Building Software Through Idea Extraction

[MTF]

out of 35 people asked, 33 said they would use it and pay for it.

Please, please, ask them to send you money right now to fund the development. Asking people if they would buy means nothing. There's no commitment. Asking them to give you money right away - that's the true test. Show some mock-ups and other stuff, but please ask them to pay now.

 

[Tiago]

I’ve tried a few businesses and they didn’t really work out. As a matter of fact, most of the times I didn’t even start. I’m going to change this, right here, right now.

This thread will be here to keep me accountable, as well as maybe pass on something valuable to a fellow fastlaner along the way.

I’m going the idea extraction way. I’ll use @MTF's "Let's Get Offline And Solve Some Real B2B Problems" thread as a rough guide.


I will eliminate industries that:

• are difficult to get a decision maker on the phone
• are too technical
• don’t have people with the mindset I’m looking to interact with
• are smaller than 10.000 businesses in my country
• have a revenue lower than 100k per year

I am left with these industries:

Hotels and Guesthouses
Construction Equipment and Services
Real estate - Buying, Renting & Selling
Pharmacies
Gym Clubs
Automotive Parts - Selling & Distribution
Bars & Clubs
Automotive Repair Shops
Shoe Retail Shops
Construction Materials
Used Car Dealerships
Fashion Retail Shops
Restaurants
Real Estate Management

I will further eliminate industries that don’t really interest me. My list is further trimmed down to:

Hotels and Guesthouses
Real Estate - Buying, Renting & Selling
Gym Clubs
Automotive Parts - Selling & Distribution
Construction Materials
Used Car Dealerships
Restaurants
Real Estate Management


I will dig deeper in these industries and come up with a picked industry next post.

I am also currently reading “Unlimited Power” by Tony Robbins. I want to improve on my mindset and achieve what I set out to do.

 

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[Tiago]

The one thing that is helping me tremendously, and I wanted to share this as I'm certain it could be of value to someone here.

Talking with your customers before launching.

I know, I know. We've all heard that before. But there's still people who don't do it. Just yesterday I learnt about a colleague that spent 9 months building an app for comparing grocery prices from different stores, and when he went to pitch to the big stores, nobody wanted. They said people who compare prices are not their target customers and they have absolutely zero interest in it. 9 months down the drain.

Talking to customers gave me so much insight. There were problems I thought they faced which didn't even exist. They uncovered new, huge pains that I couldn't possibly imagine. Right now I'm always starting off my conversations with this one sentence:

"What is the biggest problem you face in your job today?"

What this does is allow me to focus on the main problems they have and spend all my energy building a product that will eliminate them. Another BIG reward is that I can extract the 3 biggest problems they have, and use that in my future landing page copy, directly resulting in sales.

Tip: Record the calls you make. You can analyze them after the call better and you can present them to new members of the team or investors as a part of your pitch. I use Skype and record with QuickTime Player.

 

[Tiago]

So much has been going on. I absolutely love it, working on something I truly care about. The day doesn't have enough hours in, so I'll keep this short.

• Started development!

• Constantly growing my email. Right now I have 78 subscribers. I know it's not much, but we all start at something!

• Got quotes from different video agencies to create the videos I need for the software.

• Have been talking to owners of the locations I want to shoot the videos. Their price is much lower than I thought!

• Have been working on my network too. I'm one year in this city and don't know many people. This will change! Saying yes to lots of events, introducing myself to the neighbors, joining a sports club. Business isn't the only thing that matters to me.

Next I'll:

• Scout the locations to find one that fits all the requirements.

• Continue on growing my potential client list by emailing 30 a day.

I don't want to focus on too many things. On top of my To-Do list I always have written "Sales Fix Everything" so I always keep myself on a straight line. If it generates sales, I do it. If it doesn't, I won't.

 

[Tiago]

Yes, but for that they need access to the inventory of the big supermarket chains, and they won't give him access. I hope they do succeed, but as far as I know they already dropped the project.

Yesterday I talked to a developer and it was the best meeting I've ever had! Really humble, down to earth guy, fun to be around, intelligent and has around 6 years experience developing. I know this is going to be my first hire! He is a mobile developer, and I need one back-end and another front-end developer to get it going. We agreed to do small freelance projects of 2-4 weeks at the beginning to see if we can work together and so I can see his code quality. As I'm not able to review his code, I'll ask for an expert friend to go over it and see if it's clean and well documented.

Tip: For anyone starting a business in the SaaS world, I'd really recommend the Groove blog. They have some great content on first hires, how to optimize for conversions, what to watch out for, tools and tips to increase performance. Really a great blog.

