SAAS Execution, Dane Maxwell style

[MartinH]

You need to cut the pains down to the top 3 and really look at each one closely, can you combine the top 3 into 1 software?

Technically yes.
But in practice most companies have totally different (top) problems --> so offering a more complete software would probably not be appealing to so many companies because each of them have different top 3 problems.

Actually solving only one of the top problem would be a big enough foundation for my SaaS business.
That's what I'm focusing on right now - finding a painful problem that many companies share.

 

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[tafy]

Ok so time mangement isnt a problem and they do it on paper? This doesnt sound right to me.

How I imagine making the software for just this 1 problem:

have each member of staff with a diary, that you enter jobs into, either 1 off or recuring. Managed by the office.

Then the cleaner has a mobile app or a website location to see their diary and check off jobs as they go, maybe even note down on jobs that took longer than normal or shorter, or other notes that go back to the office to sort out. I dont know the business that well right but you do.

If it works out then it can be expanded with invoices and payment processors down the line.

Pitch it to them and see what they say

 

[MartinH]

Day 25:

Today I had a very successful phone call with a CEO I found on XING.
I started out doing idea extraction on him and we found a problem that I could easily solve for him.
(I knew I found a real pain when he told me he's currently using MS Excel for this task and it sucks)
I heard another entrepreneur say once:
"Any time you see excel being used for something it wasn't intended, you've got a business opportunity"

It's a fairly simple problem (regarding invoices) that still leads to 25 hours of tedious work - every month.
There are other solutions available but they are either too expensive or not "right" for him so he would like me
to create a custom solution.
Although no other property cleaning company complained about this particular problem it wouldn't hurt to create a small solution
for this guy and be ready if someone else wants that application, too. (I could pitch it directly to others and observe their reaction)

I could probably create this application myself in only a couple of days so I'll just try to do this while looking for other opportunities!

 

[tafy]

You should check out debitoor, they have great simple invoice application for a low fee

 

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[MartinH]

You should check out debitoor, they have great simple invoice application for a low fee

Thanks man, debitoor looks great. I'm a huge fan of Flat UI Design :joyful: I'll definitely use some of their styling for my solution.

 

[CoastalGuy]

Day 17:

I heard about many different new problems today but most importantly I found out that 3 CEO's I've interviewed so far are having the same problem.
I have no concrete idea how to solve that problem with software but at least I found an unsolved painful problem that occurs more than once.
It's not a problem that is costing them a lot of money (like lost revenue) but it does take up a lot of time. It's a major nuisance.
Of course I'm still far away from creating mockups and pre-selling my solution but it was a huge step in the right direction.

You are really taking a lot of action and progressing at an impressive speed! Just one thought about the unsolved problem above. You say it doesn't affect their revenue, but if it takes time it is very likely affecting their potential revenue. If you could demonstrate the potential time savings and translate that into money in some way (If they don't see the connection I assume it may need some reasoning to make the connection) it could be an interesting problem to address.

 

[MartinH]

Day 26:

Since Friday is the busiest day of the week in my target industry I didn't bother doing cold calls.
I spent some time at the gym and then learning Rails - both things I enjoy doing in my free time.
I talked with this CEO again and scheduled a meeting for tuesday next week. I will discuss what a possible solution
should look like and how much I will charge him. But most importantly it will be my first in person meeting.
I'm really excited about this - it's getting serious with two meetings already scheduled for next week. If I do everything right and make my first sale by next week I would officially be a software entrepreneur and not longer a wantrepreneur.

Also my mentor gave me my first big assignment - a web app that I should program in RoR. It will mainly be a learning experience and he'll help me out when I'm stuck but he'll even pay me for my work. I'm excited about entering the world of a software developer.
After years of struggling with finding my passion I now feel like this is the thing I want to do and should do to get where I want to be in life - on the fastlane.

 

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[MartinH]

Day 27:

Spent some time reading "Agile Web Development with Rails" and building their sample application.
Talked about my plans for next week with a few people I trust to get feedback.
Looks like next week is gonna be awesome.

 

[MartinH]

Day 28:

Continued reading "Agile Web Development with Rails". A lot of work, even to get a simple app running :embarrased:
I read some other books on this sunday, even fiction. Then I had a chat with my mentor about my tasks for the upcoming week.

 

[GarrettUK]

Am really enjoying reading this thread. I would agree with coastal guy. I'm in sales for a global IT company and the only projects I successfully sell are the ones with a strong business case behind them. If a process is taking 25 hours a month @ £10 per hour = £250 a month = £3K a year of wasted money. If your solution costs £1K year, that saves the company 2K a year. It's good to get the CEO on side but a CFO is just as important in larger organisations and can kill deals if the maths doesn't add up.

