end up in a deadlock and will abandon the pursuit altogether. During one such abandonment I started building a new SaaS product (keenly.so).

I built a small MVP of keenly and showed it to people who I thought would benefit from this and the feedback was very positive with some willing to pay for it after it's released.

Now, I'm confused as to which one I should proceed with.

On one hand, I have a product which is growing but it's in a niche market and I fear I don't quite understand how exactly I should take the next step or who/how to even market it. On the other hand, the new product is in an established (a bit crowded) market but something I understand well. And also, I believe I have a reliable marketing plan for it as well (ofcourse, no guarantee it'll work, but there's a plan atleast).

I've went full-time on this, so it is imperative for me to choose a right path and proceed, therefore here I am.

Once again, any help or guidance highly appreciated! I'm happy to answer any questions that would help.

Thanks in advance!

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39472605

Points: 6

# Comments: 16

I've built a SaaS app (rosterbird) that has grown organically to $1600/MRR without any marketing from my side. This was over a period of over 3(!) years and has been a sideproject all that time.

This obviously exhibits (very early) signs of a Product Market Fit and the gut feel is telling me to focus on the business which seems to have found a footing on its own. But, the few times I’ve tried to focus on it in the past, I’ve been turned off by my own inability to understand the product exactly and the target audience I should focus on, and learn what exactly the next step I should take with it.

So, everytime I’d think of and plan multiple possible things (marketing, sales, pivoting, positioning, etc) and ultimately end up in a deadlock and will abandon the pursuit altogether. During one such abandonment I started building a new SaaS product (keenly.so).

I built a small MVP of keenly and showed it to people who I thought would benefit from this and the feedback was very positive with some willing to pay for it after it's released.

Now, I'm confused as to which one I should proceed with.

On one hand, I have a product which is growing but it's in a niche market and I fear I don't quite understand how exactly I should take the next step or who/how to even market it. On the other hand, the new product is in an established (a bit crowded) market but something I understand well. And also, I believe I have a reliable marketing plan for it as well (ofcourse, no guarantee it'll work, but there's a plan atleast).

I've went full-time on this, so it is imperative for me to choose a right path and proceed, therefore here I am.

Once again, any help or guidance highly appreciated! I'm happy to answer any questions that would help.

Thanks in advance!

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39469216

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

> I would agree that most people would take some job flexibility/autonomy in lieu of part of their bigco salary

This is one of the point the author has repeatedly stressed the importance of and I very much agree as well. The chance to chart your own journey and the excitement a business could bring is anyday more valuable than the predictable path of employment for many (including myself)

Valuation of business isn't necessarily determined by profits (perhaps for commodity businesses), It's just one of the metric. This is a business that has strong operations, product, assets, and IP, honestly quite surprised with this take.

Also, a nit fwiw, you automatically assumed the entire profit of the business is the market salary for the person running this business

I think this will be useful for anyone working with multiple calendars and also service providers who manage appointments through calendars.

Looking forward for your feedback!

Also, appreciate any inputs on the pricing, ideally I would prefer this to have it as a buy once software, but I'm afraid the APIs would evolve and that would need continued work on my side.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38955652

Points: 1

# Comments: 1

I was addressing the parent’s comment about being overwhelmed about not being able to go through the opinions. I’ve felt similar way before I realised they were just fomo. If anything, apps like storytell are actually better way to consume these things :)

This is not at all the take, and rightly so, when the news broke out about non profit or the congressional hearing or his worldcoin and many such instances. All of a sudden he is the messiah that was wronged narrative being pushed is very confusing.

And also, think about this, unless you’re a shareholder with openai, knowing the “opinion” of others isn’t going to impact your life in any form. I’m not saying you shouldn’t read it or participate in the discourse, but there’s no need to be overwhelmed by opinions let alone build a chat bot to get through it.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38306323

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

But with the ChatGPT/LLMs, is there any reason to write such tutorial style blogposts anymore? (except of course, for it to be scraped and used for training)

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37252567

Points: 1

# Comments: 1

Also, I use dokku for deployment, so it's very similar to heroku and uses heroku buildpacks.

Hetzner - Servers.

Helpscout - Customer helpdesk

Google - workspace Email

Github - Source code

Airbrake - Error monitoring

Posthog - Analytics

Shortcut - Project management

Canny - Feedback & Changelog announcement

Stoplight - API documentation

Slack - For app testing

UptimeRobot - Uptime monitoring

MRR - For subscription tracking

Mailgun - Transactional Emails

Reform - One time used for feedback collection

Calendly - Call bookings

Paddle - Payment platform

Being solo myself, I aim to keep my costs as low as possible as well. Until my last product, all my previous products I kept the running costs to $3 per month (just for the server on hetzner). Rest all were free services (tawk.to for CS, Zoho for email, postmark for emails, and so on). Granted they weren't making much, just couple of hundred dollars per month, but then it was pure profit and it got fun to measure the returns in profit than just revenue.

For the latest one, all in all I spend around $30 per month with close to $1250 in mrr. So it has generous spend to return ratio. The only three running cost are the helpscout (for customer support, docs, etc.), google workspace and the servers with Hetzner. HelpScout and Google workspace were my way of "splurging" the costs.

Last I checked I was using close to 16 services (ranging from marketing to revenue tracking), so weren't really skimping on tools to save costs either.

The free tools (including several the op mentioned) are awesome to get started, but many of these services' costs would jump multi-fold even if you add one other team member or go just above the limit. That's anyway all these services' business model as well.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37000782

Points: 1

# Comments: 4