[Progress] Starting another SaaS (travel industry this time)

[devbe83]

Were you got those first users from? Ads?

Personal network, always a good source for feedback.

 

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[devbe83]

What can I say? It's been a while! Time for a short status update.

C0VlD-19 has been a period of zero conferences happening. A bit of maintenance on the software, writing the occasional blog post, and after a year in, only keeping the software up to date. September 2021 I was ready to just pull the plug, when a conference organizer I know quite well asked if they could do 30 travelers.

"Eh, sure!" - and 80 more for another conference came in just a few days later. This is fantastic, and having the trust from these folks is great!

During these bookings, a number of issues with the travel API provider came up, all got fixed, then something else came up, got fixed, ... A support ticket with a passenger that picked the wrong month to travel and "can this be refunded?" (no, unfortunately) and "can this be rebooked?" on the craziest times of day. All in good spirit, and all very much doable, but not exactly 9-5 either for those requests.

This all happens, but it made me wonder about the C of CENTS again: how much control do you really have over the product you are offering? In this case, I came to the conclusion it's not a lot. I have control over my own service and the orchestration it provides, but once the ticket needs to be booked, control is pretty much over - it's in the hand of the API provider, GDS, airlines, and everything in between.

One of the lessons from the book was to love what you do (which is not the same as do what you love), and I think the honeymoon phase on this one is over. Profit margin is not gigantic at low volume, better at high volume. But coming from no volume at all for two years, I'm back where I was at the start of September: once these conferences are properly handled, is it time to pull the plug?

We'll see, I'm not sure yet. To be continued, one way or another.

 

[devbe83]

I mentioned a bit earlier that someone here on the forum contacted me. That someone was @Axxoul who works in the travel industry. We had a quick call today and chatted a bit about things. He validated the first two posts of this thread: entry into the travel industry is hard and not very transparent. We chatted a bit about the process I'm implementing, and he got excited again about an idea he had in the past. In other words:

And a tip for people looking for ideas needing execution: create a developer-friendly way to get all these 4 points, have some support folks, and outcompete all of the above OTA's that provide an API.

Looking forward to your progress thread soon, @Axxoul ;-)

Regarding my own progress... Today was the last moment in ~2 weeks where I could spend meaningful time on this idea (business travel upcoming), and I spent it on refactoring some parts of the code I have. This should make it easier to make progress in the future, but there's no visible progress on the service idea for now. Will be quiet for a while.

 

[RayAndré]

following

 

[bdb]

Question, how do you determine the amount of time required in order to get a MVP up and going ? do you take that into account before taking action ?

 

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[devbe83]

Question, how do you determine the amount of time required in order to get a MVP up and going ? do you take into account before taking action ?

Good question. I have the idea of the final service in my head, but am slappng myself into keeping an MVP mindset: can the thing I am building validate the need and serve as the starting point for the business.

As a software developer myself, I know how long certain things will take (approximately) so using that as an indicator to myself whether it's feasible to start building it or it needs another approach of getting done.

This one looked relatively contained in terms of time required, so decided to go for it and take action.

Comparing this with another idea I had a while ago, I started taking action on fleshing out what would be required and decided not to pursue that idea because of the initial complexity in even getting an MVP up and running. Which reminds me, I may need to post that idea into the INE section of this forum at some point.

Hope this answers your question!

 

[bdb]

Good question. I have the idea of the final service in my head, but am slappng myself into keeping an MVP mindset: can the thing I am building validate the need and serve as the starting point for the business.

As a software developer myself, I know how long certain things will take (approximately) so using that as an indicator to myself whether it's feasible to start building it or it needs another approach of getting done.

This one looked relatively contained in terms of time required, so decided to go for it and take action.

Comparing this with another idea I had a while ago, I started taking action on fleshing out what would be required and decided not to pursue that idea because of the initial complexity in even getting an MVP up and running. Which reminds me, I may need to post that idea into the INE section of this forum at some point.

Hope this answers your question!

Considering that this is a simple idea for an MVP have you considered hiring a person to do the frontend while you focus on the backend or vice versa ? Would investing some of the resources from your last business into this be justifiable considering that it would help you get your MVP done faster ?

I am also a dev and struggle with keeping personal projects small. Next time I want to try outsourcing parts of a project as it sounds like it would force you to detail everything before writing a single line.

 

[devbe83]

Considering that this is a simple idea for an MVP have you considered hiring a person to do the frontend while you focus on the backend or vice versa ? Would investing some of the resources from your last business into this be justifiable considering that it would help you get your MVP done faster ?

I am also a dev and struggle with keeping personal projects small. Next time I want to try outsourcing parts of a project as it sounds like it would force you to detail everything before writing a single line.

Have considered that (and in fact did a posting on UpWork), but quickly realized that getting this fleshed out enough so someone else could build it would take a reasonable amount of time as well. Not worth it, for the MVP at least.

If it takes off afterwards, I do intend on having things re-built. I'd have a visual example that could serve as a starting point. I'd have a product that (ideally) has revenue. Which combines nicely.

