My startup progress that will buy me a Ferrari

[AppMan]

Stopped watching YouTube and listening to news (Ukraine crisis ) while working and seem like my focus is back, so I continued refactoring the front end and the backend ,and the more I work the more I am finding unforgotten mistakes done by developers , they are not intentional , it is just them lack good experience, however weak code will never create a solid software , I am also to blame, I passed many reviews without looking at every line as I trusted some developers while it is clean I shouldn't have.
The software agency responded that they dont have a better developer, and I was expected this response, since I refuse to sign long term contract with them, but also mean they lost me as client for them.
I will be more involved in front end development especially I am idle during my full time job.
Next steps :

• Get involved more in development to make sure front end code is strong enough to be released to public .
• Focusing from now on on hiring graphic and html specialized since my focus will be soon turned to marketing once the alpha version get released. I am looking for someone who can do both things graphics and html/css.
• Start planning how to introduce product to the market, most likely I ll write blogs that compare my product to other competitors, I see this effective in giving some authority to my product.

 

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[AppMan]

Clean up time:
1- Got rid of Software agency after their failure to deliver quality code.
2- Got rid of students group and revoked all their permissions, after they proved they are a waste of time.
3- Kept only the best Backend developer.
4- Got rid of angular developer who was delivering buggy code.
5- Hired a new angular developer that know what she is doing and in very good hourly rate .

From :
3 developers + 1 group of students + 1 QA
now :
2 developers ( one backend(part time PM) and one front end ) only

Things learned :

• The more you hire people the more time you need to manage them.
• Be careful in hiring, bad hires are waste of time and money and big delay.
• Track their progress, it is easy to think they are doing something while they are not.
• They dont have same of your passion and they can leave without looking back.

Alpha release has failed on Feb/28, now reevaluating and setting new target based on available resources .

 

[AppMan]

My app now is more stable, have currently 2 developers and 1 QA , things are moving slowly but steadily, this app will be a middle man between customer and business, which is the best model to scale and make healthy profit. my Full time job is back busy so I no longer able to give a lot of to my SaaS unless it is weekend.
I am trying to find a way to leave my full time job to focus on my app , I am thinking in getting some funding with many post covid programs available, as I am more believing to convert this SaaS to business I need to dedicate it more serious time and take some risk.

 

[AppMan]

Today I have moved from development stage to business and marketing stage, not because my SaaS is ready , but for the following reasons :

• Getting feedback from customers or perspective customer.
• Have feeling that I am running a business instead of just building another software.
• Many techies take development as fake action to avoid facing some business actions such as sales and marketing, and I want to prove to myself I am doing business part and not hiding behind the development.
• The development seem never ending and every day there is new competition to my features so it is better to move to business to start promoting.
• I am planning to market myself to other people as startup founder , and so far I cant call that since I lack many components such as website, customers, etc.
• My developers kind of reached the diminish point, they are no longer productive as before, so my payments still the same but their productivity almost reached zero and I want to stop this.

 

[AppMan]

Yesterday I met a coworker with me who also started his own SaaS business , but unlike me , he left his day job and spend 2 years building the software, what I found he was good is he faked how perfect is his software , as he is advertising it as a cloud solution while after talking with him it turned out it is not, he also claims that he has many paying customers , yet it doesn't seem his software is production ready. over all he created good marketing materials that display him as a real SaaS startup with a lot of success.
I felt a little jealous because his software is ready while mine still not, however I understand he is in different stage in life when he can afford to leave his day job.
Also I dont think if it is fake app he will go too far, he might fake it in the early stage to report him self as a startup owner, but over the time only real deals stays.
All that gave me another boost that I needed to push my self to work on my SaaS. I am currently designing the website and preparing a list of businesses to contact, also I have subscribed to linkedin learning to learn more about sales as I never did pure sales activity before. I am excited to do the sales calls as sales career is tough one and this will widen my personal skills to more new skills

 

[AppMan]