 

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[MartinH]

Day 29:

Today was my birthday and my deadline (to find a painful problem that many companies share) has passed.
Tomorrow I'll have two meetings with CEO's - one of them will probably hire me to develop an app, the other one will hopefully become a client, too. I'll do Idea Extraction on both of them - this time not over the phone but while looking them in the eyes.
I will validate problems I found so far and ask them to refer me to friends in the industry (they both have pretty good connections to other property cleaning company managers).
I haven't found a general painful problem to base my SaaS business on but I'm heading in the right direction and now it shouldn't take too long anymore.

I worked on a RoR project for my mentor today. I worked for many hours and accomplished less than I had hoped to but I still learned a lot.
Because there are several projects going on at the same time I started using Insightly as a project management tool.
I just hope that I will always find time to reflect and not get caught up in all the action and forget that I'm here for SaaS and not to become a freelance software developer.

 

[MartinH]

Day 30:

Today was the most awesome day in months. I imagined it must be cool to talk with CEOs in person but reality totally exceeded my expectations. They were really friendly and open and not once did they ask about my experience or education. They simply welcomed the fact that I'm a software entrepreneur willing to help them solve painful problems.

With one CEO I talked for three hours and eventually defined his problem so accurately and described an awesome possible solution that we agreed I should do this right away. It's a relatively small problem, one that only small companies might have (so definitely not really scalable), but it would be a great start into my career as a software entrepreneur/developer. I'll probably charge 1.5k € for this solution and estimated this will take me only a few days to develop with Filemaker Pro Advanced. I'm really excited about this, maybe I can sell this solution to several small businesses that are still using excel for writing invoices I felt so good after this conversation. The guy really spilled the beans and I got a ton of valuable information out of that conversation. I really like that guy and I'd love to help him overcome this problem.
I now feel much more comfortable in my role as a problem solver and I realized something:

I started the day coding a project for my mentor in RoR and nothing worked. I spent the first few hours of that morning trying to fix bugs. I did this until it was time to leave to drive to my first meeting and I was really frustrated. I hated staring at my laptop screen and got sick and tired of looking at the command line
Then I started talking with those CEOs and all my programming problems seemed so small, so unimportant in comparison to those real world problems. I realized I don't care so much about the technical details, I only care about solving problems. Now I'm not a pro programmer but I got a glimpse at many different languages and frameworks. I know my way around with MeteorJS, I tried AngularJS, am currently working on Ruby on Rails, I created some small apps with Filemaker. Now I probably suck too much to create valuable enterprise software in any programming language but I know the differences between languages and frameworks, I know what tools to use for which job and I know the lingo.
Having said that, as much as I enjoy learning to code it is not how I eventually want to spend my time.
Talking with clients and establishing relationships is way more fun (and also much more productive).
So I'll do this small first job myself but when it comes to bigger solutions I will definitely hire programmers.

The other meeting I had today was even more awesome than the first one. We started talking about the software they're currently using and then eventually figured out that the problems they had with that software were not really painful or time-consuming, just annoying, and apart from that small problem they didn't have any trouble (because they have awesome employees). It's a huge company with close to 1k employees. But as the conversation went on I told the CEO that my goal was actually to solve small and ideally unsolved problems in his industry and that's when he told me that he had been secretly working on a really painful problem in his industry for about 10 years now. He had invested a fortune in software development and now has a working product.
The problem is he can't sell it: doesn't have time, doesn't have the expertise in sales and the software is outdated anyway.
So he said he'd be very interested in a partnership with me. He'd provide the concept and experience in his industry, I should concentrate on developing an awesome and modern product and then sell it to as many customers as possible.
I won't tell you what his idea is but it is genius.
Seriously awesome.
He totally blew my mind.
There is a product out there that is already in use (people are paying for it) but it's inferior and sucks really hard, his idea would be much more elegant.
I'm still just taking this in, the guy is old enough to be my father and spent a fortune on development already and he'd be willing to partner with me. :embarrased:

I will spend the next week validating this problem to see if it is a top problem and if it will be easy to sell this concept - because only then would I be willing to invest my time (and money).
There was so much valuable information in those 5 hours I spent with those CEOs I don't know where this will lead me but it's definitely the right direction.

Good things happen when you start taking action...

 

[MarkOB]

Today was the most awesome day in months

Awesome - it's crazy what serendipity drops in your lap when keep taking action

Am really enjoying reading this thread. I would agree with coastal guy. I'm in sales for a global IT company and the only projects I successfully sell are the ones with a strong business case behind them. If a process is taking 25 hours a month @ £10 per hour = £250 a month = £3K a year of wasted money. If your solution costs £1K year, that saves the company 2K a year. It's good to get the CEO on side but a CFO is just as important in larger organisations and can kill deals if the maths doesn't add up.