 

[wolfie]

One of my buddies builds software and just posted this. He's built 5-6 different monthly software businesses. Thought it might be useful for ya.

Little software development hiring tip for anyone looking to get started and want to avoid a major pitfall

1. Make everything part time and on a weekly basis for at least the first two months. Also start them off with a very small job (like coding a UI or web page)

2. The single most important quality in a developer is their ability to communicate and be timely. Most software does not require a coding genius to get the job done and decent coding skill + consistent work is all thats needed.

When you are hiring online (Aka non office jobs) you will constantly run into developers who do not message back quickly or are a pain to get a hold of.

When you first get started, you will probably think because a person can code they are "important". Trust me they are not, and millions of people can code and will kill to work somewhere consistently. Whats important is your direction and getting stuff done,

Kick these f$@kers to the curb the second they do this without an excuse no matter how talented they are. The amount of damage they can do to your business via time wasted and the time it takes to replace them is insane.

Again, do not put up with this and do not invest much in any developer no matter how "important" they seem

Be good to people, but if people cannot respond timely fire them in the first days of working with them.

Just kicked 2 of these shenanigans to the curb today within 2 days of their test work. Hire slow and fire fast, fast, fast.

 

[Tiago]

So, my validation process is done.

And my assumptions were wrong. What I though would be the #1 problem turned out not to be a problem at all. But I have uncovered new problems and one in particular was voted as the biggest problem by a large majority of the people I interviewed.

I created a mockup using mockingbird.com and am now in the process of sending it out to all the people I already talked to, to see a few things:

• Which features do they like
• Which features could they live without
• Which features are missing for them
• Test pricing. I will start at what I think the price should be. I'll fine tune it either up or down accordingly to their reaction.

Until mid next week I'll keep doing this. Once I have a strong product with a desired feature set at a good value for the money price I'll start the development.

I'd like to thank @Silverhawk851 for his post about systems. I have a very simple one, but it drives me forward day by day, non-stop.

One piece of my system is to find out 30 prospective clients email addresses and contact them. No excuses, first thing in the morning.

This may not sound like much, but by doing so I've contacted over 300 clients in the last 10 days. Do this for 3 months and I'll have reached almost 3000 clients.

 

[Tiago]

Quick update:

• My designer dropped out due to health issues. He has been having some trouble lately and decided he wouldn't be able to finish the job. I'm sad that the design didn't work out but I fully understand that his health is a priority.

• Found a new designer through recommendation of the previous one, and he should have the landing page ready by next Wednesday. We got along really well and I loved his portfolio.

• Videos are back from editing! They are awesome

• Created my customer onboarding flow and all the event-triggered emails to ensure the best trial to paid customer experience.

• I will soon be starting a private beta and created an email to send out to my subscribers. I'll run a competition and the 10 people who get the most referrals to my landing page will have exclusive early access and 3 months free to use the software. This will help select the best beta testers, the ones that are engaged and truly care about the software, and create more awareness.

• Made an amazing connection today. My girlfriend introduced us, he teaches business strategy at the university and does consulting for startups and rising companies. He's worked with Pepsi and other big brands. Really down to earth guy, gave me a lot of new angles to tackle my problems and as he believed in my idea, said that any time I have a question or doubt, just call him. Now I'm thinking of ways of giving back tom him since he's given me so much.

I will in the 11th of October be making a two week trip to the Amazon. I know it sounds weird as I'm close to launching, but my girlfriend really wanted to go on a trip and I said "Look, once I launch it I'm going to be 100% dedicated to it. I can't just stay missing for a weekend or so. If we want to travel, let's do it now." I'm really excited for it and hope I will come back with a clear mind and ready for action.

 

[Tiago]

*I have written this for two purposes. First is for me to get clarity. Writing things down makes things easier to process for me. Second is for anyone going through a time of doubt, anyone who's lost. I don't claim to have all the answers, but it might help in times of need. If you ever need any help, just send me a message.*

I have been putting off writing this for some time. These last few weeks have been rough.

The development of the software had come to a halt because my developer left. So there I was, searching for people again. But I noticed one thing:

It absolutely drained my energy.

Every developer I had to contact, every decision I had to make was riddled with doubts. Mostly doubts about myself: Can I do this? Is it something I can envision myself doing for the next 5 years? Does this actually enforce my values?

I found out I was not driven by purpose, but by profit. I thought that if I worked my a$$ off for 3-5 years and sold it, I could live comfortably with passive income after that. That could very well be true, but then what? What would my next step be?

