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Self-Taught "Coder" With 5-Figure MRR SaaS Company

A topic related to SAAS or APPs

James Fake

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James,
I noticed you live in Las Vegas, I spent two years there, I absolutely loved it, it's a great place!

I'm also a self-taught coder, I've been building a website that simplifies the process of invoicing for freelancers (using Stripe to process payments). I'm getting people creating accounts, but nobody is using the site. My gut feeling is that it isn't solving a "painful" enough problem, while the current sites available aren't perfect, they're not really that bad either. I'm thinking of pivoting and creating a competitor to websites like Upwork and PPH.

Do you have any thoughts on pursuing this path? Anything I might need to be aware of?

@AdamMaxum 's advice is very good. This is exactly what I seen as well. I actually attempted to which was my first app called Freelancify. That market takes a really, really long time to gain traction or you have to bring something new/different to the table that has a dramatic impact.

IMO; I'd prob look at other ideas.
 
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The-J

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I have no questions. Just wanna say I've been following your thread here and there since I got INSIDERS a few years ago. Your process and hustle is amazing.

For those reading, keep in mind that OP didn't start yesterday. This is the culmination of process.

Rep++
 

James Fake

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I have no questions. Just wanna say I've been following your thread here and there since I got INSIDERS a few years ago. Your process and hustle is amazing.

For those reading, keep in mind that OP didn't start yesterday. This is the culmination of process.

Wow... Thank you so much for your words!!! It means ALOT!
 

randomnumber314

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Great thread.

My biggest struggle is understanding the value/problem equation. I truly don't understand why people pay for most of the product/services they buy, so I really struggle to understand what problems to focus on.

I freelanced as a software developer for a while, and I helped dozens of businesses solve, what I thought, were really easy problems. Many of their biggest problem were easily solved with simple solutions like Google docs--yet somehow they were spending tens-of-thousands of dollars prior to my coming in and setting up a free solution.

So I'm curious what your advice is to someone like me. I have friends and family who have businesses and I've tried to find common problems worth building a company around, but what I tend to find is that their problems aren't really significant, and can be pretty easily solved using freely available software.

To bring this back to your SaaS, looking at your company's marketing site it looks like the primary service is an email provider, which is triggered by sales. I assume that your app talks to the Amazon API and sends emails to your customers' customers based on their settings. Okay...I get it; but I don't get how you found this problem, measured it's value as high enough to invest in building software for it.

Maybe I can state that another way/better: I know that plumbers exist, and I know that people pay plumbers to fix things. If my sink broke, I would just fix it, because it's a sink, and what's the value in paying someone else to fix it. So although I get that people pay plumbers to fix their sink, or in the case of your software I get that people pay your company to send emails, I'm left wondering why. Where am I missing the value judgement which determines that providing xxx service is valuable to some audience, when most entrepreneurs tend to already be problem solvers.

A local example of this: a forum member who I met at the annual meetup wanted to know which product would yield the highest profit based on mileage, price, rentals per month, etc. So in 20-30 minutes I made up a spreadsheet to answer his question. He was thrilled and sent me a gift card. But what I gave him was freely available to anyone, took very little time to create, and wasn't a complicated problem to solve--how would I evaluate that as an opportunity worth pursuing and selling?
 
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James Fake

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@randomnumber314 hey man, I definitely understand your frustration(s) as I've ran into the same issues before.

I think what helped me out a lot was that I created an app that fixed my own problems. (selling on Amazon).. so I guess my advice would be to take a similar approach. Instead of trying to create a solution to help fix other's problems, find a business or something (maybe a hobby) and then when you come across a major problem that isn't met with a good solution; create your own. =)
 

alan3wilson

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Great! Can I ask you @James Fend how did you start learning programming ? What books did you read ?

Just asking because I really want to learn but I'm stuck everytime seems like programming is difficult for me now.
 
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randomnumber314

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Great! Can I ask you @James Fend how did you start learning programming ? What books did you read ?

Just asking because I really want to learn but I'm stuck everytime seems like programming is difficult for me now.
I can't answer for James, but I can give you my answer, and I know I've heard similar answers from dozens of programmers: find something you want to build, and build it. It's really hard to learn programming if you have no objective in mind. However if you have an idea for some new social app, then you have an idea of your own that motivates you to figure it out.

Also, rest assured, no matter if you have 10 months or 10 years of experience, no one ever knows it all, so looking up the answer on google or stack overflow is a very common daily/hourly/minutely part of the job.
 

alan3wilson

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I can't answer for James, but I can give you my answer, and I know I've heard similar answers from dozens of programmers: find something you want to build, and build it. It's really hard to learn programming if you have no objective in mind. However if you have an idea for some new social app, then you have an idea of your own that motivates you to figure it out.

Also, rest assured, no matter if you have 10 months or 10 years of experience, no one ever knows it all, so looking up the answer on google or stack overflow is a very common daily/hourly/minutely part of the job.

Thanks. Indeed I've found a problem that I want to solve with an android App. Should I start with it even if I really know so little about programming ?
 

lowtek

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Thanks. Indeed I've found a problem that I want to solve with an android App. Should I start with it even if I really know so little about programming ?

Sure, there's no harm in starting. Just realize it's going to be buggy as hell and probably won't function as you intended :) Even the most experienced programmers write bugs.

I recommend the following:

1) Pick your language - I would actually NOT do java, as it's not the easiest language to digest if you've never programmed before. I would suggest python - it's easy to learn, and is the language of choice for many data scientists. If you're dead set on creating apps, then learn c# and use xamarin to wrap the code up into an android app

2) get on hacker rank and code wars and practice daily. A little bit at a time is OK

3) build something from scratch, then start over completely and see how long it takes you to do it again. This is to help cement the learning in your mind. If you simply solve the problem once, and then never review the code, you'll forget how you solved it. Then you have to solve it all over again later, anyway. Chances are high that the problem will repeat itself, so you might as well spend the time now while the solution is fresh in your mind.
 
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James Fake

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