🌟 What was the most challenging aspect of building your SaaS ?

Ayhan Dzhemalov
23 replies
For us that was finding the first testers and building models from scratch that will outperform the available ones out there. Now, our next challenge is breaking the 200 users mark and starting to charge users.

Replies

André J
Building the core tech and infrastructure
Ashmil Hussain
It is correct that finding the right users for the first phase and converting them to paid users in the next phase is a major challenge.
Ayhan Dzhemalov
@ashmil_hussain everyone loves free stuff but when its time to put out the cheese, people start running!
Ashmil Hussain
@ayhan_dzhemalov agreed; what is your thought on opensource component ? see many people does that
Ayhan Dzhemalov
@ashmil_hussain Meaning ? Can you elaborate ?
Ashmil Hussain
@ayhan_dzhemalov I see many teams make a portion of their software as open source to get more attention and SaaS with a pricing So those who needs free will use open source others will buy from SaaS. This mostly done for developer tools
Ayhan Dzhemalov
@ashmil_hussain I see, yea thats an option, however, we are not struggling that much… there are pros and cons of having an open source project. With us, we are trying to be the first in the world to build one of our solutions and it just doesn’t make sense to have an open source project.
Drew "Sales Playbook Builder" Williams
Seems to be a theme here in the comments... Moving from building --> acquisition. Many times that's a result of staying in our comfort zone of 'building'. Carve out time in your calendar, 1 hour per day, shut everything off except for acquisition activities.
Kane
Early stage is PMF. Midstage is marketing promotion.
Mathis Vella
My biggest challenge is acquisition by far!
Ayhan Dzhemalov
@mathis_vella I feel this problem will be the winner here 😁 I agree! Check April Dubford for position and go-to-market strategy.
qiufeng
Promotional marketing is so important, I once developed a product in just 1 week and I had no idea how to promote it, but it did end up getting 1000 natural growth users!
Elena Tsemirava
For me, it’s about putting together a reliable and motivated team. My experience shows that this is not easy and not fast.
Rohit Joshi
Biggest challenge for me is Marketing, As a developer I am confident I can play multiples roles but little hectic for me is marketing.
Ashmil Hussain
@rohitjoshi Most engineering founders encounter this issue.
Ayhan Dzhemalov
@rohitjoshi Check April Dunford! Her advice and books are helping me a lot. Hell I’m thinking of hiring her agency!
AmazingSylvia
Try to make PLG happen.
Simone Famulari
Probably Customer Retention
Eliza Crescini
The most challenging aspect of building our SaaS was finding the right balance between customer needs and technical constraints. We wanted to create a product that was both powerful and easy to use, but that proved to be a difficult task. In the end, we had to learn to compromise and prioritize certain features over others.
Developing a product that adopts and gets shaped based on users' needs. It is quite easy to get lost in the details of perfecting what a pipeline created months if not years ago when it comes to feature/functionality release/improvements. However, responding to actual needs and trends by providing a solution at the right time is quite challenging without cannibalizing your product.