Thanks for reading, Patrick! I'm a big fan of your work, and your Indie Hackers interview was one of the big motivators that sent me down the solo developer path.
>You could probably talk to business owners with problems, launch an (appropriately priced; hundreds to thousands of dollars per year) product against those problems, build contingent on getting 10 commits to buy, and be at +/- $100k in 12 to 18 months. Many people with less technical and writing ability have done this in e.g. the MicroConf community. If you want the best paint-by-numbers approach to it I've seen, c.f. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otbnC2zE2rw&t=2s
Thanks, I'll check out that video!
I hear that advice a lot from people I respect, and I put a lot of effort into that over the past year, but I was never successful.
The biggest problem I ran into was that there's this "disconnect problem." I know I'm a competent developer and can build niche solutions to $10k problems, but I don't know which companies have $10k problems. I can guess at it, but they sometimes don't even realize their $10k problem has a software solution. The companies also don't have incentive to talk to me to explore the possibility if I'm just a developer off the street.
In 2019, I tried to do this with stone quarries[1], sheet metal shops[2], and email copywriters[3], but the first two mostly wouldn't talk to me and the latter didn't seem to have enough opportunity for a niche business.
>I would encourage you, to the maximum extent compatible with your sanity, to prioritize "Will this get me more customers?" over behind-the-scenes investments like CI/CD which are very appropriate to Google but will under no circumstance show up in next year's report as One Of The Most Important Things I Did This Year.
I get a lot of pushback about my love for CI/CD, and it always puzzles me. Is CI/CD seen as difficult or time-consuming? For me, it's such a net positive on my time and mental energy to know that basic functionality works before I push to prod. There have been many times where CI has caught breaking changes that I'd otherwise have to catch by waiting for customers to complain or manually smoke testing my product after every push. And I don't have to do much to set it up - just slap in a Circle CI config.yml and flip a button.
>I would suggest devoting approximately zero cycles to cost control. You don't have a cost problem and no amount of cost control will bend the curve of your current businesses to sustainability. You have a revenue problem. Your desired state in the medium term will make it economically irrational for you to think for more than a minute about a $50 a month SaaS expense; marketing and sales gets you to that desired state, not cost control.
Thanks, I agree completely and you succinctly articulated a feeling I've long struggled to put into words.
I often get pushback about spending O(hundreds) of dollars on non-essential expenses, and it always feels like it's missing the forest for the trees.
One thing to consider- you approached everything with the assumption that businesses want a SaaS; the sheet metal post made it sound like you were surprised that the shops didn't want a SaaS. Software Developers like SaaS, because it makes more money and had recurring revenue. However, to a business owner that just sounds like another bill that they don't want. Owners at small to medium companies, in my experience, are very cost-conscious.
For example, I'm currently evaluating warehouse management systems. It appears that everyone in this space runs a SaaS; with ludicrous prices where they want to bill per shipper/ac count. We still plan on being in business in 3 years; and after 3 years we will have paid more than what it would cost to develop this system ourselves. If you are mostly focused on tech it's easy to think that everyone likes the idea of SaaS; but realistically the only people who get excited about that idea are the people cashing the checks every month. I have heard much lamentation and whining about having to 'subscribe' to software instead of just buying it.
In 2019, I tried to do this with stone quarries[1], sheet metal shops[2], and email copywriters[3], but the first two mostly wouldn't talk to me and the latter didn't seem to have enough opportunity for a niche business.
I don't think any of these businesses would pay for What Got Done, but I think there are a zillion businesses very geographically close to you that would.
I note in several of your posts that you live in Western MA. You're two hours by car (assuming you miss traffic!), or three hours by train, from Boston. I can think of ten companies off the top of my head that fit the mold Patrick mentions as potential customers for What Got Done, that would not bat an eye at paying the upper limit of prices mentioned. (My current employer being one of them!)
Happy to help you brainstorm potential customers via email - I'm at (my_hn_username)@gmail dot com.
I don't think any of these businesses would pay for What Got Done, but I think there are a zillion businesses very geographically close to you that would.
Oh, to clarify, I wasn't trying to sell What Got Done to these industries. I was trying to understand their businesses to see what new thing I could create for them.
I was trying to understand their businesses to see what new thing I could create for them.
That's legit.
I guess the core of my original point was that there's a big regional hub of businesses whose operations you do understand (i.e. SW businesses) that's right at your doorstep. (I'm assuming from your other blog posts you don't know a ton about sheet metal bending, whereas you do know enough to be dangerous with software, but I've been wrong before!)
Just a friendly passing comment, but I'm not sure you have the correct take-aways from speaking with business owners.
With the quarry example, you couldn't get them on the phone. How about conferences, meetups, trade shows etc? Furthermore you probably need to search for companies that might _want_ to speak to you: younger owners, companies with less to lose etc.
In the sheet metal example, it sounds like you had already decided what you wanted to build for them before even meeting them (an improved software solution for their shop management apps). Maybe trying to just speak more generally about their processes and difficulties would tease out problems you might not have considered.
I'd return to this approach/phase and give it another go to find a market fit for the ideas before you start doing a line of code.
I think that's sound advice. The strategy I had in mind was courting industries that were physically close to me. I wasn't just calling the businesses, I was showing up at their offices to ask for meetings. My hypothesis was that there are probably plenty of profitable businesses nearby that are disconnected from the tech world, so other software companies aren't approaching them.
