codegeek

I have seen some older Software/SAAS UIs displaying version numbers. But letting you switch may not make sense because usually a change happens both in backend and frontend and switching versions is not something vendors want to offer due to the complexity of switching required.

I looked at your landing page and I cannot understand what it does. What are you licensing exactly ? Is it a license for softsare product (e.g. license key etc) OR is it license as in restricting how many users can access the product etc ?

I think you need to be very clear on what problem are you solving exactly and for whom ? May be I am not your target audience but I have no clue what you offer from your landing page.

Thank you for sharing. I will take a look.

Is there an easy way to block any requests originating from VPS etc instead of residential/commercial IP from legitimate users ? I know cloudflare does a few things but I really want to figure out a way to block any request say at nginx or caddy (reverse proxy) from reaching origin servers if they are not from an IP that is not a VPS etc.

.ai is the new .io but nothing will beat .com. Even Paul Graham has said that.

I don't call that Heathcare. It call that Heath"Scam" run by Big Pharma and Insurance Mafia.

"trying for eight years". "I tried to build tens of apps". "I started getting other ideas again"

I am running a bootstrapped SAAS for 11+ years. Since you asked for honest feedback, I will lay it on you straight. The fact is that most people who try what you have tried give up after few weeks or months on one project and then move on to another. That is not critical mass or time to build anything real. Most influencers/indie hackers peddling multiple products at same time or micro-saas or whatever are either inflating their numbers or outright lying.

Let me be very clear. It is very difficult to do multiple things at once. It is almost impossible to make money from multiple things at once especially if they are not already established and you are starting from scratch.

So the 1st question you have to ask yourself is: How bad do I want to do my own things and what is my goal exactly ? The only way possible to focus on 1 thing at least for 12-18 months minimum (ideally 2+ years) before you see anything real to even move the needle a little bit.

So again, ask tyourself: what can you work on for next 12-18 months without worrying about short term or overnight success ? If you cannot answer that, you don't have anything to try yet.

Agreed. That's one thing I realized I cannot do myself. I bought an expensive Mower Rider and tried it myself only realizing how much work it is for do trimming, blow, cleanup, weeding etc other than just mowing. Granted, I have a large property. I hired back a landscaper and focus my time on other things :)

It is all about the ROI. A lawn cut from a professional can cost anywhere from $25-$100 on an average (per cut). So with a $1000 lawn mower, you will get the return back in 10-40 cuts at most. That is less than 1-2 seasons. Sure, there will be some maintenance cost over the years but if you look at a 5-10 year period, it is totally worth doing your own. Even with the $1000 price tag. Of course, you cannot count the labor time.

You never know the future but imagine the people who were bearish on personal computers when it wasn't a thing yet but was being discussed. Imagine Email, Internet etc etc. Now they are commodities. I am sure one day AI Robots will be a commodity that we could buy for $1000. May be 10 years from now. But it is coming.

OH no. This is really bad news. Gotta think of alternatives now. I never had a single hosting/software company that got better after being bought by PE. They got 1000x worse in a few months since PE take over.

"Why isn't it the top priority for everyone?"

You mean afte we have solved hunger, poverty, human trafficking, drought, famine, natural disasters problems ? Sure after all that, I am sure it can take priority.

I never said "minimal severance". I am actually saying that give them a great severance but stop with the other BS about "oh how much we love you".

Because it was never about you. They have to fake empathy and provide "explanations" because they think its the "Safer" way. You already know that of course.

Because that's the truth and just because you fake empathy, the person getting fired knows what their worth to the company was. Sure there are people who don't prefer to hear the truth but most employees would. In fact, I would go as far as to say that firing someone by accepting the truth is more empathetic than lying to their faces and crying crocodile tears.

I am a founder/CEO myself (a very small company so I don't have experience of mass layoffs for full disclosure). However, I don't get this explanation. If you feel genuine responsibility for the people, then figure out a way to NOT fire them. Or be honest and admit that the company needs to make more money/cut costs. Trust me, no one wants to hear "we love you so much but we have to fire you and I feel so bad". It just doesn't land. Be honest, be open and be willing to provide a good severance.

"Not having empathy" may have made sense 20-30 years ago when mass layoffs weren't as common as nowadays. Nowadays, everyone knows how it works and how much they really care about the employees. Nothing is worse than someone faking empathy especially CEOs (and I am a small time founder/ceo myself even though of an extremely small company).

