Startups and everything that’s still a work in progress. Writing anonymously so I can give you the most unfiltered advice.
Since I've started to have success with my startup endeavor, more folks are reaching out in DMs asking for advice.
All conversations seem to require the same advice, so I decided to copy and paste one of the DM threads to help with future conversations.
Just reaching out for some advice regarding a software start-up. Where to start essentially
Hey man! Happy to help, for a software startup the main things I recommend are:
Let me know if you have any specific questions tho
Thanks a bunch for the input bro sorry I was away for work for the past few weeks. Hope you’re doing well.
My main question is getting funding and finding programmers but keeping the idea safe
No worries man, from my experience, this is how the steps play out when successful:
The technical co-founder and validating the idea by getting people to pay is the most important first steps.
For context on funding, we raised $1M from VCs after having multiple paying customers and a product that those customers were using and liking. Trying to raise a material amount of money before that is achieved is dead on arrival in 99% of cases unless you’re a software executive.
Also, for context on the founder background for raising money with that level of traction. I grew **bleep** SaaS companies SMB department from $1M ARR to $9M ARR in 3 years and then was head of sales at **bleep** bringing them from $1M ARR to $2m in one year. One of the VCs was an investor in **bleep** and the other was the ceo of **bleep**. My cofounder had managed a dev team at **bleep** and was the lead developer at **bleep**
A founding team coming from outside of the industry would need to have more traction and progress, likely $2k MRR at least to have a chance but to forsure be able to raise $10k MRR growing 20% per month for 6 months in a row
Those resources I originally recommended cover a lot of this stuff, I highly recommend. It’s no small feat to get a SaaS going, so happy to answer questions here if you have more
Wow thanks a lot for the insight, do I need to worry about patenting the idea or NDAs this idea could be a huge industry disruptor and I’m holding my cards to my chest with it and worried about the idea being hijacked lol
I’ve spoken with a quite a few people in the industry and they all think it’s a great idea and I’m still thinking about how I want to go about selling it
We don’t have patents or any NDAs, I wouldn’t recommend it. The reality is that ideas really don’t get stolen because it’s extremely hard to get things off the ground and people are typically focusing on their own goals already. My candid recommendation would be to do the opposite and tell as many people you can that could know people that would buy it and ask for intros, cold dm people on LinkedIn telling them you have this idea and you want their candid feedback on it, cold email, cold call, etc.
It’s not easy but that’s what’s required often times. When I did my first start up I had the same mentality you have with this idea, because it’s the naturally human instinct. What it actually does in practice is set you up for failure… which is why that startup failed. Literally I would say 99% of the reason my first startup failed is because I thought the idea was more important than it was and I was too secretive about it. This startup I did the absolute opposite, I told everyone.
And now we’re at 200 customers globally.
Regarding selling it, my favourite tactic is to create a short slide presentation on what problems you think you can solve for the target customer and how. Then say you’re currently recruiting “pioneer customers” who are interested at signing up for an extremely discounted rate for helping shape the product. For example, the software will cost $1000 per year when it comes out, but if you sign up now as a pioneer customer it’s just $100 completely refundable at any time no questions asked. It will give you access to the beta when it comes out for the first entire year. Then if you love the software after the first year you can renew at a 50% discount of the $1000 price
The goal here is to get candid feedback, if people say reach back out to me when it’s ready that’s a sign you’re missing something / the problem isn’t as big as you thought / the solution isn’t something they have confidence in.
If they give you the $100 you’re on to something. Now rather than you trying recruit a talented technical cofounder with 50% of an idea, you can give them 50% of an idea with paying customers waiting for the product