This makes sense, the sales guy Dan Kennedy says the easiest way to get people to part with their money is to prove your solution more than pays for itself.

Would the cost usually be looked at as the wage of whoever's performing the task, or their average hourly revenue generated (e.g. a salesman spending time on admin stuff rather than sales)?

Using the lost revenue makes it easier to sell a solution but would that argument be used in practice?

 

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[MartinH]

the easiest way to get people to part with their money is to prove your solution more than pays for itself.

Exactly!

Using the lost revenue makes it easier to sell a solution but would that argument be used in practice?

I guess lost revenue due to inefficient work is a problem but most people complained more about some task being tedious and annoying than about it costing thousands or Euros in lost revenue.



Day 31:
Worked on a rails project and nothing worked. It was really frustrating. Took me many hours of work to achieve something really mundane (but I guess that's part of the process).



Day 32:
I spent the day programming in RoR. It's a relatively straightforward project but things like authentication and different user access rights were new to me and it took me a while to code that. Not to say it took 6 hours haha
But I'm getting better, things are starting to make sense.

 

[tafy]

I love your progress thread, its my favourite atm

How will you get the money to get the application made once you know what it is?

Pre-sell? Borrow? Do it yourself?

 

[MartinH]

I love your progress thread, its my favourite atm

Thanks tafy

How will you get the money to get the application made once you know what it is?
Pre-sell? Borrow? Do it yourself?

My plan is to get enough pre-sales before even hiring a developer to fund the first few weeks (!) of development.
After that I'll try to pull off something like Josh Isaak and continue pre-selling or even selling the MVP and completely fund
development that way. There's no rule on how many (pre-)sales I can make - the more the better

I would like to participate in the development (maybe design the UI or even code parts of the backend) -
But ideally I would let the pros take over and concentrate on acquiring new customers because that's something I can't outsource easily.

 

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[MartinH]

Day 33:

I took it easy today. The sun was shining and I enjoyed lying in the sun after so many days in front of my laptop. (I was listening to some podcasts, though)
But I also planned some things for next week.
If I would partner with this CEO I could officially stop my idea extraction phase and move on to the next level
I will validate this idea next week. I already phoned a relative who is working for a company that belongs to our target group.
I also talked with a fastlaner about my plans for next week and with my sister who will major in psychology this summer and already agreed to help me with sales and marketing.

 

[MartinH]

Day 34 + Day 35

I was busy preparing and celebrating my mom's birthday party. Didn't get much done during this weekend but it was fun.
There was an amazing marketer at that party and we got along very well. I told him what I'm working on and he offered advice.
I also managed to spend some time with my mentor working on a Rails project together simultaneously on Nitrous.io
Tomorrow I'll start another awesome week and luckily I have work to do and know exactly what to do
I got two small programming projects for next week and also I'll validate this idea for property cleaning companies. I promised my (potential) business partner to phone him on friday next week to tell him if I'm "in".
In case I'll do this project with him I need to find a few programmers who will work for me because I told my potential business partner that I'm working with a team of programmers. I'm not at the moment but two weeks should be enough time to find a few "brothers in arms".


I'm a bit torn between becoming a (better) programmer and becoming a "businessman".
If I would get better at programming I could easily charge 100€/h and make some serious money but if I would become a better businessman I could hire programmers and potentially make a lot more money. I'm worried that programming will distract me from concentrating on what's really important - growing my business and starting other businesses. We'll see, maybe I can pull of doing both.

 

[tafy]

Be the businessman and hire experts when you need them, simple

 

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[MartinH]

Day 36:
I did some research on the competition for this project I'd like to start with this property cleaning company.
It's a product for state-owned enterprises for electronic public procurement but it's very specific.
As it turns out the market is pretty complex due to regulations and there are a lot of competitors - although there are none for our particular niche.
I'm really unsure what to do right now because I've experienced first-hand how state-owned companies defy logic and economics and
I'm not sure if it would be wise to start a project that would be legally and technically complex and would depend very much on the arbitrary decision of some official. It's tempting because I'd have a partner who has a lot of expertise in his industry and could support my goals but then again - if the product is not something those companies genuinely want (they obviously need it) then I wouldn't start it.

Later that day I started working on an invoice app for a property cleaning company and it went well. I was very productive and I'm sure I can finish the app by the end of this week.

 

[MartinH]

Day 37:
I worked some more on the invoice application and it's about halfway finished already That was a fun little project but now I need some feedback from my client to proceed with the second half.
I also sent out some emails to contact state-owned companies like hospitals yesterday but I only heard back from one of them.
In the evening I worked on the app for my mentor.

 

[Deleted15476]

This is awesome man. Keep pushing

 

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[stairclimber]

Day 10:
I'm not really happy with the industry I chose. There are a few companies that are really dominating the market and making billions but then again the majority of cleaning companies can barely make ends meet.

