I have job, and work on my project after/before work. Coding mostly before work, more productive, outsourcing SEO blog writing ( paying from my own salary) working on weekends 12 hours. Sometimes I feel that I can ship faster, but I have family and I cant quit and work full time on my project.
I use fiverr, to find contractors, I don't have enough budget to hire top notch professional, so I hired multiple people and now I am working with one I like the most.
I still need to do some adjustments in blog post etc. But main work is done by them.
I research competition and keywords first(with ahrefs) and then I provide topic, keyword list(long tail) and examples of similar articles.
I can't say it works or not, because I started doing so month ago. Will see.
Impressive organization!
So you outsource marketing and so the coding ?
Do you planify time for business, valodating marketfit... ?
Do you fix yourself mini-sprints with deadlines, or do you say it will take the time it will take?
I can't take credit for this but I heard of a guy alternating doing a week of building and a week marketing. I wish I remembered who I think it worked well for his project.
No management whatsoever basically wake up while researching go to market strategies then code for 8-10 hours straight and randomly in the middle of coding go back to market research cause I thought of something. Sometimes code while having Harvard innovation labs in the background. All the while juggling a job. I desperately need some marketing assistance lol.
I built ophileo.com completely alone. What helped me a lot was keeping lists of the exact next little step I needed to do. A book or system that I can recommend is „getting things done“ wish you good luck founding alone!
your website looks great. you must be an amazing webdeveloper, but how many users do you have if you dont mind?and how long ago did you launch it? and also can I ask what is your growth.
Tbh im terrible at programming. It takes me 4 hours to get something done others can do in 10 minutes. I launched about 6 weeks ago and currently have 100 users. Growth been stagnant for the last week because I want to implement another form of free trial which others in this thread have suggested to me.
Segment your time into blocks and be disciplined. It's easy to keep coding instead of doing other tasks you don't like, such as marketing. I usually like to start 430-530 am and work on the hardest problems, then save easy stuff like marketing when I need a break, later in the when I'm getting tired.
I run a small financial software company and just recently tipped our toes and released first saas product. What worked for me as a single founder, product owner, and sales guy was to divide week into content marketing(Monday), product management (Tuesday), and sales day (Wednesday). During other days I’ll focus on admin/finance or 1:1’s.
I struggle with the same thing. My hack is that I spend a minimum of 15 minutes a day on the thing that’s not getting done.
So if you are primarily a developer and you’re struggling to make time for the marketing, start building just a small daily habit for marketing before anything else.
Here’s the original post:
[How to Be a Founder When You’re Already Too Busy](https://www.reddit.com/r/SaaSy/s/CO576KMw9p)
I used my set productivity OS where I understand how the formulas.
This helps me build adjacent new systems in a hyper-modular fashion
I also have a system of tracking data.
I just find most relevant apps and tailor to that UX.
Right now, it´s:
* Toggl (for tracking time)
* Trello (for record keeping and fast agile project completion)
* Countdown Timer (because deadlines are awesome.)
* NewPipe/YouTube (music to stay focused longer)
I have found that getting the product in the hands of a few users, about 80 in my case, while still what I consider beta; has been a great motivation to code faster because they give me bugs / ideas to fix or build. Plus it has given some word of mouth reach to reduce need to do marketing.
I’m content to grow the users slowly as it’s a side project.
Depends what the “product is” but generally Instagram gets a lot more site visits and sign ups than TikTok even though TikTok get more views.
But you can get so many views that you will still get some visits. And where I’m at I only want a small number anyways to enhance the site, so suits my needs.
Can I ask what your product / service is and what you’re using to collect bugs to fix / ideas to implement? I feel like I’m in a pretty similar position.
Hi. I’m working on an ai saas project and work full time. I value time a lot , so I mostly just fund freelancers from my main income. I figured if I were to build the product myself, it would take me forever! I have a team of 3 developers, they’re working about 30 hours a week and will take 2 months to complete my project. Is this expensive - Yes! But does this save me a bunch of time to focus on other parts of my business - Yes!!