And it paralyzed me. For two weeks I was very negative, and felt like a complete failure. I've built a mildly successful company when I was 17 and sold when I was 19, but that all seemed worthless. I ignored all my successes and focused on my failures. My confidence took a big hit.

Thankfully, I have an amazing, supportive girlfriend who helped me through it. Choose the person you want to have a relationship wisely.

To me, a failure is only a failure if you learn nothing from it. So my first step was to build a retrospective of the past 5 months. These are the most important things I realized:

• I should've launched faster. I didn't need to have a greatly designed landing page, a blog, videos, an expensive domain, a customer onboarding email cycle, email templates etc...

• I truly value freedom of time and location. Building a company here wouldn't allow me to take a few weeks to explore new countries, at least not at the first 2-3 years.

• I love helping people. The best memory I have of my previous company is a heartfelt email I received from a customer. Thinking about it makes me feel very happy that I created value and increased the quality of life and happiness for a person.

• Networking is essential. I was very lonely at the beginning, thinking I had to do it all alone. It's way easier than that. Just invite someone to lunch and try to help them. Reciprocity goes a long way.

• Personal development is key. Meditation, gratitude and visualization have helped me a lot to move forward, especially these last few weeks.

• Systems are very important. Instead of goals, I like to break them down and implement daily systems I can adhere to that will continually force me to make progress and get momentum going. Thanks @Silverhawk851

• I love ideas and concepts, not so much the daily grind of a startup. At first this hurt to write down. But then I rewired my thinking. Instead of strenghtening my weaknesses, why not strenghten my actual strengths?

• I love to surround myself with people who have a bright mind, have innovative ideas, are positive, fun, keen to improve themselves and enjoy life. You truly are the average of the 5 people you hang out with the most.

I've learnt a lot about myself. As long as I learn from this experience, time will not have been wasted.

But I was still not knowing what to do next. I worked on myself by asking more questions.

• What are my values?

• What does success mean to me?

• What would keep me absolutely motivated and fascinated for the rest of my life? (Thanks Dan Sullivan)

• What is my unique ability?

• What is my purpose?

And this is still a work in progress. I do not have all the answers yet, but I'm closing in what I think I could be doing next.

One thing I do know is that I love is helping others live a happier life. Helping them grow personally so they can exponencially contribute to the world. So the question now remains:

How can I create the most value to the most amount of people in the fastest way possible (thanks @Andy Black ) through my unique ability?

 

[MTF]

Good for you, @Tiago. It's good to realize that something isn't working for you before you go too deep into it (it would be much more difficult to get out if you've already spent a lot of money on development and had a working MVP/final version).

Having said that, I'd like to address a few of the things mentioned in your post.

Every developer I had to contact, every decision I had to make was riddled with doubts. Mostly doubts about myself: Can I do this? Is it something I can envision myself doing for the next 5 years? Does this actually enforce my values?

I found out I was not driven by purpose, but by profit. I thought that if I worked my a$$ off for 3-5 years and sold it, I could live comfortably with passive income after that. That could very well be true, but then what? What would my next step be?

You're overthinking this. I can't help but feel that seeking purpose becomes the next trendy thing on this forum, yet in essence it's exactly the same as "doing what you love." I DO like thinking about purpose and generally consider business/founder fit first, and profits second, but if you mostly focus on purpose you'll probably need much more time to get profits. Thinking about profit is good, because it forces you to focus on businesses that solve specific problems people pay for solving.

Your question "but then what" is irrelevant today. You'll be a different person in 3-5 years, and you'll make completely different choices. And if you made enough to retire, then I think it wouldn't be such a bad trade-off to spend 3-5 years doing something you don't consider your purpose (as long as you don't hate it).

What I do (self-publishing) is most likely not my purpose. I wouldn't do it for free, and it doesn't fire me up a lot. What fires me up is the money it generates, or rather what this money means to me (freedom).

If you find something very profitable and non-limiting (meaning you get time freedom, location independence, etc.) that you don't hate, then I think you should keep doing it even if it isn't entirely your purpose - and you do it for as long as needed to ensure you have enough money to live off interest.

I like what @MJ DeMarco wrote here:

Once you grab a few sales, start making money, and start getting market feedback, your idea on "what you love" will change. I could sell dog shit and love it, IF the market was telling me "This is good, we want it."

Successful entrepreneurs (not "do what you lovers") love providing value -- sadly, many don't get to realize it because they aren't engaged in the process long enough to grab sales and find out. Validation, or sales, changes everything. Until then, its really hard to fall in love with any idea because ultimately, you need a hug and a pat on the back, which only comes from sales.

