Tips for Developers Who Want to Build a SaaS Startup

prasenjit_pro · 2022-08-30T05:59:31.000Z

Having built Proxies API and made it to 100 paid users for the first time in my startup life, I tried to compile a list of tips for other developers like me who might be thinking of starting something on their own.Developers are a different beast, and the advice here may not apply to anyone who is not a developer and is a normal human being.Pick an idea you have used. When you start a startup one of the persistent problems you face is that you don't relate to the problem. If you are not a parent, its almost impossible to relate to any conversations that parents have about their troubles. You just don’t. This lack of empathy in a startup setting adds up to a huge disadvantage and will never allow you to be fully confident in what you are doing. 2. Pick an idea you have already paid for: If you have ever paid for a service, think very carefully about that. Can you code it yourself if you give yourself a few months? It is because developers don’t pay for shit. If an app forced you to do that, then there must a real need for that app.3. Don’t pick something that needs a pretty UI: My product Proxies API is an API. I can get away with almost no UI. It is such a relief that I don’t have to work with a designer. I find that I am 4 to 5 times faster when I don’t have to deal with UI stuff.4. Don’t pick anything that you need in-person sales for. Marketing is a developer’s friend. I realized this only later in my life. In-person sales are very weird for the developer personality. My advice. Don't do it. Learn how to market instead.5. Pick something that is a self-serve model: People signup for a trial and decide to pay or not pay based on their trial experience. This is a beast that you can conquer. You don’t want to be going around talking to actual humans. It is not for us.6. Try writing: If you can code and write, you will win the world. The whole success of Proxies API is based on constant improvements to code and a little bit of consistent writing over time.7. Keep it real: Be clear on your motivations. I know that developers are not motivated by the prospect of making millions. But they are excited by the promise of financial freedom. So I was clear on my motivations when starting Proxies API — I didn’t want it to make me millions. I wanted it to give me financial freedom by earning what I earned in my day job. I didn’t need a penny more. By being clear about it, you are not living someone else’s life but your own, and it will give you the necessary fuel to keep going.Have fun.The author is the founder of Proxies API the rotating proxies service.This article originally appeared here: https://www.proxiesapi.com/blog/Tips-For-Developers-Who-Want-To-Build-A-SAAS-Startup.php

SadTrombone 3 years ago |

This Proxies API service seems to be using AI-generated "This Person Does Not Exist"[1] style profile pictures for its positive customer reviews near the bottom of the page:

https://www.proxiesapi.com/assets/img/steve.jpg

https://www.proxiesapi.com/assets/img/customer1.jpg

https://www.proxiesapi.com/assets/img/customer3.jpg

https://www.proxiesapi.com/assets/img/customer4.jpg

Makes me question if the customer reviews or even the customers themselves are real.

[1] https://this-person-does-not-exist.com/

oorza 3 years ago | |

I can't find any evidence any of those people, or the companies they purport to represent, actually exist. One thing to slap faces where you don't have any, but straight up making up reviews, people AND the company is actually hilarious

CalRobert 3 years ago | |

Almost every restaurant website uses stock photos as well - "oh this place looks nice" and tineye reveals that indeed the stock photographer made it look nice as well.

Logos, customer reviews, etc. are just tricks.

nmarinov 3 years ago | |

I read the "How to recognize an image of a fake person" section on the site you linked and I'm curious how did you spot that the pictures are fake?

SadTrombone 3 years ago | | |

If you see enough of these AI-generated portraits on the Internet you'll start to notice the similarities, especially since This Person Does Not Exist is usually the source for the vast majority of them that I've seen. They're very often used as profile pics by Twitter bots.

The way the person's head is framed in the shot is pretty much identical most of the time and kind of a tell on its own.

Other tells:

- steve.jpg: The skin above the top rim of his glasses has some repetition/distortion.

- customer1.jpg: Distortion in the hair, most noticeable at top left. Mouth looks fake too.

- customer3.jpg: I didn't notice anything significant, but it just looks like an image taken straight off TPDNE. Do "vibes" count?

- customer4.jpg: The teeth merge into each other.

arrowsmith 3 years ago | | |

Go to https://thispersondoesnotexist.com/ and spend a few minutes refreshing the page. There's something distinctive about all these fake faces - I can't explain what it is, but once you've seen enough of them you can recognise the "look" quite easily.