You know actually this is good news. You picked the wrong industry but you got the experience of cold calling and idea extraction so when you picked the right industry you will not screw up your cold calls and idea extraction with those precious prospects.

 

[MartinH]

Day 38:
Time really flies, I can't believe it's been 38 days already.
I'm doing more projects at the same time than I anticipated.
There's the invoice app, the app for my mentor and the project with my potential business partner. I'm doing a lot of research for this project and next week I'll meet the controller of a major property cleaning company (who happens to be a friend of my uncle) to talk about opportunities.

The good thing is none of those projects too complex so I can handle it. I'm a full time entrepreneur so luckily I can concentrate on my business (ideas) the whole day, from 6 a.m. until 10 pm and until today I still didn't feel stressed or overwhelmed so that was my indicator I might have enough time to test out a different idea:

While contemplating over some Dane Maxwell videos I had a sudden inspiration for an e-learning platform.
It will be similar to what's already available but with a (hopefully) unique spin to it. I was thinking about how Jason Fried proposed to find a business idea by "scratching your own itch" and this is basically what I did
So now I'm testing two approaches:

I. Dane Maxwell: Start without an idea, find someone else's pain and solve it for them
II. Jason Fried: Scratch your own itch / Find your own pain and solve it for you & others

I have done a lot of thinking about e-learning and gamification back in 2013 when I started developing my first learning app for law students and during that time I had a similar concept in mind but it wasn't until I heard Dane say a certain thing that I realized that maybe the time is right for this concept.
I listened to an episode of the "Starting from nothing podcast" with Brant Cooper and I'll probably use his approach of testing my hypothesis.

 

[Carrots]

Hey MartinH really enjoying your progress thread. I have no doubt that you're going to become a legend in this community.

 

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[TechMike]

I too have been enjoying the updates, especially the regularity of them. I had considered doing "The Foundation" thing, but I've decided following somebody else's designed path is just not for me. I have always blazed my own trails, and now's not the time to go back on that.

I loved hearing about the cold calling stuff. Very cool.

Best of luck.

 

[MartinH]

I too have been enjoying the updates, especially the regularity of them. I had considered doing "The Foundation" thing, but I've decided following somebody else's designed path is just not for me. I have always blazed my own trails, and now's not the time to go back on that.

I loved hearing about the cold calling stuff. Very cool.

Best of luck.

Hey Mike,
thanks for your support!
By all means, follow your heart and do your own thing!
I don't believe in following a guru's path to the T either but then again there are simply things that work and things that don't work. What amazed me about the "Dane Maxwell" method is that he suggested that one can start a business with no ideas/expertise/money - and the more you think about it the more abundant your mindset becomes.
When I started my very first business I thought taking big risks is part of being an entrepreneur but actually it's plain stupid. The smaller the risk of failure the better.
And the most foolproof way to start a business is having your first customer before you invest a lot of money & sweat equity. That's not Dane Maxwell's discovery, I guess anyone on this forum who's financially successful can confirm that.
Then - after you find your first customer (and ideally get a prepayment ) - you're free to put the right people in place to build the thing your customer(s) want.
Wish you all the best for your business!!!

 

[MartinH]

Day 39:

I wanted to gain even more control over my time so I started tracking every single thing I do. I created a To Do List the night before and then did all of those tasks the next day, mostly even in the time I alloted for each task. I made sure to mix things up and not spend too much time on a single project so I wouldn't get bored or irritated. I also made sure to do the most important tasks in the first two hours after getting up.
Altogether I spend about
8 hours coding,
1 hour at the gym,
1 hour on the invoice app,
3 hours doing research on educational platforms on the internet and my business idea
1 hour watching tutorials

I got really excited about my business idea for an e-learning platform and experienced this "rush" that you get when you have a sudden inspiration or when many things you learned suddenly make sense in a totally different context....
I'd like to start that project for real but that would be a totally different project in magnitude and complexity.

 

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[CJD]

Loving this thread. Keep going!

 

[MartinH]

Day 40:
Basically finished that app for my mentor.
I completed "Rails for Zombies 2" on Codeschool and read some tutorials.
I'm still a beginner but I'm starting to grasp how rails works. I'm really glad I found Nitrous.io - it makes everything so much easier, most of all collaboration with my mentor.
It was a warm and sunny day so I sat outside in the garden and did extensive research on the e-learning market. There are many competitors but every year there are more and more startups entering that market. The market is far from saturated...
My sister was skeptical at first when I told her about my idea for an e-learning platform but after we discussed my USP she agreed that there could definitely be demand for that.
I'll need to test that.
I read some reviews for popular e-learning sites and searched for negative reviews
My plan is to collect many negative reviews and build a better e-learning platform (but aligned with my USP).