To clarify with the sheet metal companies, I didn't go in pitching a replacement to their existing tools. I always opened the conversation by asking them if they had processes that frustrated them, cost them money, or if their existing software failed to meet their needs. But I definitely found it hard sometimes when they asked me what I wanted to build for them and my answer was basically, "I don't know..."
Maybe it's just a matter of picking the right spot on the spectrum. It seems like you want businesses that are niche and disconnected enough from mainstream tech that big players aren't courting them as well. But they can't be so disconnected that they won't talk to you, either.
It's wild how you've done exactly what the priests of entrepreneurship preach, and it hasn't worked for you, and people cannot accept that. You must have done something else! You must have done something wrong!
I think [0] that a better approach, one that’s more likely to lead to a profitable business, is to flip the strategy around. Instead of “Do customer interviews, sniff out a problem, and build a solution”, it can be more effective to find the customers where they hang out (online is ideal), observe the problems they complain about, and crucially observe what they already pay for.
For one, it avoids the natural bias they’ll have while answering questions (they’ll very likely tell you what you want to hear to try to be “helpful”).
For another, it helps you create something they’ll actually want, and pay for, by fitting in with their existing habits and worldviews.
Going into a conversion with the idea of “I need a problem to build a SaaS for” is only one level better than “I need to validate that they want my idea”. The format of the solution is already pre-decided — which is no good if they don’t already pay for SaaS. That’s an uphill battle you definitely don’t want as a solo founder! “If I could just make them see how great this is...” is a rocky start for a business plan.
Choosing an audience you know and already understand is a big advantage. Picking one you aren’t part of is harder.
You don’t need to be new and unique to be profitable. You don’t need to invent a new kind of product or solve a problem that nobody else has solved. All of that just makes it harder :)
[0] I think this because of Amy Hoy and Alex Hillman and their 30x500 class that teaches this approach. Not my own invention :) I’ve had success with it though, and other have too, so I want to give credit where it’s due. They have a lot of great free material at https://stackingthebricks.com
>> wasn't just calling the businesses, I was showing up at their offices to ask for meetings.
That's tough stuff. I've done the same, and while it feels good when you're able to talk in detail with a business owner, I didn't come away with actionable things usually. There just isn't a good substitute to being embedded in an industry.
Michael, work part-time in a warehouse (as manual labor) handling stone for 3-6 months. Guaranteed you'll come away with more problems than you can solve.
>The biggest problem I ran into was that there's this "disconnect problem." I know I'm a competent developer and can build niche solutions to $10k problems, but I don't know which companies have $10k problems. I can guess at it, but they sometimes don't even realize their $10k problem has a software solution. The companies also don't have incentive to talk to me to explore the possibility if I'm just a developer off the street.
They sometimes do realise their $10k problem has a software solution though. You need to be in the pathway for when they go looking to solve it, not go to them.
Advertise in the white pages as doing custom software development. You'll get plenty of businesses contacting you ready to pay money to solve all sorts of problems not currently addressed by off the shelf solutions. Very rarely are they actually willing to pay anywhere near the total cost to build it, but enough to make building it worth it to you if you can get a couple other customers on board.
>You could probably talk to business owners with problems, launch an (appropriately priced; hundreds to thousands of dollars per year) product against those problems, build contingent on getting 10 commits to buy, and be at +/- $100k in 12 to 18 months. Many people with less technical and writing ability have done this in e.g. the MicroConf community. If you want the best paint-by-numbers approach to it I've seen, c.f. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otbnC2zE2rw&t=2s
Thanks, I'll check out that video!
I hear that advice a lot from people I respect, and I put a lot of effort into that over the past year, but I was never successful.
The biggest problem I ran into was that there's this "disconnect problem." I know I'm a competent developer and can build niche solutions to $10k problems, but I don't know which companies have $10k problems. I can guess at it, but they sometimes don't even realize their $10k problem has a software solution. The companies also don't have incentive to talk to me to explore the possibility if I'm just a developer off the street.
In 2019, I tried to do this with stone quarries[1], sheet metal shops[2], and email copywriters[3], but the first two mostly wouldn't talk to me and the latter didn't seem to have enough opportunity for a niche business.
>I would encourage you, to the maximum extent compatible with your sanity, to prioritize "Will this get me more customers?" over behind-the-scenes investments like CI/CD which are very appropriate to Google but will under no circumstance show up in next year's report as One Of The Most Important Things I Did This Year.
I get a lot of pushback about my love for CI/CD, and it always puzzles me. Is CI/CD seen as difficult or time-consuming? For me, it's such a net positive on my time and mental energy to know that basic functionality works before I push to prod. There have been many times where CI has caught breaking changes that I'd otherwise have to catch by waiting for customers to complain or manually smoke testing my product after every push. And I don't have to do much to set it up - just slap in a Circle CI config.yml and flip a button.
>I would suggest devoting approximately zero cycles to cost control. You don't have a cost problem and no amount of cost control will bend the curve of your current businesses to sustainability. You have a revenue problem. Your desired state in the medium term will make it economically irrational for you to think for more than a minute about a $50 a month SaaS expense; marketing and sales gets you to that desired state, not cost control.
Thanks, I agree completely and you succinctly articulated a feeling I've long struggled to put into words.
I often get pushback about spending O(hundreds) of dollars on non-essential expenses, and it always feels like it's missing the forest for the trees.
[1] https://mtlynch.io/retrospectives/2019/05/#an-app-for-rocks
[2] https://mtlynch.io/retrospectives/2020/01/#sheet-metal-resea...
[3] https://mtlynch.io/retrospectives/2019/06/#taking-on-google-...