Probably the biggest giveaway is that the faces are all positioned identically in each photo, but there's something else that juuuust quite doesn't look real. Maybe some of the faces just seem a little bit more androgynous than anyone I ever see in real life. There's something about them that sits just on the edge of the uncanny valley.

Tade0 3 years ago | | |

Outside from the odd file names, minor details like ears, glasses, earrings.

Our friend Steve has something going on with the left hinge of his glasses.

Customer1 has an interesting right ear.

Customer3 has very asymmetrical earrings.

Customer4 has a bulge where the left earring would normally be, and the right hinge of their glasses is crooked.

pzrsa 3 years ago | | |

I think the image names gives it away more.

"customer1.jpg" and "steve.jpg" lol

deelly 3 years ago | | |

Usually eyes are not completely symmetrical.

lopatin 3 years ago | |

Yeah the reviews on the landing page seem fake. It's the kind of fake it till you make it that doesn't bother me. It's not like he's faking blood tests.

throwaway4good 3 years ago | | |

Problem is that it makes you question the whole post. Ie does he actually have 100 customers or is it just something he writes because it is well known that people are less likely to buy something no one else is buying.

quantified 3 years ago | | |

Yeah, you never worry about doing business with an out-and-out liar, of course?

ramraj07 3 years ago | | |

It’s one thing if Reddit founders post news articles themselves on their free site. It’s another if a saas site has fake reviews.

phobotics 3 years ago | |

I think this is actually quite common now - where you get permission from a person to use their review of your product but they don't want you to use their likeness.

Maybe sometimes it feels a bit much to ask to use someone's review and also ask for a photo of them.

It is somewhat disingenuous but I don't think I mind too much if they are legit customer reviews.

arrowsmith 3 years ago | | |

Try googling the names, job titles and companies of the people who "wrote" these reviews. I can't see any evidence that these people (and in some cases their companies) actually exist.

I don't believe that these testimonials are real.

nmarinov 3 years ago | | |

When compared to a similar site hosted on the same server[1] the reused pictures and reviews are definitely suspicious[2].

[1] https://teracrawler.io/

[2] see the Our customers feel it section

cjk 3 years ago |

I dunno. I call bullshit on almost all of these tips. Not all developers are awkward, socially-inept, and incapable of designing their way out of a paper bag. I find that to be a really tired stereotype these days.

I’d say: if you want to be successful, push yourself. All of these things are skills that can be learned.

wzwy 3 years ago | |

Any tips on how to push oneself?

I frequently find that I reach the “I give up” ceiling very quickly when I try to push myself on most things. I reckon it’s because I can be quite impatient and intolerant towards frustrations.

And what are your thoughts on talent? Sure, most skills can be learned, but the rate of learning can vary and time is limited. How worthwhile is it to learn something if you know you might be slow at it and the skill plateau is probably not too far off? Do you normally aim for good enough for those skills you did learn but don’t think you can be an expert on them?

cjk 3 years ago | | |

I'm impatient and easily frustrated as well. But I've learned to kind of lean into my frustration as a motivator when learning new things.

I try to spend time learning things that interest me personally, and when that happens to overlap with things I deal with at my day job, great. If not, oh well.

I don't really consider how long it might take to learn something if it's interesting to me, and I tend to dive pretty deep, even if I don't get to "expert" level. I figure if I need to become an expert in a thing, that'll come with time.

Mizza 3 years ago |

Strongly disagree about talking to people. You've got to talk to your customers and non-customers. It's a skill, you can learn it.

sscarduzio 3 years ago | |

I'm a ~30K MRR indie hacker, and 10y backend developer. I 100% confirm everything he said, but I too agree the most important features all came from talking with users/prospects/customers.

I'm shit at it, but the mantra I tell to myself is: "remember when you were a kid? These are other kids that play with the same toys as you. Just talk about the toys and how to make toys more fun. Same enthusiasm!".

Just stay away from the mindset of "convincing people". Nobody likes being convinced to do something.

dewey 3 years ago |

Not sure why this is not being flagged. It seems like spam and the footer "The author is the founder of ... the rotating proxies service. This article originally appeared here..." just feels like someone copy-pasted their marketing blog post to HN.

edf13 3 years ago |

There isn't a great deal of content here... this is purely marketing spam?

stingraycharles 3 years ago | |

Yeah, it’s very low on actual insights, and appears to be an excuse to just promote their own product, as they mention it a bazillion times.

