[Looking for Advice] I own a SaaS business that is not making profits yet, and I could be earning a lot per month as a software developer.

[Layton]

Hello everybody!

Let me put you in context.
I'm the co-founder (CTO) of a SaaS business that is slowly growing but is not making significant profits yet but has the potential to do so.
To give you an example, if I close a few more clients I'll be able to make ~$1k per month with the business. Which is pretty cool to me, because it will help to cover most of my monthly expenses.

Quitting is not an option yet. But I know that if I worked as a software developer for a company, I'd be able to make $5k or more on a monthly basis, which is an amazing salary for my location and would allow me to save a lot of money every month.

An option is to take a part-time job while I work on this, but I can't imagine putting 30 hours per week of work on another company on top of what I'm currently doing (which is a lot).

So yeah, I know this is not enough information for anybody to take a decision, but I wanted to know if anybody had a similar experience and took a decision. I also am very aware of the fact that this is what owning a business looks like, and there isn't much that you can do other than suck it up and work hard.

Thank you very much in advance!

 

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[Kevin88660]

Hello everybody!

Let me put you in context.
I'm the co-founder (CTO) of a SaaS business that is slowly growing but is not making significant profits yet but has the potential to do so.
To give you an example, if I close a few more clients I'll be able to make ~$1k per month with the business. Which is pretty cool to me, because it will help to cover most of my monthly expenses.

Quitting is not an option yet. But I know that if I worked as a software developer for a company, I'd be able to make $5k or more on a monthly basis, which is an amazing salary for my location and would allow me to save a lot of money every month.

An option is to take a part-time job while I work on this, but I can't imagine putting 30 hours per week of work on another company on top of what I'm currently doing (which is a lot).

So yeah, I know this is not enough information for anybody to take a decision, but I wanted to know if anybody had a similar experience and took a decision. I also am very aware of the fact that this is what owning a business looks like, and there isn't much that you can do other than suck it up and work hard.

Thank you very much in advance!

Grab the $5k salary and hire an assistant to work for you on your SAAS business.

Also depends on what the limiting factor to growth is. If there is no issue on the technical factors you should be using your salary to fund a part-times sales assistant.

As the old saying goes, quit your job only when it is obvious to do so.

 

[Choate]

If you aren't working for another company at all and have 80+ hours per week to pour into this business, I'd try to figure out fast what's stopping you from closing that $1k MRR gap that you need to cover your living expenses.

If that's not possible in the short term, I'd definitely look to freelance using your existing skills and aim for 10-20 hours per week to help cover expenses.

 

[Tiago]

What's the potential for this business?

What's holding it back from growing?

 

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[Practic]

Hello everybody!

Let me put you in context.
I'm the co-founder (CTO) of a SaaS business that is slowly growing but is not making significant profits yet but has the potential to do so.
To give you an example, if I close a few more clients I'll be able to make ~$1k per month with the business. Which is pretty cool to me, because it will help to cover most of my monthly expenses.

Quitting is not an option yet. But I know that if I worked as a software developer for a company, I'd be able to make $5k or more on a monthly basis, which is an amazing salary for my location and would allow me to save a lot of money every month.

An option is to take a part-time job while I work on this, but I can't imagine putting 30 hours per week of work on another company on top of what I'm currently doing (which is a lot).

So yeah, I know this is not enough information for anybody to take a decision, but I wanted to know if anybody had a similar experience and took a decision. I also am very aware of the fact that this is what owning a business looks like, and there isn't much that you can do other than suck it up and work hard.

Thank you very much in advance!

Toral revenue=NC*(LVC-CAC), where NC number of customers, LVC -lifetime value of a customer, CAC-cost of acquisition of s customer

To grow your business you need to use methods, which with one shot hit three targets. In this case you need methods which increase NC and LVC, but decrease CAC. Revenue sharing and income sharing programs have zero CAC, increase NC and LVC. You can grow sales to 10k/month and forget about a job.

 

[Layton]

Grab the $5k salary and hire an assistant to work for you on your SAAS business.

Also depends on what the limiting factor to growth is. If there is no issue on the technical factors you should be using your salary to fund a part-times sales assistant.

As the old saying goes, quit your job only when it is obvious to do so.

I'd say the limiting factor, for now, is the sales part. We already have a very good and stable version of the app with 7 clients that gets the job done.
Some of our clients are pretty big and influential, so they could refer us to other clients which is great, but that happens over time and we can't rely on that.

Getting a $5k salary right now would need a large time investment for me so I don't think it's actually an option.

I guess the smartest thing to do would be to slowly scale a side business to the point of earning enough to sustain myself while working on this app.

 

[Layton]

If you aren't working for another company at all and have 80+ hours per week to pour into this business, I'd try to figure out fast what's stopping you from closing that $1k MRR gap that you need to cover your living expenses.

If that's not possible in the short term, I'd definitely look to freelance using your existing skills and aim for 10-20 hours per week to help cover expenses.

Yep exactly! Those 10-20 hours per week freelancing would be ideal, but having a hard time to actually find a project that requires that and pay well haha.

In order to make $1k a month for me, we need a few more clients, which is something we're expecting to have but definitely not in the short-term.

Thanks for your input

 

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[Layton]

What's the potential for this business?

What's holding it back from growing?

Our customers can earn a lot off of us because we don't get any commissions from them. This being said, the most important thing for us is to acquire as many customers as possible.

We haven't spent a penny in marketing yet so I think that's the major issue. We were able to get our current clients by direct sales, but haven't put much effort into selling to unknown people.

On the tech side, we're pretty good, and working daily to improve the system, add new features, and meet our current customers needs.