Ask HN: What's the hardest part of building a SaaS that users keep paying for?
I'm Afrid, 14 years old, building SpecWise AI solo from Bangladesh. Struggling to get my first paying customer. Would love to hear what actually made users stick around for you.
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Hi Afrid! The answer depends on where you currently at with your userbase. Do you have any customers yet? Here are a few ideas that came to my mind: 0. Build your brand (not your product brand, but your as a person) - imo having your own followers helps tremendously! Articles, interviews, anything helps! 1. I`d start by finding a few people interested in the idea already and talking to them directly. What problem you are solving for them in their opinion, where in this solution they find most value and what they are willing to pay for (and how much). 2. Market analysis can be a good hint - what is already there, what is missing in their product that yours have and how it is monetized. 3. If any expo or social events, - join if you can and pitch your idea. 4. Check open door days / any social events at local companies that might benefit from your idea. Also pitch!
Hope this can help. THe best of luck to you :)
Congratulations on asking such questions so early in your life!
If you start with questioning "What do I pay for?" and "How did I hear about it?", it should be easier to start building that empathy muscle that will make it clearer (with time) where to find your customers and what to build, exactly.
This is all easier said than done. I've been able to find that with Uruky and bewCloud, but I've had many failed products over the last 20+ years.
Congratulations on starting so early. It’s impressive. I think getting the users is a hard part now because users are overloaded with different kinds of services and apps so you have to double down and decide who you are targeting and marketing for and only reach out to them.
My app MacroCodex.app has 10K+ active users.
My tip for you is, let users use it for free and figure out how they are using it.
After that build things to solve their problems and eventually they'll pay for things.
Making a feature so useful that once users have the habit to use it, they would miss something if they don’t have access anymore (e.g precise analytics data).