The post would have had more merit if they left their startup’s name out of it, e.g. only on their profile page.

is_true 3 years ago | |

Yep. The first tip is to do some spamming to get customers.

TekMol 3 years ago |

I would like to hear more about how you approach the issue of taxes.

The way I understand Stripe Tax is that it will give you a huge list of sales like:

    $210 paid from a company in the USA
    $123 paid from an individual in France
    $300 paid from a company in Japan
    ...

And then you are supposed to do the right thing with that list.

Is that true?

Do you pass that giant list to your tax accountant and they fill all the correct paperwork?

What if some of those sales mean you have to pay taxes directly to the country in which the buyer is? You deal with that countries government directly then?

gnicholas 3 years ago |

If you're posting an article, you should post the link instead of the full text, FYI. If you want to do a Tell HN that works too, but then there would be no need to include the link at the bottom.

melvinmelih 3 years ago | |

I actually appreciated to read this article in full on HN. People should do that more often…

codingdave 3 years ago | | |

I disagree - HN already gets enough self-promotion, the last thing we need is everybody copy/pasting their blog-based marketing here. This specific article was decent, but it absolutely is marketing and I don't want to encourage that.

jakabia 3 years ago | | |

Yes, no pictures, no ads, I liked this format as well.

lelanthran 3 years ago | |

FWIW, for this sort of thing I prefer the fulltext on HN, rather than clicking through to some ad-filled, slow and bloated destination that fingerprints my browser and tracks me forever.

cweill 3 years ago |

Congratulations on getting your first 100 paying users. Most startups never make a single dollar.

How long did it take you to hit that number? Many of us devs want to do SAAS but don't understand what's a reasonable amount of time to expect until we can get "ramen profitable".

Aulig 3 years ago | |

It took me around 1.5 years (at first part-time and then full-time) to get to 1.5k-2k€/month with https://webtoapp.design

Probably quite long but I had a lot of stuff to set up to get the product automated (and I did barely any marketing, basically just wrote a couple random blog posts for SEO).

00deadbeef 3 years ago | | |

Why does your site say:

> It's not allowed for us to publish your app in our own developer accounts

I've published apps for others in my developer account

quickthrower2 3 years ago |

Nice work! Judging be your price that is at lease $2300/m which is impressive. It is also a great idea and good site. I like your guidelines alot. Definitely I tried cold calling once and it was a horrid experience. Mostly because any who wanted to talk wanted freebies only. :-(. Sales is it's own profession, it is hard to do as a hobby, and especially if not that way inclined.

I suggest adding your site link to your HN bio, as it might be of interest to some HN people.

swyx 3 years ago | |

probably an overestimate: first users are usually free or cheap, the price is raised later. but still impressive.

gabereiser 3 years ago | | |

Stickiness is more valuable early on than that $10/mo or whatever you charge. Make sure you measure how often a user returns, uses, consumes, etc to see if what you are building (or built) is actually used like you want. Often people forget this and it leads to hostile user behavior and payment traps.

You - being the future SaaS startup developer.

paradite 3 years ago |

> Don’t pick something that needs a pretty UI

For frontend engineers, should the advice be the opposite: "Pick something that needs good UI/UX"?

antupis 3 years ago | |

I think generally you should pick something where you have that unfair advantage and you like to do. If you are good at sales of course you should pick something where you need lots of sales, same to UI if you are god like designer of course you should pick something where nice UI is advantage.

Aulig 3 years ago | | |

I agree with this. The harder the thing is you're doing, the bigger your moat. Ideally it shouldn't be too hard for you though of course, e.g. because you have prior knowledge about it.

wongarsu 3 years ago | |

If you're a designer, pick something that needs to look good

If you're a UX person and have access to a pool of people to do user testing with: pick something that needs good UX

Those two are somewhat at odds with each other, and neither is really the job description of a typical frontend engineer (though of course some frontend engineers are good at one or both)

wingshayz 3 years ago |

I think the author is making some huge generalisations here.

"Don’t pick something that needs a pretty UI": What if I'm really skilled in UI dev and have a good visual eye? Or a friend happy to do some free mockups?

"In-person sales are very weird for the developer personality": there is no one developer personality, I wouldn't rule this out at all.

"You don’t want to be going around talking to actual humans.": this is almost never going to work for a startup. Actually talking to people (users, clients, integration partners) is probably the most important thing you can do as a founder.