For a long, long time I couldn't fully grasp what he meant by that. I started making good money with self-publishing, but still wanted to find something better, more "purposeful." But now that I keep seeing steady growth and it just works for me (vs dozens other ideas I tried in the past), I no longer care if it is or is not my "true" purpose. I'll keep doing it - just as MJ would sell dog shit - as long as the market will want it and as long as it will make financial sense for me. Purpose can come later when I attain lifelong financial security (and if things go well, this will be a relatively short period of time, maybe three years more at most).

• I truly value freedom of time and location. Building a company here wouldn't allow me to take a few weeks to explore new countries, at least not at the first 2-3 years.

This (I mean exploring new countries, not freedom of time) might very well change when you start a fast-growth business. I used to think I would start traveling a lot once I start making enough money to cover all my expenses and set aside some money for savings.

Now that I make well over several times what I need to support myself, I still don't travel. Why? Because thanks to the money I now earn I changed my daily routine and it's so exciting and fun I don't feel a strong urge to travel (well, maybe except for wanting to avoid the winter). In fact, I think it's very likely I would find it less enjoyable to travel than to stay at home and simply enjoy my everyday life. I also simply enjoy saving and investing money instead of spending it on traveling.

This ties well with what I said before about being a different person in 3-5 years. In reality, your priorities can change a LOT when your business starts making enough to support you, generate savings and still have a nice margin for enjoyment.

• I love ideas and concepts, not so much the daily grind of a startup. At first this hurt to write down. But then I rewired my thinking. Instead of strenghtening my weaknesses, why not strenghten my actual strengths?

That's precisely why I believe that a person without software experience (i.e. a person who couldn't develop the software herself) should never start a software-based business. I think it's one of the most valuable lessons you've gained here.

And yes, DO think about your strengths and leverage them. Just don't necessarily think that these strengths have to be your Unique Ability. I make money off writing, but I doubt it will keep me absolutely motivated and fascinated for the rest of my life. Actually, even now there are at least a few things that make me more motivated and fascinated than writing.

But I was still not knowing what to do next. I worked on myself by asking more questions.

• What are my values?

• What does success mean to me?

• What would keep me absolutely motivated and fascinated for the rest of my life? (Thanks Dan Sullivan)

• What is my unique ability?

• What is my purpose?

And this is still a work in progress. I do not have all the answers yet, but I'm closing in what I think I could be doing next.

One thing I do know is that I love is helping others live a happier life. Helping them grow personally so they can exponencially contribute to the world. So the question now remains:

How can I create the most value to the most amount of people in the fastest way possible (thanks @Andy Black ) through my unique ability?

These are all good questions and I like asking them myself as well, but I don't think they're that crucial to ask if you're yet to find a reliable source of income that will support your regular lifestyle. The majority of the successful entrepreneurs started with something that just worked for them, not necessarily something that was their purpose. Having more money and freedom is what enables you to be more picky about the new ventures you want to start. It all comes back to what MJ described in his book.

 

[Tiago]

Okay, things have been moving!

I've received a few responses to my emails and they all talk about the same problem. I have an idea in my mind that could help them generate more revenue and bring in more clients.

This is just an assumption though, so now I'll:

• Schedule 30 talks or meetings to confirm this need and validate the idea. If they're interested, pre-sell them on a closed beta.

• I would like to offer them something of value in return for their meeting, so I'l prepare a little gift or maybe some valuable information they can use in their business.

• Talk to independent developers in my city. I see lots of developers meetups, next weekend I'm also participating on an event called "Startup Weekend" where you build teams and create businesses in a intensive weekend. I'm sure I'll meet some interesting people there.

So far I've:

• Written how my product is going to look like, so developers can better understand the scope of the project.

• Got a meeting scheduled for Monday for idea validation.

• Prepared my cold calling script.

• Sorted out 30 top players in my industry to call them these next few days for idea validation.

• Talked to my local developers agencies asking for a quote on my project.

• Read more on "Unlimited Power" by Tony Robbins. What a great book! Thank you @AndrewNC and @MTF for motivating me to read it.

• Read the A Reading Strategy That Actually Works and sorted out some of my favorite books and took some notes of it on Evernote.

• Added another thing to my system which is "Implement one lesson from a good book per day in your life".

P.S.: The power of systems! I have in my system to contact one person that I either look up to, admire their expertise or their way of life. I did this, but never would've dreamed that person would answer me, but he did! He is actually helping me find good developers to get my project going. I really look forward to being able to provide him value too in the future as he has for me.

