Fresh from my lessons learned with Cusoy the past six months, I am now dedicating an entire year to a new B2B SaaS venture that hopefully reaches ramen profitability very soon and will potentially hit six figures of revenue within a year or so.
Start: February 3, 2014
End: February 3, 2015
I. Ambitious goals by December 31, 2014
II. Why B2B SaaS and its advantages
III. My runway
IV. Updates moving forward
“The only thing standing between you and your goal is the bullshit story you keep telling yourself as to why you can’t achieve it.”
– Jordan Belfort
I. AMBITIOUS GOALS BY DECEMBER 31, 2014
- $5,000-$10,000+/month
- 10-20+ paying customers
Those are the only metrics of success I am measuring myself against — revenue (and profits) and customers. It’s a tall order, but I am shooting high for this year. That is my #1 goal for 2014, as I mentioned in 2014: The Year of Creating Value and Systems.
II. WHY B2B SAAS AND ITS ADVANTAGES
Choosing B2B over B2C
Contrary to building a B2C consumer-oriented app in a world where 94.5% of apps in the App Store will be free by 2017, I am going directly to B2B SaaS.
There are so many real business problems out there waiting to be solved in unsexy, “boring” industries.
I don’t want to cater to Silicon Valley 20-something and 30-something problems (I won’t name any apps here), but those in B2B companies where the real money is and opportunities are.
There are a lot of slow-moving industries where there are incredible, abundant opportunities to solve important business problems with software automation. Better yet, your software will help make people’s lives easier and help them generate revenue and save time and money.
How B2B fits into my goals
I can still accomplish my initial goals of building a well-designed product with a great user experience… but this time for businesses, rather than consumers.
I don’t want to build the next billion dollar company, I don’t want to try my hand at starting the next [elusive] consumer startup unicorn, I don’t want to spend months courting investors without paying customers — I don’t want a startup, I want an actual business that generates revenue with paying customers.
I am a heavy believer in the 80/20 principle, and the best, quickest and most effective way to accomplish such a goal is with B2B SaaS.
The best investor is your customer.
Likewise, the best money you can “raise” is from your customer.
One of my biggest lessons was learning how difficult it was to monetize B2C apps, even as Cusoy was wasn’t just some “cool” and “fun” product, but actually solving a legitimate pain point.
B2B SaaS specifically and the principle of recurring revenue
When you start a business, one of the hardest things to do is customer acquisition. It’s the most painful thing to acquire a customer.
As a founder, why should I go through all that trouble and work of acquiring one customer and only charge once, when I can instead create a software-as-a-service product and business to generate recurring revenue while also helping my customers solve their problems on an ongoing basis?
Most importantly, I want to start a successful and sustainable business so I can have a freedom-based lifestyle. I can’t think of a better way to do that than a software business that’s revenue-first with paying customers and recurring revenue — which B2B SaaS fits to a tee.
Paying customers and revenue-first before I write code
But… I don’t plan to write a single line of code until I get at least 5-10 paying customers.
How will I do that? Subscribe to my blog to keep posted on my journey 😉
I am doing a completely different approach to B2B SaaS than I did for B2C with Cusoy and I can’t wait to see how it goes.
III. MY RUNWAY
I only have another 6+ months of savings before I go bankrupt, but I’m also going to work on the side to make up for the latter 6 months, which won’t be impossible but will just require ongoing hustling.
I am going to do whatever it takes to bootstrap to ramen profitability (and beyond).
Going all in this time, because I strongly believe in my chances of success this time around and I’m going to put my money where my mouth is.
IV. UPDATES MOVING FORWARD
My email subscribers will get a weekly update while I will post public blog updates every two weeks and also do a monthly review, as I have done before with Cusoy.
More details to follow in upcoming weeks.
I’m super excited! 🙂
P.S. I’d love to meet you on Twitter here.
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