Like the OP, the first version of my service launched to crickets (though I had spent almost two full years building that beta version). The 3,500 people who had signed up for e-mail updates took a quick look, and then left, never to return, when they realized that the service was very bare-bones.
The solution in my case was actually to add features, because that first version wasn't very useful. I spent another three years adding features before launching paid plans, two years ago. I made sure to have thousands of conversations with users to make sure that I was on the right track.
Today, I derive my income fully from this service (Calcapp, an app builder for people needing formula support mostly on par with Excel). I haven't gotten rich, and I would have made more money as a consultant, but the income is passive, I still enjoy working on the product and interacting with customers, and I'm confident that our best days lie ahead of us, with a major update on the cusp of being released (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25389963).
Launching a SaaS business is the hardest thing I have ever done, but getting people to derive real value from something I have built is immensely satisfying. I wouldn't trade it for anything.
As a result of this HN post, 158 people visited the blog post I linked to, and only 112 people visited the Medium story. This is despite the fact that the blog link is buried in a child post, and only appeared later.
Moral of the story: when posting to HN, avoid Medium links.
Comments
I wrote about my experience creating a SaaS product in 2018:
https://medium.com/@david_39141/after-15-years-im-finally-re...
Like the OP, the first version of my service launched to crickets (though I had spent almost two full years building that beta version). The 3,500 people who had signed up for e-mail updates took a quick look, and then left, never to return, when they realized that the service was very bare-bones.
The solution in my case was actually to add features, because that first version wasn't very useful. I spent another three years adding features before launching paid plans, two years ago. I made sure to have thousands of conversations with users to make sure that I was on the right track.
Today, I derive my income fully from this service (Calcapp, an app builder for people needing formula support mostly on par with Excel). I haven't gotten rich, and I would have made more money as a consultant, but the income is passive, I still enjoy working on the product and interacting with customers, and I'm confident that our best days lie ahead of us, with a major update on the cusp of being released (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25389963).
Launching a SaaS business is the hardest thing I have ever done, but getting people to derive real value from something I have built is immensely satisfying. I wouldn't trade it for anything.
If you don't like Medium, here's a version of that write-up hosted on our blog:
https://www.calcapp.net/blog/2018/04/09/launching-after-15-y...
As a result of this HN post, 158 people visited the blog post I linked to, and only 112 people visited the Medium story. This is despite the fact that the blog link is buried in a child post, and only appeared later.
Moral of the story: when posting to HN, avoid Medium links.
Thank you for sharing! I enjoyed this write-up. (And thank you for sharing a non-Medium link too).
Thanks for your kind words. :-)