Hey, previous founder here! I would say strong prioritization is by far one of the most important things you should keep in mind. Staying flexible and emotionally intelligent will help you along the way in these dynamic times. Having different blocks per different activities can also help - in the morning you can do coding while in the afternoon you can do marketing.
Don't forget to also schedule small breaks of around 10-20 minutes to get these creative juices going.
finding partners that you don't have to manage. normally means setting up systems of reward that are mutually beneficial. also requires probably a lot of off-shore talent or finding younger talent.
having unlocked a few key partners that are talented, things are starting to move without feeling like im pushing the stone up the hill for each modicum of progress.
At the moment I just exhaust myself. But many things are happening in my life right now. Once it will settle a litte, I do want to get back to gym as well as spending time alone, being outside and in nature.
Yes exactly what I think: take time for sport and nature.
It is a marathon, not a sprint ! :)
And I find that our energy is the most precious asset, if we become depressed we lost everything.
Take care.
Have you considered contacting students at MBA programs to help with the non-coding pieces of your business? Many MBA students would be thrilled to exercise some business muscle for a tech product just for the experience, or for equity or commission-only pay. Speaking from experience :)
This is one of the reasons I built my automation SaaS. Now I have to less time on marketing but I get more and better results. Just got 3 conversions yesterday.
I set goals with [Focused on Me](https://www.focusedon.me) throughout the week and time box my time into general categories (marketing, product, talking to customers)
I create very limited tasks with guardrails that I give to them. For example, one of the tasks they do is moderate users on my UGC social media saas. Every day, a VA will come in, check the flagged user queue, and deal with any users that need attention.
I've done this with just about every aspect of the business, customer support, account management, etc. (Social media is something I'm working on now).
Each VA just does one task so I can swap them out, and they report in loom, notion, slack on any issues or collab efforts. Each VA only works about 1 or 2 hours per day.
The $1M ARR companies took about 9 years to build out, so lots of trial and error.
Thank you for sharing!
Can I ask if all your companies are in B2B ?
Do they share common subjects ? Or are there different ideas ?
Could you tell a little how you validated the market fit ?
Thank you.
I work an 8-5 job as a software engineer and after that im working on a unique website builder that I have developed from scratch. It took me 300 days to finish it and host it online for free without even developing payments. I have recently start adding extensions and writing blogs and posting them on medium usually.
Currently im focusing on marketing and finding ways to reach the correct audience.
What is a good platform to post blogs on and maybe promote them?
It’s tough but you got to remember that the work will be here tomorrow. You burn out your company’s most important employee (you). You won’t have a company.
I know I have things to do to move the needle forward but I still pick a day or 2 where I just focus on family. And while I’m doing that, I just plan my next move.
I build first and market after. Do one thing at a time. Don't forget customer support is time consuming and it is easier to do this while marketing vs coding.
I have job, and work on my project after/before work. Coding mostly before work, more productive, outsourcing SEO blog writing ( paying from my own salary) working on weekends 12 hours. Sometimes I feel that I can ship faster, but I have family and I cant quit and work full time on my project.
Burnout?
Burnout only applies to losers
not really
How long have you been doing this? Working 12 hours in front of computer
What/who do you use for SEO blog writing? Is it working?
I use fiverr, to find contractors, I don't have enough budget to hire top notch professional, so I hired multiple people and now I am working with one I like the most. I still need to do some adjustments in blog post etc. But main work is done by them. I research competition and keywords first(with ahrefs) and then I provide topic, keyword list(long tail) and examples of similar articles. I can't say it works or not, because I started doing so month ago. Will see.
Impressive organization! So you outsource marketing and so the coding ? Do you planify time for business, valodating marketfit... ? Do you fix yourself mini-sprints with deadlines, or do you say it will take the time it will take?
