Exactly. I started my SaaS almost a decade ago, with stints of in-between consulting to finance the whole thing.
For the first half of the decade, I used to drink the cool-aid too: rewriting components using the framework-of-the-day, stating my opinion on whatever I considered to be important on HN, Reddit...
Resulting in a lot of stuff, but not in reasonable ARR.
A few years ago, after making lots of cliche mistakes, I had another rough period, resulting in me buying out my partner's half that I gave to him for free without any contingencies, and having to consult again to finance the buy-out.
After that I decided to take the leap for the third time, and took a deep dive myself into sales and GTM, resulting in what I consider a ramen profitable ARR right now for someone with a family of four with a working spouse (little over 100K€ ARR).
I'm now slowly and steadily growing, but reinvesting almost everything I make back into it.
My next big learning step will be figuring out at least one repeatable way to get new clients.
I'm still in dubio whether I should do proper marketing, or just hire 2 SDRs and hand them a list with contacts...
I am very picky on my customers, so they tend to be very sticky, and buy extra modules as they renew their licenses, so I'm quite happy with how everything is evolving...
However, the whole thing takes time, a lot of time, and it requires a lot of grit and patience.
So while it might sound interesting in a short comment on HN, it's basically just grinding every day, throwing things up to a wall, and seeing what sticks... If I'd blog about this every week, it would probably be really boring.
It might take 2, 3, 5 or 10 years to get to € 1M ARR, or maybe I'll never get to this amount, but I'm ok with that. I have friends who got investors, sold or were acqui-hired, and to me they seemed not to be happier at all during the job. And while it's nice to get FU money, I'm not sure that I'm willing to exchange years of my life for it, as i'm currently mostly enjoying myself and building the kind of company that I would love to work for.
The reason I'm no longer posting on Reddit, HN and the likes, is that - all things considered - I already have too much things on my plate, and posting on social media is not the best use of my time.
I do keep skimming articles to get the big picture as a hobby, but skip most of the shiny new things (TM), and stopped contributing because the value-add for me is so low.
For the first half of the decade, I used to drink the cool-aid too: rewriting components using the framework-of-the-day, stating my opinion on whatever I considered to be important on HN, Reddit... Resulting in a lot of stuff, but not in reasonable ARR.
A few years ago, after making lots of cliche mistakes, I had another rough period, resulting in me buying out my partner's half that I gave to him for free without any contingencies, and having to consult again to finance the buy-out.
After that I decided to take the leap for the third time, and took a deep dive myself into sales and GTM, resulting in what I consider a ramen profitable ARR right now for someone with a family of four with a working spouse (little over 100K€ ARR).
I'm now slowly and steadily growing, but reinvesting almost everything I make back into it.
My next big learning step will be figuring out at least one repeatable way to get new clients.
I'm still in dubio whether I should do proper marketing, or just hire 2 SDRs and hand them a list with contacts...
I am very picky on my customers, so they tend to be very sticky, and buy extra modules as they renew their licenses, so I'm quite happy with how everything is evolving...
However, the whole thing takes time, a lot of time, and it requires a lot of grit and patience. So while it might sound interesting in a short comment on HN, it's basically just grinding every day, throwing things up to a wall, and seeing what sticks... If I'd blog about this every week, it would probably be really boring.
It might take 2, 3, 5 or 10 years to get to € 1M ARR, or maybe I'll never get to this amount, but I'm ok with that. I have friends who got investors, sold or were acqui-hired, and to me they seemed not to be happier at all during the job. And while it's nice to get FU money, I'm not sure that I'm willing to exchange years of my life for it, as i'm currently mostly enjoying myself and building the kind of company that I would love to work for.
The reason I'm no longer posting on Reddit, HN and the likes, is that - all things considered - I already have too much things on my plate, and posting on social media is not the best use of my time.
I do keep skimming articles to get the big picture as a hobby, but skip most of the shiny new things (TM), and stopped contributing because the value-add for me is so low.
Highly relevant comic for me: https://xkcd.com/386/
I imagine there are many others that share a similar story.