So I have been off since Nov 15 I saved money to have an unpaid leave until Feb so I am fully dedicated to my project, I was able to do some improvement, however, I thought my precious time should not be spent fixing UI bugs, so I hired the first developer and also negotiating with some outsourcing companies to contract the front end to them. So I can focus more on a critical part of the software that makes it stand out, and focus on the business side. am I satisfied with the amount of work I am putting? not really, my family also competing on my time, for my wife especially I am on a long vacation, she is actually not happy with the 75 days off I took since she is afraid we have to put some break on our spending, she is a nonbusiness woman and doesn't have a strategic or business vision so I excuse her.
I have also joined some groups on Facebook for founders that help me a lot and make me gain more knowledge about many marketing and sales technics and software that are there to help gain customers.
On the parallel side, I am continuing my MBA study, I feel now more confident when I talk in business matters with other people, as I can have some credentials to defend my views, also it helps me in my short-term web design and marketing business as before I was asked how I know about marketing if I never studied business. And believe it or not, I get some feeling of accomplishment knowing I am getting a Master's degree, which I needed after years of normal life without any significant accomplishment.

Will give another update at the end of this month, I have now no excuse fully dedicated to this project. let's cross hands.

Lessons learned :
- You need community or people around you to give you push , I found that in the groups I joined.
- Have clear vision what you want to accomplish , it is easy to waste time and money not knowing where are you going.

 

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[AppMan]

I am in the last days of my long off /unpaid time that I took it to focus on building my SaaS and other businesses and here is what I did and learned :
Things I did :
1- Was able finally to find good front-end and back-end developers to work on my SaaS, the front-end developer is relatively expensive but seems like there are few good angular developers out there. the next project I might use React for UI.
2- Created another business related to the Internet of things and was able to build the website, however as usual the challenge was to get customers. Also, I prototyped some stuff.
3- Learned some CAD tools and a lot of info about prototyping 3D printing, etc, for the first time in 12 years I had the time to install new apps and learn new skills beyond programming.
4- Learned that the competition is too high and any business requires your full time and full attention to get it up and running.
5- Stopped looking for side businesses because I reach the conclusion that I need a partner, simply you only have 24 hours per day.
6- I was planning to do some cold-calling training so far but didn't get a chance.
7- My focus shifted from learning more tech skills to building systems and businesses.

So far I think I have grown in these two months mentally and reached many conclusions, I became more realistic and focused when it comes to finding a business.

 

[AppMan]

One backend and two front-end developers, the development is on tack, also I am back to my full-time contract job. at times feel overwhelmed, but happy that no crappy developer is there.
The inflation rate in Canada just going crazy, although the government keeps saying it is only 6%, the reality is different, I am thinking of renegotiating my contract at the end of this year, as I feel the spending in this way is not sustainable.
I promised my self to start learning cold calling, so far I didn't do it, but planning this week to take that phone and call this.

 

[WJK]

One backend and two front-end developers, the development is on tack, also I am back to my full-time contract job. at times feel overwhelmed, but happy that no crappy developer is there.
The inflation rate in Canada just going crazy, although the government keeps saying it is only 6%, the reality is different, I am thinking of renegotiating my contract at the end of this year, as I feel the spending in this way is not sustainable.
I promised my self to start learning cold calling, so far I didn't do it, but planning this week to take that phone and call this.

Cold calling is practice... and trying some A and B approaches. Keep your stats. You must know your numbers to know what works and what doesn't.

 

[AppMan]

So the two and half months ended, this was the longest off time from full-time job I take in 12 years, and here is what I found :
1- You need that time to build your business, employment takes the best of you during the day.
2- Having time without an idea is also useless.
3- Full-time job is not that bad in the end, you get paid for what you like to do and know how to do it, as long as financially rewarding, there is not a lot to miss outside especially if you are not a people person.
4- some benefits of owning a business can be obtained by faking it; nobody will read your accounting records to verify what you say is really what it is.
5- After two and half months of hard work, I feel I am now off and that the pressure is now less on me. I kind of appreciate having a full-time job, finding customers is too much stressful job.
6- My friend who I mentioned before who started a business from scratch is now doing very well, he is talking about doing big stuff and making big purchases, which means he really doing good money, however, he doesn't seem happy in his life, and working his a$$ off.

I felt I got matured a couple of years in this off time, and my view of many things has changed.
Back to my software, well I hired a new guy who charges more but produces better results, however, his last PR was full of bugs, and seem losing his edge.