Thanks @Silverhawk851 for your post !

 

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[Tiago]

Update!

I've talked to lots and lots of people in my niche, and they all have the same complaints. So I went, thought of a software which could eliminate all those pains and proceeded to validate.

I've also written a pitch, with a little elevator pitch, what problems customers have, my solution, size of market, a short business model, my competition and how I'll acquire customers.

So I went on and called them with the solution, and out of 35 people asked, 33 said they would use it and pay for it. This is amazing news!

I love this idea as well because it provides so much value to them and to their clients, and it would facilitate their lives immensely.

My next big task is finding a development team. I would like 1-2 developers, 1 mobile developer and 1 designer.

I don't want people only for their technical knowledge. I want people who are positive and who like new challenges and experimenting. I believe a company is only as good as its people.

These are the ways I'm thinking of finding people for my team:

Development related events.
Meetups through meetup.com.
Talking to university professors, if they have any exceptional students who they could recommend.
Contact top players in software companies in my region.
Searching people through Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter and reaching out.
Making a video like SnazzyRoom (I wouldn't know how to distribute it properly though. Ask for friends to share it in Facebook?)

Do you have any other ideas on how to find good developers for your team? Or any advice on hiring them?

 

[wolfie]

The question then becomes how can you provide them enough value upfront, that they would want to give you money before its developed. Ask them if they want to be a premium member for this software? The benefits might be that they get all the updates and releases early, if they get in early they get to choose the features that they want. Think of some benefits that you can provide them. Always try to make it a win-win situation.

Just some ideas!

EDIT: Also going along with what MTF said earlier about the mockups, the best software I've seen is keynotopia. If you can build the rough draft with that, you can use it to show your developers and also use it to show your clients you are serious about this and that you need money to fund it.

 

[Tiago]

So I've just talked to another 5 clients today, all of whom loved the idea. Slowly building an email list.

This list is just for validation right now, and to show prospective developers that we have a real business going here, not just a "Hey I've got an idea let's build it" kind of thing. Once I get the development going, I'll build a landing page to get early adopters, slowly drip feed them valuable content and our progress.

I've talked to two developers this morning. They didn't have the necessary skill set though. Even though I value the person more than their skills, they still need to have some technical knowledge to do quick deploy of the software.

With every meeting I'm getting valuable lessons though. A lot of the times they have some tips to give me (today they gave me some GREAT suggestions about the usability of the website). I'm also learning how to interview better, seeing as this is new territory for me.

Best thing of the week: A developer I met at the Developers Conference that happened here is a real rockstar in the JavaScript development community. He's a really cool dude and down to earth, and he is hosting a meetup this Saturday with around 75 attendees. I've been talking to him and he offered to let me go on stage to do a quick pitch of my idea! I have begun refining my pitch immediately and will be practicing it until Saturday. Let's see how it goes!

 

[MTF]

I'd recommend you read The Lean Startup. It describes an iterative approach to developing capability. Getting stuff out early and getting feedback and soon as possible. It's pretty short and has a lot of great advice and case-studies of real businesses.

I'd read this book first: https://gettingreal.37signals.com/

I found The Lean Startup very confusing and boring, but that's just me, a non-technical person.

 

[Tiago]

While building my pitch for this weekend, I just noticed a big thing!

I was adding a feature that not even ONE of my clients said they were having pain with. I thought it was important and I would like to have it if I were in their shoes. They didn't say they needed it.

Sometimes you just have to step back and look at the whole thing.

Eliminating this unnecessary feature will cut down development cost by quite a bit.

 

[Tiago]

So, the meetup went great! I got lots of people interested and applying for interviews.

This week I've interviewed 10 people, and have around 15 more scheduled. I have two candidates which I like, I'll keep interviewing more people and see how that goes.

 

[Tiago]

I got my first 4 signups on the landing page!!

I know it's not much, but at least it's progress! I'll be asking those who signed up if I can have a talk with them to better understand their problems.

I'm having some trouble with my developer though. I really really like him and think we could work great together, but he said he's not interested in a salary. He wants to be part of this because he really believes in it.

I've only met him though, and I know that now it all sounds good and well, but how will we cooperate once the business has it's ups and downs, once there is money involved? I've always been against sharing equity if I don't know the person for at least 5 years and have worked with him before.

On the other side, I really believe we can build great things together. I'll talk to him and offer this deal:

Let's work for 6 months together, with him received payments for delivered features. After those 6 months, we can discuss this matter again. I can still say no though, I'm going to be perfectly clear. This gives us both time to evaluate how we work together.

