Ask HN: How to manage different SaaS subscriptions?
4 comments
You have no customers whose subscriptions to manage yet. Thinking about this at this stage is a distraction.
You're getting feedback; what's the market saying? What are your potential customers doing? What are you learning? Are you making sure you're not being tossed around by frivolous feature requests tied to a hint of a hypothetical purchase if implemented?
You're getting feedback; what's the market saying? What are your potential customers doing? What are you learning? Are you making sure you're not being tossed around by frivolous feature requests tied to a hint of a hypothetical purchase if implemented?
Thanks. You’re right it’s a distraction.
One of these potentials mentioned after a demo that they would pay me $100 per month per user if I could offer a bunch of additional features (I had most of these in backlog). Of course these would take me a long time but it gave me motivation.
Thanks I’ll think about this again once I’m actually making money. Even if I can make $10 per user that would bbe amazing
One of these potentials mentioned after a demo that they would pay me $100 per month per user if I could offer a bunch of additional features (I had most of these in backlog). Of course these would take me a long time but it gave me motivation.
Thanks I’ll think about this again once I’m actually making money. Even if I can make $10 per user that would bbe amazing
How are you getting feedback, though? Do you have people using your software but are not paying? If you have users, what are the analytics telling you?
>One of these potentials mentioned after a demo that they would pay me $100 per month per user if I could offer a bunch of additional features
Why are they asking for those features? What problems do they have that these features would solve? What are they doing right now to solve those problems? When was the last time they dealt with those problems and how did they deal with them?
Dig deeper. A customer requesting a feature is like a patient telling their physician what drug to prescribe. A physician wouldn't just comply; they'd dig deeper to find the root cause of the symptom the patient is trying to fix.
In other words, a feature request is an "owie", and it's up to you to figure out what caused that, and how to fix it.
Many times, there are false problems. They'll request a feature and when you dig deeper, the problem is something else (see XY problem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XY_problem)
>(I had most of these in backlog)
How are you filling up that backlog? What's going in, and why is it going in? One has to be very careful with product road-maps. What's the impact of that feature/bug fix? You'll have ideas for all kinds of features, but you'll have to prioritize them somewhat and sort them. What's your prioritization algorithm? What makes that you're implement X feature before Y? Again, be careful about that.
>One of these potentials mentioned after a demo that they would pay me $100 per month per user if I could offer a bunch of additional features
Why are they asking for those features? What problems do they have that these features would solve? What are they doing right now to solve those problems? When was the last time they dealt with those problems and how did they deal with them?
Dig deeper. A customer requesting a feature is like a patient telling their physician what drug to prescribe. A physician wouldn't just comply; they'd dig deeper to find the root cause of the symptom the patient is trying to fix.
In other words, a feature request is an "owie", and it's up to you to figure out what caused that, and how to fix it.
Many times, there are false problems. They'll request a feature and when you dig deeper, the problem is something else (see XY problem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XY_problem)
>(I had most of these in backlog)
How are you filling up that backlog? What's going in, and why is it going in? One has to be very careful with product road-maps. What's the impact of that feature/bug fix? You'll have ideas for all kinds of features, but you'll have to prioritize them somewhat and sort them. What's your prioritization algorithm? What makes that you're implement X feature before Y? Again, be careful about that.
My software is super early and I’m not charging yet. Just me working solo for about a month or two so far so a long way to go. I’m dog-fooding my own software and getting feedback, and hoping to open it up in the next few months or so. Because it would be so sparse I doubt I can charge more than a few bucks but I want to raise prices for new customers asap as new features come online.
My ultimate goal would be to charge $40 or more per user but that’s a ways off, and try to compete with some incumbents that charge like 100 plus dollars a user.