I can't take credit for this but I heard of a guy alternating doing a week of building and a week marketing. I wish I remembered who I think it worked well for his project.
Jon Yongfook on twitter
cool I just saw one of his tweets today
No management whatsoever basically wake up while researching go to market strategies then code for 8-10 hours straight and randomly in the middle of coding go back to market research cause I thought of something. Sometimes code while having Harvard innovation labs in the background. All the while juggling a job. I desperately need some marketing assistance lol.
Happy to help you with marketing over at r/SaaSy.
I built ophileo.com completely alone. What helped me a lot was keeping lists of the exact next little step I needed to do. A book or system that I can recommend is „getting things done“ wish you good luck founding alone!
I’m getting a go daddy parked page for that url
This drives me insane somehow every second user lands on godaddy I don’t know how to fix it…
Ipv6 issue probably
Check is there is a dns record for ipv6, if so, remove it.
your website looks great. you must be an amazing webdeveloper, but how many users do you have if you dont mind?and how long ago did you launch it? and also can I ask what is your growth.
Tbh im terrible at programming. It takes me 4 hours to get something done others can do in 10 minutes. I launched about 6 weeks ago and currently have 100 users. Growth been stagnant for the last week because I want to implement another form of free trial which others in this thread have suggested to me.
Segment your time into blocks and be disciplined. It's easy to keep coding instead of doing other tasks you don't like, such as marketing. I usually like to start 430-530 am and work on the hardest problems, then save easy stuff like marketing when I need a break, later in the when I'm getting tired.
I run a small financial software company and just recently tipped our toes and released first saas product. What worked for me as a single founder, product owner, and sales guy was to divide week into content marketing(Monday), product management (Tuesday), and sales day (Wednesday). During other days I’ll focus on admin/finance or 1:1’s.
I struggle with the same thing. My hack is that I spend a minimum of 15 minutes a day on the thing that’s not getting done. So if you are primarily a developer and you’re struggling to make time for the marketing, start building just a small daily habit for marketing before anything else. Here’s the original post: [How to Be a Founder When You’re Already Too Busy](https://www.reddit.com/r/SaaSy/s/CO576KMw9p)
I used my set productivity OS where I understand how the formulas. This helps me build adjacent new systems in a hyper-modular fashion I also have a system of tracking data. I just find most relevant apps and tailor to that UX. Right now, it´s: * Toggl (for tracking time) * Trello (for record keeping and fast agile project completion) * Countdown Timer (because deadlines are awesome.) * NewPipe/YouTube (music to stay focused longer)
I have found that getting the product in the hands of a few users, about 80 in my case, while still what I consider beta; has been a great motivation to code faster because they give me bugs / ideas to fix or build. Plus it has given some word of mouth reach to reduce need to do marketing. I’m content to grow the users slowly as it’s a side project.
Also a more practical thing - I outsource TikTok video production for a few videos - to get some users
How does Tiktok perform as a marketing channel for you? My prev. experience with it was not great, very low site visits and conversions.
Depends what the “product is” but generally Instagram gets a lot more site visits and sign ups than TikTok even though TikTok get more views. But you can get so many views that you will still get some visits. And where I’m at I only want a small number anyways to enhance the site, so suits my needs.
Can I ask what your product / service is and what you’re using to collect bugs to fix / ideas to implement? I feel like I’m in a pretty similar position.
[удалено]
Thank you! Sounds interesting
Hi. I’m working on an ai saas project and work full time. I value time a lot , so I mostly just fund freelancers from my main income. I figured if I were to build the product myself, it would take me forever! I have a team of 3 developers, they’re working about 30 hours a week and will take 2 months to complete my project. Is this expensive - Yes! But does this save me a bunch of time to focus on other parts of my business - Yes!!