 

[Tiago]

This is what I have been doing lately:

Manually sending out emails to prospective clients. This is a slow method, but it has already given me 10 new leads in my landing page! Every progress is something.

But then I realized I needed to start getting the "10x mindset" on. So I hired I developer to create a script, which scrapes off email addresses of businesses in any given city, for the first 20 pages of google. This way I'll save tons of hours and get on with the more productive stuff.

I'm going to start on content marketing right away. It's the new way of advertising and it's come to stay. Google is giving more and more attention to high quality content and it naturally boosts SEO for valuable content out there. And I have a very good angle on a blog that has a strong USP to my audience.

But truth is, I suck at writing. I was born in Brazil, lived in Germany and now am back in Brazil, and my language still isn't 100% native and there is lots of vocabulary that I'm missing. But I see that as a great opportunity. Starting to write will:

• Improve my communication skills
• Improve my language knowledge
• Directly result in sales and the biggest of all...

Start my copywriting career.​

I've always put copywriting off, I don't know why. But sooner or later, you're going to need it. You're always sending out emails, doing tweaks to better the conversion of your website, selling your product.

I'm excited about this!

P.S.: I got to do a very extensive interview with a client yesterday, it gave me very good insights about their real problems. My goal is to interview 20 people before creating a solution. Thanks @smoove001 again for the book, it is helping me a lot.

 

[Silverhawk851]

One piece of my system is to find out 30 prospective clients email addresses and contact them. No excuses, first thing in the morning.

This may not sound like much, but by doing so I've contacted over 300 clients in the last 10 days. Do this for 3 months and I'll have reached almost 3000 clients.

That's Beast man, I love it.
Rep +++

Keep it up dude,
imagine in 6 months you've talked to 6000 people.
Mathematically impossible for you to not have atleast 30+ clients.

The amazing thing about systems is,
Once you stick with it,
Over time,
you'll start to realize you're getting better.
What took you 30 tries to do,
You can now do in 5.

What took you 6 hours to do,
you can do in 30 mins.

You skill level rises,
and so does you competency.

Systems > Goals.

 

[smoove001]

Guys, I'm having doubts in my mind...

The process is going great, should start development this week.

But there is one thing that is bothering me:

Should I aim for a bigger market?

My market size has 85.000 potential customers. My price would be 40$/month. I'm not sure if I should go aim at a larger market size because hey, I might not get to the moon, but I will sure travel further than if I were aiming at the treetops.

What are your opinions on this?

I don't know what you mean by aiming at a larger market size, shouldn't you be doing that from the beginning. But if you mean changing your whole solution, I say don't do it and focus on the 85,000, that's enough to make a great living if the product you're building is valuable to them. Imagine 1000 customers paying $40, that's like 1.2% of your potential customers and $40,000 in MRR which I think is highly feasible.

You find a solution to a problem, build it and sell it to as many as you can, no need to worry about a big market right now.

 

[tafy]

There's other countries in the world too btw, market is 100 times what you think

 

[MTF]

Should I aim for a bigger market?

No, you shouldn't. It's your first business started this way, don't try to make it perfect. Moreover, don't forget that this product is only the first step in this market. You can offer more products and services, so each client can be worth not $40/month, but several hundred.

There are three ways to grow a business:

1. Increase the number of clients - this one is limited in a smaller market.
2. Increase the average transaction - this one would be the best route for you by adding new products and services.
   
3. Increase the frequency that the average client buys from you - not really applicable in software.

 

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[Tiago]

Short update!

What I did:

• Email list growing to 143 clients.

• Had a meeting with the developer, discussed a few details and signed a contract of non-disclosure and IP.

• Launched my 2nd blog post.

• Removed Disqus from my blog and added a very simple comment system. Disqus is a barrier for people to get and comment on the post.

• Talking to a model to work on the video shoot.

• Created the mockups for the mobile version.

• Updated the script to my sales interview.

• Joined a co-working space for 30 hours/month to get out of the house and socialize a bit.

• Added a new feature to the software that was being requested by everybody. I will only add features that are an absolute must, I want to keep it simple.

• Applied for Microsoft Azure Bizspark Program that gives you free cloud services for 3 years for startups. I've got no affiliation with Microsoft, might be very helpful for new companies that need those services.

What I'll do next:

• Send out email trying to figure out how my clients measure their success and how they intend to benefit from the software. This will be used to create an optimized customer onboarding experience, so they can convert from free trial to paid user faster and at a higher %.

