Ask HN: Best resources on starting a lifestyle business?
After working in RevOps and sales for VC-backed startups for a few years, I'm considering creating a SaaS business that helps solve problems for a particular niche industry that interests me.
What are some resources that are useful to look at while I consider embarking on this journey?
My experience in RevOps & sales the last few years has been that so many influencers are trying to pitch you their guides and resources for a fee. It's made me suspicious of pretty much anyone selling their insights and made it hard to determine which are of actual value.
79 comments
[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 135 ms ] threadBTW, I have the feeling that nowadays is way harder to live from "traditional" software than some years ago, except for some system software that a SaaS can't replicate, of course.
The downloadable software has been shrinking for years. But there is still a market and all the 'cool kids' are doing SaaS, so less competition.
it's been offline for a while, but the read-only archive is still accessible: https://discuss.bootstrapped.fm/
Microconf is also very high quality with great talks out there, a podcast and a slack community. Focused on SAAS software. Rob Walling, the founder, wrote a book recently. Not my area, but I heard good things about it.
I also like the Tropical MBA podcast. They get stories from entrepreneurs outside the shiny bubble (agency owners, Amazon FBA, SEO software, affiliates, etc)
Books that might interest you : Company of one by Paul Jarvis ; Profit First by Mike Michalowicz ;
Other good resources for entrepreneurs: - Seth Godin & Robert Cialdini for marketing - The Mom Test (how to talk to your users) - Made to Stick (how to craft stories and narratives) - $100M offers & $100M leads by Hormozi (currently reading them, it's mainly common concepts put in a simple and actionable way)
Some links to what Adrig mentioned:
- https://www.indiehackers.com
- https://microconf.com
- https://www.startupsfortherestofus.com (podcast)
- My new book is https://saasplaybook.com
- https://tropicalmba.com - the podcast for 7- and 8- figure founders
I think everything else is pretty easy to find via Amazon/book website of your choice.
Thanks for the links, keep up the good work :)
I just rejoined after not working on side projects for a while and find it a great value - super easy to network/find a cofounder too
Second advice, use Ruby on Rails or Django as a web framework and don't follow after the complexities of JS and other newcomers. Phoenix (Elixir) is awesome but that will require much more efforts and expertise compared to the established and time-tested Rails and Django.
Good luck!
p.s. I'm writing this as a person managing a lifestyle business (LibHunt & SaaSHub).
p.p.s. I'd also recommend getting into the IndieHackers community for inspiration and shared experience.
If you're building a typical CRUD app and don't have a VC-backed budget, just use a Django or Rails.
Thus, a tool is the least important part of a project, while choosing the right tools might be one of the most important decision of a project.
That's a recipe for a very non-lifestyle business
Again, I'm saying this within the context of data heavy web apps.
It's my framework of choice and a secret weapon indeed but let's not pretend it's rails-easy. It's just not.
That wasn't the question though. The question was, which is easier? And let me tell you, you can't beat User.first. Even typing this comment I'm proving my point as I can't remember how to do that in ecto. User |> first() |> Repo.one()? after importing and aliasing a bunch of mysterious (to the beginner) things?
Right tool for the job. If i was building a temporary app, i'd use rails and make very very sure everyone was on board with the idea that it was temporary. I might even sabotage it so it couldn't be used long term (us evil old rails devs have.. tricks). Proper long term infra? elixir.
I ask, cause I have a service that is a Rust backend (kind of specialized in what it does) + a SolidJS frontend... But I've seen a potential area for growth, I didn't imagine at first, and that would be stuff like user profiles, authentication, and managing stuff. And I really don't want to cut all this more "CRUD" like stuff in Rust and an SPA. I don't know Ruby, but have done some rather large Python projects in the past, just never ventured into Django land.
It comes with a built in admin portal that lets you work with all your data in list views and detail views, with sorting, filtering, and searching. For a lot of scenarios you can get away with just using the admin portal (like we have accounting people log in there and import CSV files, etc).
It’s great for managing a data model, setting up a database schema and managing the migrations for you. And once that is setup it’s pretty trivial to enable API endpoints to do all the CRUD-style stuff, if needed.
