SaaS Founders, What 3 advice would you give your younger selves?

A couple years ago, I wrote 5 things I had learned [0] going from side project to a full-time business. Might be worth a read?

[0]: https://keygen.sh/blog/5-things-ive-learned-in-5-years/

Not sure if I count but I could definitely uniquely live off my SaaS profits.

The tips I would give to myself:

1. Don't ever stop trying: sure, getting a job instead will give you a few hundreds k per year - but it won't help you getting any closer to your freedom dream. No more worthless standups or stupid retros.

2. Don't kill your social network: I know the temptation to get rid of social media is strong, but you need to cultivate your network and turn it into an audience of potential customers

3. Keep writing: building a trace of reliable writing and showing skills is an invaluable marketing tool

My view may be biased by having invested most of my life in up-skilling my skills (just because I enjoy it) and I find myself technically super strong but lacking in marketing.

The tips I would give to the general population are:

1. Be balanced in how much time you spend learning tech / doing marketing / managing staff

2. Do what's best for the product and for getting to the customer. CREATE VALUE FOR SOCIETY

3. Keep growing your network

Not a SaaS business, but an entrepreneur nonetheless. One thing I learned early is that having a co-founder with a serious b2b sales background, especially in a mid-tier company (big enough to bag F500 clients, small enough to work with small businesses) is a superpower.

My co founder was able to close deals I wouldn’t even know how to approach.

Don’t discount sales and marketing. Unless your tech is really revolutionary (chatGPT tier) or leagues ahead of the competitors (Figma), your biggest problem will be distribution and discovery, not tech.

Depends on the stage:

Seed stage. Focus on engineering and talking to customers. Ignore everything else. Do the sales and marketing work yourself till $1M in ARR at least. Many startups fail since they try to hire for these essential roles and its rare for non-founders to take it from 0 to 1.

A/B round stage. Build an in-house recruiting team early. I scaled to 150 people too fast over at Stream, next time i'd take more time with hiring. I'd also recommend doing final interviews with everyone yourself, don't let the company hire people without you interviewing them. Be on top of MQL definitions when you scale marketing, otherwise things will go wrong. Sales enablement is essential when you get beyond 3 AEs. Read Saastr :)

Hire CFO once making significant money ($1M/yr or so).

Start hiring PMs as soon as you see that you can have two product teams working together in parallel.

Don't listen to advice on the internet and think about the situation you're in, it's always individual. Advice from the internet will always paint in big strokes.

But also regarding code: If you think you will need it later, you probably won't. Build simple and don't overengineer. Chance is, you do it even though you think you don't. If it overgeneralizes something because you think it might be a requirement in two weeks, do it when the need arises, not now.

Selling is harder than building. At least for a builder. Go out and sell, even before you build.

Don't hire a single non founder before PMF. Don't build anything without real commitments from customers. Focus on distribution, go to market and product in this order.

Founder here

1) I thought I could hire "head of sales" that would run the /department/ not need extensive hand holding, and worse, I did it more than once - went through several vp of sales. Of course they interview well, they are sales people. There has to be "verify" and really understand what is going on

2) The skills to get a product off the ground are very different than scaling a business; people have written about the "3 ceo's" but I think there is a similarity with technical founders; I had multiple co-founders but few stuck it out until the end, in retrospect they were needed at a given phase, not the whole time

3) know if you are trying be rich or king ( https://www.highalphainno.com/articles/rich-vs-king-the-corp... )

Marketing is more important than product.

MVP doesn't need to be perfect, but the core product should work.

Get it in users hands ASAP, get feedback ASAP, or see no traction and move on, ASAP

Finding a business / product that actually is working is unique. When you find it, stick with it. Nothing is perfect, and shit is going to be hard, it’s just the next level of the company. Be optimistic — look for what’s working and do more of what’s working. Don’t let pessimism get routed in the way you think. All of that, and fight the urge to build first — sell first.

Maybe not only SaaS specific. But Naval is GOLD.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-TZqOsVCNM

Read and apply “The Mom Test” or you aren’t doing it right.

It took me 5 months to build my first SaaS from scratch, which is way too much. For example, I could use this time to focus on marketing.

During my development process, I realized that 80% of the features I implemented were also present in other SaaS products. This is why I created Nextless.js, a SaaS Boilerplate that includes all the necessary features for launching a successful SaaS.

Do not take VC money.

1. Set an aggressive (but achievable) revenue goal for your first year. If you're having trouble figuring out what that might be, I suggest 500k ARR, because that will put you on a path to raising a series A. You should be able to hit this goal with fewer than 5 people in your first year. You should take a very hard look at your business and what's going wrong if you don't hit that goal.

2. Don't raise too much money for your seed. Plain and simple, you just do not need much money to build and validate your business plan. Whatever your number is, consider whether you'd really be much worse off if you raised half as much.

3. Start by providing professional services before you have a product. This will help you generate some early revenue, it will validate that someone is willing to pay for your services, it'll help you understand the requirements for your product before it's built, and most importantly, it'll help you build early relationships with crucial clients. Streamline these professional services by automating them with your early product. Over time, replace the professional services entirely with your product.

1. Learn how to sell. At all costs, learn how to sell. 2. Determine a pricing structure then raise your prices. 3. Resist hiring anything but engineers for as long as possible.

Good luck.

You don’t have to go nuclear big to be successful. Decide your own goals, don’t let someone decide it for you.

1. Call local customers 2. Listen to teammates 3. Learn how to enjoy the unfun work

INVEST IN TIME TRAVEL. TIME TRAVEL IS POSSIBLE. YES THIS REALLY ME.

Sell before build

- It takes 7 months to recruit someone. 1 for the interview, 3 waiting at the old job, 3 months of ramp-up.

- Hire. Business will grow.

- You need to love your employees like a father does. That means, they’re gonna be shitty, they’re gonna be losers, they’ll waste your money, and some will be exceptionally good. But you need to love them all equally.

- You’re not gay. Girls just don’t like shy men under 25. Keep chasing girls, success will come.

Start earlier/younger. (I'm 33, just started building my own)