What you’re feeling is probably tied to an unspoken emotion. I say take some time to self reflect and just really ground yourself to your unique situation.
Then come back and start iterating. If your churn rate is an issue, that means LTV is down and your product has a specific life cycle.
If you’d like some help on that. Feel free to reach out via DM.
Why are freelance developers so bad at business lol
I don’t understand why they don’t stay in contact with their clients at least bi weekly.
If you need help in the future or looking to grow a SaaS company from 0 to 100 paid users.
I also mentor technical founders in navigating the business world.
Feel free to reach out via DM or link coralreef consulting
Too much to type but I’ll give you a quick summary
Running ads will increase your CAC and give you specific feedback for your startup. For example if you get a lot of clicks but zero conversion, you couldn’t hit a click farm or wrong ICP.
I don’t recommend ads unless you have a lot of money to spend. You can leverage ads for market research on your product, because you’ll be able to quickly test iterations. Again I don’t recommend because you’re not talking to your end user.
B2C products should be sold in B2C distribution platforms like TikTok and instagram
B2B products can be sold on Reddit, Twitter and LinkedIn
There’s many methods to selling your product, whether it’s social selling or community building or building in public. Those are all great and I personally like to sell via those channels for startups.
If you’re building the MVP before beginning validation and market research, you’re not absolutely dead in the water. You just need to keep iterating.
PMF doesn’t happen at initial launch, you need to keep pushing until your product literally has a place in the market.
I’m building SaaS companies for myself and holding them in a PE firm. I also started offering this as a service to other technical founders.
Growing your SaaS from 0 to 100 paid users
Feel free to dm me if you need help
You can also consider VCs and angel investors, I personally wouldn’t get a loan anymore.
Not to say it’s a bad idea, it’s just a lot harder to do as a startup.
Software ideas are overrated, I say focus on the business side.
Enter an existing market, if you need help with this you can send me a DM. I’m basically a biz dev nowadays.
I also can get you connected with another biz dev that focuses on idea validation to PMF
Marketing is easy but also even easier to overthink
Start simple and expand, your sole job right now is to tell everyone in the world;
Go out and start talking to people, share the website. Ask for feedback and then iterate
Don’t worry about rejections, those are also feedback
Yes move forward. Idea has been validated and there’s an existing market!
Ideas are just that ideas, an experienced entrepreneur looks at the market and sells to a niche market
Sell a product people want to buy, not a product you think they want to buy
I learned this the hard way lmao
If the startup dies the startup dies, you can always build a new one.
I’m assuming there’s a need for the funds and hence why they don’t want to create that chain of events
Besides what everyone else suggested, you can connect with people on LinkedIn and Twitter. Tons of technical founders on there
All software with decent CSS is lux software, change my mind
I’m a software engineer now entrepreneur.
I noticed this issue right away when I first started, many freelancers still think “9-5” and I don’t think they really understand how to do business.
They lack communication skills and don’t really know how to ask the right questions. I know because I struggled with this myself.
A good engineer should be able to troubleshoot all the problems themselves, the whole experience should feel like a “white glove” service.
My biggest advice is to network with other engineers that either run an agency/firm delivering “dev as a service”. Shop around a bit before you make any final decisions.
A place to find them is here on Reddit or Twitter, also LinkedIn is growing so I think that’s another great place. I’m personally on all 3.
Always sell what people want to buy
I wish people wanted to buy what I want to sell lol
I love this, a good way to rephrase it (change the mindset) is to view your employer as a client. If you can land that job, you can land any client
There are tons available already but what’s important is finding a niche. For example, my niche is SaaS so I hang out in all the SaaS rooms, including Reddit’s.
Figure out which niche you want to create for and build them space/platform
Ideally you shouldn’t have a salary, if your goal is to make your company as profitable as possible.
Pay yourself of course through an LLC, I say keep it low enough that you can pay your bills and sink the rest of the capital into the business.
Otherwise you’re just using that seed money to employ yourself. Which can psychologically cause you to get lazy and not give as much effort
I could be wrong ofc but it’s good to at least consider.
As long as systems that automate are being built, there’s always demand for a SWE.
SWE are definitely in high demand, it’s just shifted.
I think you’re only seeing it through the lens of an employee. Where you’re blindly applying to jobs, build a micro SaaS and promote it on TikTok. Watch how quickly your perspective changes
I’m in the space of helping SaaS founders go from 0 to 100 paid users.
You did everything right but probably messed up on execution. If they said they were interested, body language and questions were the queues to look for.
If you believe your market research was good enough to invest time into developing an MVP then you probably just want to fill in the gaps and start onboarding users, somehow…
I started providing this help as a service.
I’m a technical founder and I am currently building SaaS companies for myself, so I’m basically sharing my experience and knowledge with you. On what’s worked and what hasn’t worked for me. E.g. marketing, sales and operations for SaaS companies.