Existenceblinks 3 years ago |

Very solid. I've experienced all of these as well.

> 1.. you don't relate to the problem

Yeah, it's like being blind. "Why do people buy that thing?" is a question I barely get answer confidently

> 2.. because developers don’t pay for shit

It's getting worse. These folks always demand open source alternatives, self-host. Sometimes, the moral of story is "I want your free labor no matter how your family is doing"

> 3.. Don’t pick something that needs a pretty UI:

Super related here. When I realized my product value is literally UX/UI, it's like the end of the word because there's no many HCI solutions at all. It's always hard to use for any target, techie, non-techie, it's hard still.

> 4.. Learn how to market instead.

Developers try to do marketing is like trying to do self-surgery, ones just can't

> 5.. You don’t want to be going around talking to actual humans

I ended up shitting on a customer because he thought he knew problems (my app trying to solve) more than I do, but I'm confident he didn't know shit.

> 6.. Try writing

Yeah, this is part of content marketing. It kinda sucks to me though, lots of content marking is just for sake of marketing, doesn't bring much knowledge.

> 7.. Keep it real.

The most real sad thing is going back to working for corp.

bitswings 3 years ago |

I would also add that you shouldn't worry too much about whether or not people want what you're building. Just solve problems.

Also, be prepared to fail a lot before you succeed...your first solution might not go anywhere...your tenth one might not either...but your eleventh product...who knows?

stevage 3 years ago |

>Try writing: If you can code and write, you will win the world. The whole success of Proxies API is based on constant improvements to code and a little bit of consistent writing over time.

Not sure what you're referring to by "writing" here. Blogging? Writing marketing copy?

jmacd 3 years ago |

I find it interesting that you have a completely different URL/Brand for a same/similar product with different positioning. https://teracrawler.io/

How has that experiment been working out?

revskill 3 years ago |

Outsource the most as you can. Focus only on the logic and all will be fine.

sscarduzio 3 years ago | |

But don't outsource talking to users! It's the literal compass for a successful roadmap.

LeonM 3 years ago | | |

This is why I think it is critical for a founder to do customer support for as long as possible. It should also be the last thing that is outsourced (or better: never outsource customer service!).

Customer feedback is the most valuable resource for a starting company. Understand what brings value to your customer, and understand what the pain points are. Where do they get stuck trying to use your product or service?

Apply what you learn from customer feedback. This is also a feedback loop on the improvement cycle of your product, as you should observe a drop in customer service requests once an improvement has been applied.

With every improvement cycle, the product should bring more value and less friction to the customer. This will make marketing so much easier as you now understand the customer's pain points, and you have a product that solves just that. Do it right, and the product will basically sell itself (you still need marketing though).

jdthedisciple 3 years ago | |

Good tip, any recommendations on outsourcing? Would you pay folks on fiverr or upwork to do stuff for your startup?

leroman 3 years ago |

Working on a SaaS startup my self, realized marketing is very important, i recommend you read the book “the mom test” it will give you tools to speak with users and get to product market fit

raunometsa 3 years ago |

This is awesome! Instead of pitching your ideas to VC-s who will then demand unrealistic growth, developers are building their own small internet startups.

Yes, in most cases, they're not making millions, but who needs millions anyway? If you can buy food, pay rent, and support your family with a product that you made with your own hands, wouldn't that be nice?

This is what my site https://microfounder.com is exactly about: "It's possible for a solo developer to build a profitable microstartup to pay the bills and live life on their own terms."

jdthedisciple 3 years ago | |

Haha I like your little pitch there ;)

AND you got me interested! Definitely noted, thanks for sharing!

jakuboboza 3 years ago |

Gratz man. I think most important hint is to just start building.

foreigner 3 years ago | |

I disagree, as an engineer building is too tempting and will get you in trouble. Instead just start selling. Keep the building to an absolute minimum until you've sold something.

jakuboboza 3 years ago | | |

yes, but you need to or you SHOULD have MVP to sell just to not get into position where you sold something that isnt there :)

anonymous344 3 years ago |

as a dev and made few software/services as product, but don't know how to market them with good results.

How do you market your software-product? with small budget..?

em1sar 3 years ago |

bro you don't even have a valid cert on your website

SadTrombone 3 years ago | |

Cert loads just fine on my end.

privacyking 3 years ago | |

bro you don't even have an up to date browser / trusted cert store.