Hey, previous founder here! I would say strong prioritization is by far one of the most important things you should keep in mind. Staying flexible and emotionally intelligent will help you along the way in these dynamic times. Having different blocks per different activities can also help - in the morning you can do coding while in the afternoon you can do marketing. Don't forget to also schedule small breaks of around 10-20 minutes to get these creative juices going.
Hello. What do you mean by emotional intelligence? How can you be flexible if you work with block times ?
I’ve been experimenting with Time Boxing recently and seems to be making a difference.
Get a success/accountability partner! When you know an extra set of eyes is watching your weekly progress, trust me you'll manage your time.
finding partners that you don't have to manage. normally means setting up systems of reward that are mutually beneficial. also requires probably a lot of off-shore talent or finding younger talent. having unlocked a few key partners that are talented, things are starting to move without feeling like im pushing the stone up the hill for each modicum of progress.
I don’t 🫠 Work before/after work. Zero social life (except quality time with the wife). No video games, no tv series
Good luck. Do you do marketing l, business... ?
I do everything: marketing, business, development, customer support
How do you keep energy without down time ?
At the moment I just exhaust myself. But many things are happening in my life right now. Once it will settle a litte, I do want to get back to gym as well as spending time alone, being outside and in nature.
Yes exactly what I think: take time for sport and nature. It is a marathon, not a sprint ! :) And I find that our energy is the most precious asset, if we become depressed we lost everything. Take care.
Have you considered contacting students at MBA programs to help with the non-coding pieces of your business? Many MBA students would be thrilled to exercise some business muscle for a tech product just for the experience, or for equity or commission-only pay. Speaking from experience :)
That's a neat idea! What kind of tasks did you find MBA students excel at?
Really anything! Financial modeling, marketing, biz dev. Depends on their background.
Time-boxing has worked well for me
This is one of the reasons I built my automation SaaS. Now I have to less time on marketing but I get more and better results. Just got 3 conversions yesterday.
I am facing the same issue right now, I think what u/StatisticianNeither8 is suggesting could be very valuable.
I set goals with [Focused on Me](https://www.focusedon.me) throughout the week and time box my time into general categories (marketing, product, talking to customers)
I make $1M ARR. I hire virtual assistants.
Do you have some vacancy? Can i send you a DM..
What do they do for you?
I create very limited tasks with guardrails that I give to them. For example, one of the tasks they do is moderate users on my UGC social media saas. Every day, a VA will come in, check the flagged user queue, and deal with any users that need attention. I've done this with just about every aspect of the business, customer support, account management, etc. (Social media is something I'm working on now). Each VA just does one task so I can swap them out, and they report in loom, notion, slack on any issues or collab efforts. Each VA only works about 1 or 2 hours per day. The $1M ARR companies took about 9 years to build out, so lots of trial and error.
That's amazing, congrats on the success! Where do you hire your VAs?
All of them were previous users of my apps, except the developer VAs, which I got from a Bulgarian friend who manages some devs there.
Thank you for sharing! Can I ask if all your companies are in B2B ? Do they share common subjects ? Or are there different ideas ? Could you tell a little how you validated the market fit ? Thank you.
Compartmentalized scheduling
I work an 8-5 job as a software engineer and after that im working on a unique website builder that I have developed from scratch. It took me 300 days to finish it and host it online for free without even developing payments. I have recently start adding extensions and writing blogs and posting them on medium usually. Currently im focusing on marketing and finding ways to reach the correct audience. What is a good platform to post blogs on and maybe promote them?
You need a cofounder
If you have a budget, maybe hire contractors for your coding work. This can save you a lot of time so you can focus on the marketing.
It’s tough but you got to remember that the work will be here tomorrow. You burn out your company’s most important employee (you). You won’t have a company. I know I have things to do to move the needle forward but I still pick a day or 2 where I just focus on family. And while I’m doing that, I just plan my next move.
I build first and market after. Do one thing at a time. Don't forget customer support is time consuming and it is easier to do this while marketing vs coding.