The only possible positive thing out of this cringy article is that the severance is decent (for a US company). 4 months of pay and healthcare coverage through Year end. Everything else could have just been a couple of sentences.

Companies need to stop doing this melodrama every time they decide to fire people. Everyone knows the goal is to make money and keep a company profitable for their shareholders. Why these melodramatic posts ? People would prefer honesty. Just say "We need to increase our profits or reduce costs or both and hence we have to lay people off. Here is what we are providing as a severance". That's it.

The moment I see scroll-jacking on a website, I bounce. I don't even think twice.

It is bad because you are deciding something for ME, the user. That's bad UX because I want to decide my own experience and scroll jacking is the worst thing you can do for UX. Stop doing this.

I run a bootstrapped B2B SAAS (12+ years now) and I have seen it all, made all the mistakes possible and had enough wins over the years to keep going.

The first thing to understand is that there is no one size fits all. You have to start somewhere keep iterating. Ok you probably already knew that but wanted to preface anyway to set expectations.

Overall, You have to start with the WHO. Who is this product really for ? If your answer is generic or covers various horizontal segments, you are going to struggle a lot more. NO one builds a product that covers various horizontal segments on Day 1 and succeeds generally. You have to go really really niche and specific. The problem is that this scares new founders who think that if they don't think or aim big (translates to trying to sell to too many segments), they will fail or not make enough money to make it a real business. This is totally false thinking. Take it from a guy who has done it for 12+ years and still fails.

Once you have defined the "Who" (note that this may change with time but you have to start somewhere based on your best assumption as of now), you should have it written down very specifically. For example, don't say "I have a CRM". Instead say "I have a CRM that helps B2B SAAS founders in this specific way".

Also, 100 customers is too ambitious and unrealistic in early days. Start with getting first 5-10. Get them in first. Condition your mind that it is ok to have a really small set of customers who hopefully love your product. With that, you now have to go hunting also known as "outbound" in salesy terms. Sorry no magic wand here if you were expecting a different answer. You of course can do the usual like submitting to directories,writing blog posts etc and you must do all those as well on the side as everything adds up.But the most important thing is manually reaching out to prospective customers.

So now the question is: how do I find those prospective customers ? This will again depend on the "WHO". But more importantly, where do they typically hang out ? I don't mean necessarily in person (that of course helps a lot) but also online.

One tip is to look for customers in your niche already who may be using a competitor product. Websites like builtwith etc can give you a decent list of those customers (not 1005 accurate but they are reasonably accurate).

Bottomline is that you have to do manual outreach every day (minimum to 50 people if you can). Don't sell them the product. Start asking them for a conversation.

All the best. Happy to help if you have more questions.

what is your objective ? Are you trying to learn how startups work and hence wanting to work at one ? Or are you trying to work at a startup and hopefully build wealth with equity (very unlikely).

Then, The question is : how much equity vs salary ? Lot of startups have roles like "founding engineer" etc but the equity won't be more than 1%-3% (or even less). Granted, some of these are funded and offer almost market salary.

Or are you looking for significant equity (say > 5-10% or more) ? In that case, you will almost be like a co-founder and that changes the game and requirements.

They are not just some random 3 have decades of real db experience behind them. They also just got funded which gives them the ability to expand and stay longer in the game.

"Why Us" => "I ran Postgres at Instacart, where we scaled the company 5x in April of 2020. The biggest problem we had was making Postgres serve 100,000s of grocery delivery orders per minute"

Couldn't be a better why us :)

Not the same comparison. Alphabet/Google has a solid 25+ year history. It's not 100% AI or not. It's about a Healthy and proven business model.

Agreed. S&P 500 needs to be seriously gatekeeped. We need safer boring companies in there thatbhave been peoven over a long period of time. Nothing against these companies but they are not proven and ready for S&P 500.

To be fair, it is done exactly to protect against accounts like yours. HN quality needs to be gate-keeped and new accounts absolutely need to be throttled. You may have meant well and be genuine but the bar is high now especially due to AI bots.

Sure but thats a very cynical way of seeing things. A company cannot exist without making a profit but there are plenty of companies that try and take care of their people. At least the ones that don't have investor or board pressure (smaller private companies).

Because of these shitty corporate companies that don't give a shit about their employees, the well is now poisoned for companies that do care especially smaller ones. Employees don't want to give their best anymore because they are burnt elsewhere and they become unemployable at smaller companies. It is a sad state of affairs.

I wish all platforms did this specially reddit, twitter etc. I don't use AI to write comments on any platform and always wondering if I am replying to an AI comment.