• Talk to 30 clients every day.

• Send out email about the mobile version mockup and get feedback.

• Create a better sales cycle. I've got a friend who's going to help me with this.

• Talk to a designer to help me with the landing page. I've got it roughly done on Instapage, but it needs some work still.

• Close the deal with the model and location and proceed to do the video shooting.

Launch of the software will be in about 6 weeks! Will test it with 10 clients at first for a month to see how they like it, catch any bugs and then release it.

 

[Tiago]

Keep momentum.
​

Things are moving along! Every day pushing a little forward is paying off.

What happened:

• Today I finally signed the deal for the location. Sunday we're shooting the videos.

• Signed the deal with the video agency.

• Wrote a new blog post. Currently have 3 published.

• After doing the wireframes, now hired a designer to do last touch-ups in the landing page. It's going to look really professional and miles better than any other competitor out there.

• Reached 200 subscribers! I keep getting comments on how awesome the content is and that nobody out there is doing anything remotely like it.

• Software development is closer and closer to launch. Next week we probably have all the core functions ready and can start touching up on the design.

I'm starting to run out of people to contact on LinkedIn. I'll have to figure out a new strategy to reach clients, but I already have something in mind. The video shoot has been taking up all my time, once that is done, I will test my new customer acquisition strategy.

Last week I was at the beach with a couple of friends and had to do some work while there. They couldn't believe I would work on a Sunday, was I mad?! But I guess people don't understand that once you're truly committed to a project that you actually care about, work is fun. I love working on my project. I go to bed completely exhausted, but with a smile on my face. I know a lot of people here can relate to that

 

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[Tiago]

Introducing a habit in my life.

Every night before heading to bed, I'll write out the single most important task I have to do the next day. Once I wake up, that will be the first thing I do. Before checking emails, before getting bombarded with all that noise.

Usually those are the tasks that require the most energy and mental clarity. I think it will be wise to do them as early as possible in the day.

I'll do it for 30 days and see if my productivity increases. Will post the results here.

 

[Tiago]

Came back from the fair yesterday. It was really good, and I'm glad I went. Thank you @tafy for the nudge.

While the fair wasn't specifically targeted at my niche, I got 50 contacts out of it. They all seemed really interested about the idea and about my blog so today I sent emails to all of them. The feedback has been very good.

I also met quite a few authorities in my niche I had previously emailed and made a stronger connection with them. Now whenever I publish a new blog post or want to change the software, I have a few people with experience I can reach out to.

Learned about a new direct competitor. They are in their early beginnings and I have to study a bit more what they are doing. If I didn't go to the fair maybe I would've learnt about them too late in the game.

So all in all, it was worth it. Got to learn more about the industry, made quite a few contacts, learnt a lot.

Right now I'm focused on a few things:

• Getting the video editing done. Talked to the video producer because they were waiting for my feedback and gave the green light.

• Finishing the landing page design. My designer is a bit slow, but he said that tonight he has something to show me. If his designs aren't up to my standards, I'll look for another one.

• Launching soon. My developer said that in 2 weeks we have a working software. He's developing some automated tests to reduce initial bugs and could then start to polish the design on the software.

• Publishing another post. We're reaching 300 subscribers this week probably, and I expect to convert quite a few of those to trial users and paying customers.

I'm at a crossroads though.

The software is going to need to work as a mobile app eventually. It's a must.

Right now I'm developing a responsive design, which means you can access it through your mobile web navigator and it will scale down to your screen and have a pretty similar design as an app would. It will be a bit slower and a bit buggier, but for the first launch I think it's OK.

The problem is, it will be very difficult to educate people on that. People don't care about your product, they care about you solving their problems.

My problem now is, should I:

A) Start the app development for Android and Apple as soon as possible. This would be riskier and more expensive, as my software will very probably not launch with market fit. But also much faster, and since I have competitors coming, speed might be key here.

B) Launch the software with responsive design, and iterate fast on first feedback. The product market fit version will definitely be much different than the launched version. This is both safer and cheaper, but at the expense of being much slower. 3 months at least of tweaking after launching and then another 3 months of developing the mobile app versions.

I'm not sure which route to go.

 

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[Tiago]

Good news

The landing page is done and it looks really good. Tweaked some things back and forth with the designer and I'm happy with the end results, looks very professional.

Launched a new blog post.

Terrible news

My developer is dropping out... We worked so well together, but it's too much for him to handle right now. He is working full-time while doing a masters degree, and is not able to add freelancing for me into this mix.

