5 Things I Learned Working in a SaaS Model

From the translator: Freckle Time Tracking co-founder of the service shares 5 of the most significant things that he learned during 5 years of work on the service:

1. You are not a “technical company”, but a company that “makes customers better”

People do not pay you for amazing programming skills and nginx configurations that you can write blindfolded. People pay you money because the product you sell saves them time, money, effort and nerves. Therefore, your job is to make your customers better. Every decision taken in the development of a product and business should be based on this thought.

2. Never announce feature launch dates.

Just do not announce such dates. Never. Believe me. People will constantly ask you when the “function X” is ready. Here is a good answer to this question (if you plan to do it at all): “We are considering launching this function in one of the following versions. I can not tell you the exact date of its release. " Just be honest with customers - you yourself do not know when this function will really be ready and whether it will be at all.

3. Spend money on things that will help you stay productive.

This includes obvious things, such as a powerful laptop (frequently updated), a good chair and table for work, and less obvious things, such as software that allows you to focus on developing the capabilities of your application, rather than setting up servers.

4. Do not work too much

Overwork is the first step to failure in business. You cannot show the best you can do if you are constantly under stress. Do not check email in the evenings. If your team has only 1 or 2 people, do not provide round-the-clock support. This is normal. Customers will understand you. And if something happens to your program, it will not be the end of the world (if Time Tracking falls, it's annoying, but people can take notes on paper).

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Dying from exhaustion is not your main goal. Your health, family and social life are more important than a five minute support response time and a 100% uptime guarantee.

By the way, if you want to successfully follow this point, it is useful to know where you are wasting your time .

5. Do not get fooled

People are easily disturbed. And people are well-versed on the hype around new technologies, frameworks, programming languages, and deployment methods. People will tell you what to do and what to expect. What you need to prepare scaling for a million users, otherwise you are doomed. That generating HTML on the server is so old-fashioned. That node.js will cure cancer.



The point is to remain pragmatic, because your goal is business. Use proven (by you) and familiar to you technology. The “litmus test”, according to which I check the technologies: people involved in the promotion of technology are in a situation similar to you, that is, they base their own business on it (this quickly weeds out cool but useless material). It is necessary to optimize the product before delivery. That is, use fewer codes and deeper tests, and also focus on keeping everything neat in order to ensure the long-term profitability of your own business.