 

[WJK]

So the two and half months ended, this was the longest off time from full-time job I take in 12 years, and here is what I found :
1- You need that time to build your business, employment takes the best of you during the day.
2- Having time without an idea is also useless.
3- Full-time job is not that bad in the end, you get paid for what you like to do and know how to do it, as long as financially rewarding, there is not a lot to miss outside especially if you are not a people person.
4- some benefits of owning a business can be obtained by faking it; nobody will read your accounting records to verify what you say is really what it is.
5- After two and half months of hard work, I feel I am now off and that the pressure is now less on me. I kind of appreciate having a full-time job, finding customers is too much stressful job.
6- My friend who I mentioned before who started a business from scratch is now doing very well, he is talking about doing big stuff and making big purchases, which means he really doing good money, however, he doesn't seem happy in his life, and working his a$$ off.

I felt I got matured a couple of years in this off time, and my view of many things has changed.
Back to my software, well I hired a new guy who charges more but produces better results, however, his last PR was full of bugs, and seem losing his edge.

So, you are growing as a person. Yes, it's a big struggle and a learning curve. Each time you put yourself out there, it gets easier until you reach the next challenge. Your skills and your attitude will improve with practice. The day-to-day start-up struggles melt as you learn how to make it work. It's like learning to tie your shoes. You don't have to think about it step-by-step. A lot will have become an automatic reflex.

 

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[Tau Ceti]

Hey man,

I read your thread with great interest and please don't take any offense to what I am about to say, but it seems that you are not going anywhere with this business.

As far as I can tell, you still don't have a single user and your app/website is still not out to the public. My question is what are you waiting for?

You should focus on releasing the application no matter what before the end of this month.
Build 1 feature and 1 feature only. Just the one that provides value. That's it.

I know you may think you need more features but you don't.

What you need is users and customers and now you have neither.

So get you app out there, get some users, listen to their feedback and iterate on your idea. You don't need other devs at this stage, or QAs or product managers or development agencies.

What you need is 1 single paying customer to validate your idea.

Once you get to 100s of paying users,, and the workload becomes to much between support emails, bug-fixes and new features to build, then you can start hiring VAs to handle support requests.

And so on and so forth.

Don't let perfect be the enemy of good. Your users don't give a crap if you use best practices and if you app is bug-free. Peter Levels, famously ran his SAAS without git for many years, had a single massive PHP file and one big CSS file, and he made a 100k per month with that.

Anyway, I don't mean to bring you down. It's tough out there but I am also building a SaaS and I have made some of the mistakes that you made so I just wanted to give you an outside opinion on your current situation.

Best of luck.

 

[AppMan]

I read your thread with great interest and please don't take any offense to what I am about to say, but it seems that you are not going anywhere with this business.

As far as I can tell, you still don't have a single user and your app/website is still not out to the public. My question is what are you waiting for?

I agree with that the progress of building software is slow, in fact I halted all the dev activities because I found I have no enough time to make meaningful progress.

Then two things pushed be back to the project again
1- COVID19 which let me work from home and be able to have another personal PC beside my work PC.
2- Working as Contractor which give me enough financial power to fund hiring other developers as for me I don't have time and energy after 8 hours of day job to do any programming.
However I still have things that slow me down
1- my full time job (Contract)
2- the nature of freelancers, they get motivated at first then flake once they found another client or think they will get paid for do nothing.
3- having a young family is also take big chunk of my time
4- Studying to get my MBA.


Why I don't have alpha or beta version already open for public ? well without some features that I am going to release , you really don't have anything that other competitors going to offer.
Imagine you release something similar to MailCheat(Chimp) but more buggy and basic , and without any feature that MailCheat(Chimp) doesn't have. Who is in the right mind to use such app.
The only way to speed it up is by partnering with someone else, but so far I don't like the idea of having a partner, as I want to be free at least with this project.
However I decided any future project I will look for partner from start. And this is my advise to anyone cant dedicate to their startup to seek partner who have abundance of time.

 

[AppMan]

Almost a year since my last post, and here are some updates :
Got my MBA
Outsourcing and AI Disturbed the market of IT professionals , and in general salaries got a hit, I have been on many roles in the last year, and still not very stable in my full time job, it seem like IT and Software career is not as solid option as before.