I am also a dev and struggle with keeping personal projects small. Next time I want to try outsourcing parts of a project as it sounds like it would force you to detail everything before writing a single line.

Thats'exactly the thing Outsourcing would have forced me to do that beforehand instead of on the go like I do it now.

The struggle keeping things small is ever present, and often leads to analysis paralysis. I'm trying to be very aware of that and at every step I ask: "is this an idea that needs implementation for a first MVP? or will this come naturally when there is traction?" - have scrapped a number of things already using that approach.

And as a dev, you probably also have a good idea of where compromises could be made, code-wise, and where things should be in order if you want to build on top. I have a couple of things I really don't care too much about, other things must be good from the start.

 

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[devbe83]

Still integrating with airlines API, but also started to think about branding.

As an experiment, I tried DesignCrowd (referrer link) / DesignCrowd to post a job and see if design would come. I went with the second cheapest plan, and in less than 24 hours have gotten 40 designs, of which 5 or 6 are now making it very hard for me to choose a winner In case anyone is looking for a logo design, so far I can definitely recommend this approach.

 

[Owner2Millions]

@devbe83 congrats Im going follow your thread to see how I can improve my own app process as well. So for your designer job post, how did that work out? Also did you have a demo ready for customers to view? If so did you use Youtube? or something else?

Did you sell the SAAS company or the app itself? How was that process of selling? What valuation multipler did you get? did you use a business broker?

 

[bdb]

A very quick status update:

• The web app has gone live, certification has been paid for and was approved, and now all I have to do is wait until someone at the GDS flips the switch to be able to book actual tickets. (In other words: everything works and is active, apart from the actual booking)
• Have been adding a live chat and support e-mail address into the application to be able to help a hand if the need arises.

On the to-do list:

• Once live, get that first customer to try things and gather feedback.
• Work on a landing page to pitch the web app to future prospects.
• Pitch the web app to future prospects.
• In other words: marketing and sales!

Where are you hosting the web app ? VPS ?
Do we get a link to see how it looks

 

[devbe83]

My two cents: too much text.
Mobile navigation elements are not centered correctly.
Besides that it looks really nice.
You planning to run some cpc adds on facebook or google soon?

Thanks for checking! Will take a look at the mobile view. And see whether text can be condensed.

No ads planned yet, still want to iron out some kinks (in both the app as well as the landing page). Contacting folks I know that may want to use this as a first round of marketing, as I can work with them closely on whatever kinks they run into. But the plan is to get to ads around September-ish, after a couple of run-throughs. I do want to put a rough timeframe there. Rough because things can be slower than expected, but a timeframe to keep myself from enthusiastically adding an infinite amount of features and never getting traction.

 

[dawp]

Were you got those first users from? Ads?

 

[bdb]

It's been a while man, how are you doing ? Hopefully good

 

[devbe83]

It's been a while man, how are you doing ? Hopefully good

Yes, time flies

So far have 7 conferences who handled (and are handling) flights through SpeakerTravel, good for 50 travellers now.

Marketing-wise collecting logo's and testimonials I can put on the website, should go live in the next week once I have all approvals.

Sales-wise, trying to attract some more conferences by exploring my network. Also talking with a company that has similar needs, but in a different vertical. They should have news on a go/no-go early January. If that lands, it will be a bigger one that will scale into a few thousand travellers at once, so very excited about what that will bring

Also in touch with a company that organizes events for third parties, and SpeakerTravel seems like a potential fit there as well. Meeting them in January.

In the meanwhile, happy holidays!

 

[bdb]

Sounds amazing.

Is your site prepared to handle that kind of scale once you start getting a few thousand users in ?
Also have you thought about combining lodging with your service? maybe with an established API ?

Happy holidays.

 

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[GatsbyMag]

Service/application
Adding several features I had thought of, but are now requested by first users. Feels good to validate those ideas, but must be careful not to fall into the "build trap". We'll see, for now all requests seem useful and I can see them being used by all customers over time, so that's good.

I'm also in the midst of building a SaaS, what do you mean by the "build trap"?

Similar to you I've been getting feedback and a number of ideas sent my way. I'm investing a lot of time and money into adding additional features for my next version, but I'm also cautious in implementing some of these ideas because I know to focus on the core USP and to see how much of the target market can validate it through $$$ - is this what you're referring to when you mention "build trap"?

Thanks

 

[Xavier X]

@devbe83 Since it appears you're primarily targeting conferences, is there any reason the emphasis is only on speakers? Other than speakers, conference organizers might be responsible for people in other crucial roles. Moderators, judges, performers etc.

You might cast a potentially wider net with a conference approach, rather than focusing only on speakers.

 

[francevalue]

Hey!
Your journey has been amazing!
How do you plan to monetize your website?

 

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[francevalue]

Hey! I've read again all your thread and it's really interesting.
Have you started to run some ads?
Have a nice day.

 

[Axxoul]

Hey man, its now 2022, time for another update

Also you should look into Duffel... I believe they will be much better than your current API provider.

 

[FreakyThomas]

Yeah, definitely ! Please tell us what's up !

 

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