# Don't Build SaaS Unless You Can Handle These 7 Things... Channel: Rob Walling Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=767bPGQ_ris Duration: 9 min Language: English Words: 1878 Transcript page: https://viewrankai.com/tools/youtube-transcript/767bPGQ_ris --- [0:00] one of my worst memories of bootstrapping my last startup was a moment where I looked at the company bank balance and realized I might not be able to make payroll in 2 weeks and I had to go to my personal savings and consider whether I wanted to sync even more money I was already into six figures probably around1 $150,000 of my money into drip and I had to make the decision of whether I was going to pull even more money out of our personal account in order to make payroll some of the hardest parts of being a SAS founder is the uncertainty and that's why in this video I'm going [0:34] to talk about seven things that are difficult to handle or can be challenging and if you can't handle these things you probably shouldn't build a SAS company even though it's the best business model in the world and you can build an amazing life and sell that company for millions of dollars potentially it's still a pretty hard way to go and if you stick around till the end I'll tell you about a book that I think will help you stay sane while you grow your sass in case you're curious about how I made payroll I actually went to another software product that I owned and did an annual sale and I raised I [1:03] don't know $115,000 in cash in a very short amount of time and that allowed me to basically barely make payroll so with that let's dive in to our first of seven things that you're going to experience as you build your SAS company so as you build a SAS you're either going to work nights and weekends you're going to live off your savings or you're going to raise funding so if one of those three options doesn't sound appealing to you and I'll be honest each of them has their pros and cons building is probably not something you want to do unlike a lot of businesses let's say a service [1:34] business where you're going to do some web development work or photography or video editing you can often bootstrap that just on your own time because you charge dollars for hours you get it going you get another contract you hire a freelancer to help you and you can build a company just by building it up like a snowball SAS takes a tremendous amount of time upfront building with no revenue and so the nights and weekends living off savings or raising funding being the main options there are obviously a few others like if you have a supportive spouse you can live off their income for a while I would still [2:06] say that's living off savings even if you're not drawing down because you're basically not saving the money that you would otherwise be earning the second thing you'll need to handle as a SAS founder is maintaining almost 24x7 uptime meaning 24 hours a day 7 days a week 365 days a year now certain pieces of software are more Mission critical than others and so some SAS Founders have the luxury of if they have a few hours of downtown time it's not a big deal but I don't know of a single SAS app where if you have days of downtime that your customers are not going to be [2:35] really annoyed so there are other products where you don't need 24x7 uptime so imagine selling an ebook a video course where someone has that locally on their machine or imagine having downloadable software where there is no uptime it's just the software is installed on someone else's server or it runs locally on an iPad say one of the reasons sassis so valuable is that you handle everything as the founder you handle the updates you make sure it's all always working you make sure it's getting better over time but one of the downsides is you have to spend a lot of time thinking about and working on uptime and sometimes you might find [3:09] yourself on a Sunday night needing to get up and fix your servers or make sure things get back online and if you don't want to do that I wouldn't recommend starting a SAS the third thing you're going to encounter as you build your SAS is a long wait because it takes way longer than you want it to and way longer than you think it should with a lot of companies you can start it in a weekend and have th000 $5,000 $10,000 of Revenue by the next week again if you're selling services or if you write an ebook and have a big audience you could literally write an ebook over a weekend [3:38] and make money SAS takes time to build and so whether it's nights and weekends or whether you're building it full-time it just takes a tremendous amount of time upfront to get to the starting line which is launching and then once you launch usually you haven't built something people want so you spend months and months and months figuring out how do I get to that point where I've built something that people want and are willing to pay for and that might take 6 months might take 12 months might take 18 months I've seen even experienced Founders Take 2 years to find product Market fit from the time [4:07] they launched and these are people with resources and funding it just takes a lot longer than almost any other business model I know there's a reason most startup accelerators are 3 months and Tiny Seed my SAS accelerator is 12 months because SAS just takes a lot longer than most other businesses a fourth thing that you're going to want to get acquainted with and enjoy if you're going to start a sass is either marketing or sales and sometimes both a lot of product Builders a lot of developers think that if they build a great product it will sell itself this almost never happens so if you don't [4:39] have some chops as a marketer or a salesperson or have the desire to learn one of those skills you're going to have an uphill battle and you're going to have to kind of get lucky and I don't like relying on luck I don't like having approaches where you have to get lucky in order to succeed I want things to be repeatable and I want people to be able to invest hard work and skill to be able to succeed so if you don't want to learn marketing and you don't want to learn sales I would say start a step one business where you are in an ecosystem [5:05] like a Shopify app or a Heroku app and with that you can focus more on the product on building it on supporting it but your marketing is mostly supplied by the app ecosystem because you have a channel where you can just get essentially lowcost or free customers which is the App Store that you exist in a fifth thing you'll want to get pretty good at as you build your SAS company is customer support and most Founders I know don't mind customer support actually this can be a fun interaction with your end users and you can learn a lot about where you want to take the product but I do know that after a few [5:36] months of doing support I know I personally get pretty bored of it and I get kind of burned out on it and so my first hire was always someone in support to help take that load off of me and do tier one support I do know some Founders who continue to do it month after month and it's something that's in their wheelhouse I don't think it's the best use of your time as a Founder but it's certainly something that you're going to have to do if you launch a SAS company this sixth thing you'll need to get used to as a SAS founder is uncertainty you [6:03] might have Financial uncertainty like I talked about at the top of the video you're probably going to have emotional uncertainty because let's be honest growing sass is emotional and the entrepreneurial roller coaster can have you riding High 1 minute and feeling like you're going to crash and burn and implode and like every competitor is taking a swipe at you and everything's going down and Google knocks you out of the rankings and your Mr is frozen or it's going down the next minute and I like to say that being founder is making hard decisions with incomplete information and incomplete information means you have uncertainty so if you [6:37] can't learn to live and thrive in an environment where things are changing very quickly and there is a lot of uncertainty you want to stay away from starting a SAS company and the seventh and final thing that you'll encounter as a SAS founder is competition in almost every Niche that I know of now there is competition and that's okay that doesn't mean you shouldn't start a sass it doesn't mean you shouldn't start a company where there is competition but you have to learn to have a healthy relationship with competition meaning if they make a move you can't let it devastate you or distract you but you [7:09] also shouldn't just ignore and downplay your competition there's a healthy balance between those two of being aware of competition watching what they're doing but not getting so focused on them that you're not focused on your own customers this is a balance I didn't have in my early days as a founder and it's something I learned as I matured and something you'll certainly have to deal with if you launch a SAS company in a minute I'm going to tell you about that book I think will help you stay sane as you grow your SAS but before I do that microcom connect is once again open for new applicants microf connect [7:40] is our online community with more than 5700 bootstrapped and mostly bootstrap Founders we have a free tier a basic tier and a premium tier depending on your needs and desires but it is an amazing Community it's moderated heavily and it's the longest running largest and the best community of this type that I know the book I've mentioned a couple times about staying sane while starting up is written by my wife Dr Sher Walling it's called the entrepreneurs guide to keeping your together and it covers all these topics it covers dealing with uncertainty dealing with raising a family or or ESP spouse significant other while you're starting your startup [8:16] dealing with burnout and all the other struggles that you're going to encounter as an entrepreneur so I highly recommend it's available on Amazon or at zenf founder. if you enjoyed this video about some of the hard things that you'll encounter as start your SAS company check out this one about the top 10 avoidable mistakes SAS startups make I'll see you next week --- About this transcript Read from YouTube's own caption track and laid out by ViewRank AI (https://viewrankai.com). 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