As he's seen how much I am invested in this, he doesn't want to do a half-assed job, which I respect.

He's not going to charge for the last 2 weeks of development and is going to help when other developers come in to give assistance in the beginning until they fully understand the software structure.

This sucks, as we were really close to launching and now I will have to delay it. When I read his email I couldn't believe my eyes...

But that's being an entrepreneur. Things never go as expected and the difference is how you react to it.

My plan of change

My focus has changed in the last few days. My number one goal is:

Reach product/market fit.

That's all that matters in the moment. To those that might not know what it is, it's delivering the exact product the market wants. 90% of SaaS fail because they don't hit product/market fit.

How am I going to do that?

More often than not, people say "Don't reinvent the wheel... Just make it better" and I will follow that advice. There are two SaaS companies in the US that have the same model as me and they are successful.

I'm going to copy 80% of their best features, the ones the users love the most, and add 20% of my own touch to differentiate myself from the market.

Customer Development

I don't know why, but I've stopped doing customer development. I thought I knew everything there is to know about my customers, and turns out I was wrong.

I will not make that mistake again. I'm going to reschedule customer interviews and test out assumptions, get to know their biggest problems, learn their language to use in my marketing copy, build up ideal customer personas and grow stronger relationships with my customers.

Top priorities

• Find a developer again.
• Start mobile development. I know it's risky since I haven't launched my product yet but I want to speed things up because there is real demand for this.

 

[MTF]

"How can I deliver the most value to the most amount of people in the shortest period of time with a skill I am good at and love doing?"

I like this question, but I still think it's overthinking it, plus it's too skill-focused and that can limit your thinking.

For instance, you could say that my answer to this question would be "writing." But if I were to focus primarily on writing, I wouldn't think about self-publishing as a business, but as a job of writing books. And that would be a very limiting way of going about it. I don't even consider myself a writer. I'm just an entrepreneur who happened to enter the self-publishing industry. I'm turning my raw product (my books and my experience in the industry) into various mediums (ebooks, paperbacks, audiobooks, service business, etc.).

I don't do any of it thinking whether it's how I can deliver the most value to the most amount of people. I just cast a wide net and as Jay Abraham frequently says, "try to continuously identify and discover new hidden assets in my business." I have to admit it's probably not the most elegant way to do it (it's pretty much throwing stuff at the wall) but hey, it works for me.

One person from this forum who has since disappeared told me during a coaching call when I was working on my SaaS business for real estate agents that I wasn't in the business of SaaS for real estate agents. I was in the real estate industry, period. That's a powerful way to think about it no matter your business because it leads to almost limitless growth and opportunities.

I didn't fully understand it then, but I understand it much better now. I'm not in the business of writing books. I'm in the self-publishing industry, and it encompasses ALL types of publishing (ebooks, paperbacks, audiobooks, video courses, blogs, etc.) as well as ALL types of services and products for people in this industry (services for authors, coaching, physical products for authors, software, and so much more).

Can you see how different it is when I look at it not from the perspective of my skills (no matter if it's something I'm good at and love doing), but from the perspective of casting a wide net in the industry you happened to choose for some reason? Obviously out of all these options I would still pick the ones that fit me best, but I don't think "okay, I won't start a service business for authors because I can't use my skill of writing this way" or "I won't affect the most amount of people in the shortest period of time."

Exactly. I believe too that you shouldn't claim yourself as an expert in anything if you have no results to back it up.

So I was thinking. I will take a few business under my coaching program and charge them nothing. I would focus on getting them real results, whichever they are. This would allow me to:

- Get real world experience.
- Get testimonials to back me up.

Would you like to get coached by a chubby guy (or even just an average-looking dude with average strength) who wants to become a fitness coach but only has basic knowledge about fitness? Free or not, this is not a good proposition. If you want to become a fitness coach, first you have to generate results for yourself. If you want to become a business coach, it's the same.

 

[Andy Black]

When I was working on my SaaS business for real estate agents ... I wasn't in the business of SaaS for real estate agents. I was in the real estate industry, period.

What if you didn't think of yourself as being in the real estate industry either, but in the business of helping people?

(I've just finished a Grant Cardone course on selling and I like his thinking that we should all see ourselves as being in the people business first and foremost. We sell to people, who just happen to be looking for a new house, or trying to sell their house, or trying to help either of the above.)

Haha. I hope I am helping and not muddying the water.

For me, things have become clearer when I put helping people first, ahead of building an XYZ business...



EDIT: "Helping people" = "Solving problems" = "Adding value"

Of course this can be done via entertainment as well.