In what ways does Django lag behind Rails or Laravel?
Laravel's first-party ecosystem, both paid and free, on top of the framework is quite widespread. This also brings a lot of people to the party on the third party side with excellent tools like Filament and Ploi. I don't see this nearly as much for Django. Have a look under the Ecosystem tab on the Laravel homepage. Within a few `composer install`s, you can get:
- Local dev environment (i.e. actually running the app): Herd, Sail
- Stripe/Paddle support: Cashier, Spark
- Starter kit scaffolds including all the usual auth goodies (e.g. 2FA): Breeze, Jetstream
- View layer alternatives to plain old HTML views: Livewire, Inertia
- API and Social logins: Passport, Sanctum (for SPAs), Socialite
- Fulltext search: Scout
- Robust APM: Pulse, and Telescope on dev
- Admin panels: Nova, and 3rd party Filament
- Websockets: Echo, Reverb (coming soon)
- Infrastructure, both traditional and serverless: Forge, Envoyer, Vapor, Ploi
- Completely alternative PHP runners to replace php-fpm: Octane with Roadrunner, Swoole, or FrankenPHP
- Automated browser testing: Dusk
You can find Django packages for these things too, but I struggle to see many of them coming from the actual Django team. I also think the Django Admin solution is very neat for getting off the ground, but doesn't seem as robust as Nova or Filament.
Lastly, call it my bias, but Python's overall lacklustre developer experience with package and environment management (compared to Composer and Ruby gems) also affects Django as a result.
[0] https://spark.laravel.com
I can think of a couple of meanings, but the first thing I’d recommend is a lawyer to figure out your language, privacy policy, exposure if using certain terms.
For example results, quality, etc would need legal documents to basically say ‘results may vary’ based on jurisdiction.
I was thinking of focusing on others lifestyles. Things like food, exercise, shakes, etc
My experience from going down this road with trading financial markets, where there’s as much snake oil as anywhere, is: Try them.
At least, to the degree you can afford, i.e. don’t spend your last $5k on some course that you’re counting on to save the day (it won’t).
Basically none of them will be the silver bullet they claim to be. But you will learn. Even if it’s only learning how the grift works. That’s eye opening, and helps you to see who is offering real value and who is selling cognitive bias.
Take the view that from any resource, you’re only looking to get a nugget or two. Eventually you’ll piece things together. Everything is basically just “the basics”, but understanding the basics in a logical sense is different than knowing how to operate those basics well.
https://www.amazon.com/Scale-Seven-Proven-Principles-Busines...
A stage 1 business depends on the founder doing the work; a stage two business depends on specific people doing the work; a stage three business has enough systems and checks in place that people are interchangeable.
With a stage two business, a critical person leaving can threaten the entire business. This is a particular issue in the software field where people tend to job hop. Creating a stable lifestyle company that is more than a three or four person shop, thus requires a large and sustained effort to document all critical processes. Don’t underestimate this challenge.
For instance, if I run a business and hire workers to develop features for the website and have a few people in the factory assembling widgets. It’s fine so long as I can approve the PRs and train up the next folks as needed.
If you get to the point you aren’t needed great; but everyone I know running lifestyle businesses tend to take only a few weeks off throughout the year — not all at once. Many take <1 week per year. They’d be considered “stage 2 businesses” by the metric mentioned. Imo that’s totally as far as most of these businesses can get, unless you have revenue to sustain overlapping roles.
If you get to the “I don’t need to work any more” phase of a business; typically it’s time to sell or hire someone to manage and do something else.
Which btw should be the goal, I’m just saying, you’re no longer running a business if you quite literally are leaving for weeks at a time lol. Someone is running it for you.
Covers all the angles including for non technical founders.
I promise you I’m on your side.
I made the reference as the channel presents 3 incrementally larger ways to go from lifestyle to solopreneur.
His method is based on focusing on the end-user and understanding them more than they understand themselves.
Your suspicion is a natural objection, and Dane can teach you how to overcome such objections.
Of course, Dane practices everything he preaches. If his marketing still leaves you suspicious, then maybe his method is not for you.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1447467
https://microsaashq.com/index.html