I have gaveup on my original SaaS that I started this thread to track it, and started another SaaS that use AI.
The progress on this second one was faster, and I intentially chose the technology that I am comfortable with , also selected a product idea that doesnt require too much work until you reach the MVP.
Currently I am doing cold calls to get some businesses using it, but so far no success. I am getting blocked by gate keepers most of the time, but cold call give me some strange feeling that I am in control of my destiny, I used before to feel I am locked in my situation, but when I do cold calling I get some confidance boost.
I also fininalizing two other businesses, these are service business. And I know all of them require a lot of marketing, but I am kind of testing the water and seeing which one will turn to real business.
The fear of Tech job market shrinking make me want to take self employment more seriously, as I think in 2 years there will be a drop in salaries, and I think that is what Amazon currently doing , forcing people to come to office so many of them will resign , then hire new people in half of salary and most likely fewer.

 

[WJK]

Almost a year since my last post, and here are some updates :
Got my MBA
Outsourcing and AI Disturbed the market of IT professionals , and in general salaries got a hit, I have been on many roles in the last year, and still not very stable in my full time job, it seem like IT and Software career is not as solid option as before.

I have gaveup on my original SaaS that I started this thread to track it, and started another SaaS that use AI.
The progress on this second one was faster, and I intentially chose the technology that I am comfortable with , also selected a product idea that doesnt require too much work until you reach the MVP.
Currently I am doing cold calls to get some businesses using it, but so far no success. I am getting blocked by gate keepers most of the time, but cold call give me some strange feeling that I am in control of my destiny, I used before to feel I am locked in my situation, but when I do cold calling I get some confidance boost.
I also fininalizing two other businesses, these are service business. And I know all of them require a lot of marketing, but I am kind of testing the water and seeing which one will turn to real business.
The fear of Tech job market shrinking make me want to take self employment more seriously, as I think in 2 years there will be a drop in salaries, and I think that is what Amazon currently doing , forcing people to come to office so many of them will resign , then hire new people in half of salary and most likely fewer.

It's interesting what is happening with AI. I knew it was a disruptor. I think it is going to also do the same with attorneys and other types of workers.

I think you're right about Tech jobs. Musk cut Twitter by 80% of the employes and it seems to be doing fine. What's going to happen with all these displaced workers?

 

[Andy Black]

cold call give me some strange feeling that I am in control of my destiny, I used before to feel I am locked in my situation, but when I do cold calling I get some confidance boost.

I never heard anyone put it this way. I started doing a bit of outbound (just connecting and DMing people on LinkedIn) and am enjoying it. It's less passive than inbound.

I am kind of testing the water and seeing which one will turn to real business.

That's marketing imo.

 

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[Ravens_Shadow]

From one Ferrari owner to a future one: it seems like you're dabbling in 3 different ideas if I read your update right and on my personal belief, that is a recipe to continue being in the trough of mediocrity. Laser in on one thing and work on it like your freedom depends on it, because it does.

 

[AppMan]

I think you're right about Tech jobs. Musk cut Twitter by 80% of the employes and it seems to be doing fine. What's going to happen with all these displaced workers?

If you watch the Microsoft CEO presentation on Microsoft Ignite, you will understand how scarely the AI will be for white collar employees, as it almost will replace any brain based job. The employer on the other hand will get more richer, I think the era of office jobs will reach to end or at least the work force will be reduced to less than 25%.

I never heard anyone put it this way.

Maybe because people who do cold calling are usually doing it for all their life , but for someone who is doing it for the first time , it really give a great feeling that you are not under the mercey of someone to call , instead you can get the client and make money.

it seems like you're dabbling in 3 different ideas

I agree that juggling many ideas often leads to none being nurtured enough to succeed. However, when I don’t see positive outcomes from my main idea (SaaS), I start considering investing my time in other pursuits.

 

[AppMan]

Today I have create AI for my product so it can interact with customers without human intervention using Azure new AI capabilities, the second part is linking it to my existing product, I am doing this to increase the value of my product, and have something to say over the phone that catch my prospects attention.
On the other hand my full time contract will start next week and my time dedicated to my SaaS will be limited.

 

[AppMan]

I did many cold calls but no one was interested in my product, so I said I am done for now with B2B apps and lets try B2C where I will be able to use direct channels with customers instead of B2B which require more organized sales and relationships .
I am working now on prototyping IoT solution for cunsomers, and this will be my first time creating product that target consumers instead of Businesses, I want to compare and see which one is more suitable to me.
It was also got refreshment to my engineering knowlege as I have to design the cirtcuits , etc.

For my full time job I was able to secure another short term contact, so that will give me some time to find a new more stable contract hopefully on better terms. I am also working on my new business website which is software consulting and tried to partner with others to make it look big.