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Thank you for this reply. I actually created a micro saas basically on these principles, EXCEPT I made it for my father's industry.. which makes selling it and supporting it drudgery for me.

So I know it's possible and it was nice reading your writeup reminding me I wasn't just lucky. (My father's industry is very niche and basically had zero competitors for the segment of the market (20-50 employees).

My plan is to try again soon with something I am way more passionate about.

discuss

n4te|2 years ago

Even though I love working on my software, there are still a lot of business things that need to be taken care of. Even some aspects of building the software are not fun (eg, fuck Apple). Ultimately it's a job and even in the best case you have to push through a lot of bullshit to enjoy the good parts of doing the job and of course the rewards (revenue, having many people use and enjoy your work, etc).

The end game is to either sell out or hire others to handle the drudgery. Ideally you can work or not work as you choose and everything runs smoothly regardless. How much revenue you divert to that cause is up to how much you can stomach doing yourself. It took me 5-6 years to reach burn out and need assistance. Now I'm in that ideal zone and it's much more comfortable. I doubt I'll ever sell as I'd have too much free time.

I do think it's possible to have a product you hate and lots of reasons selling and supporting it can be horrible. I just wanted to point out that even if you loved it, you'd still have some of those aspects. Finding a successful toehold is difficult. You might try and fail a number of times before doing it again. I'd be wary about giving up on a success unless you're super sure the annoying bits can't be massaged enough to be tolerable.

One thing I haven't had to deal with is marketing. I started the business with a Kickstarter but otherwise never had to actively peddle my wares. That's mainly due to it being a niche market, that the nature of animation is flashy/appealing and doesn't need to be explained, and by focusing on UI/UX/polish so users enjoy using it.