We haven't made any money at Fogbeam Labs[0] yet. I could talk a lot about the reasons why, and why I'm still crazy optimistic, but it might take a while to write it all up. Maybe I'll do a blog post one day. I think it's all too long for an HN comment.
That said, I can try to distill out a few key points:
(in no particular order )
1. Doing this as a "side project" while the founders still work day jobs. I think doing that is fine, but it limits how fast you can move and how aggressive you can be.
2. And (1) goes hand in hand with this one, which is "not being focused enough". I should have emphasized a "what is the single most important thing we can do now to generate revenue" approach from the beginning. Instead, we worked on this "grand vision" which is pretty cool, but took forever to get close to having a shippable product.
3. Early on I was thinking mostly about on-premises deployments, with the idea of rolling the code into a SaaS version as "next step". In hindsight, that was probably exactly backwards. Going SaaS, and going "down market" in terms of customer size would have made it easier, I believe, to get initial traction. IoW, as Mark Suster put it[1] "hunt deer, not elephants".
4. Not taking my health seriously enough. As some of you may recall, I had a heart attack[2] near the end of 2014. And while I lived and was able to get back in the saddle, that whole ordeal happened at a really bad time from a company perspective and cost us basically the entire following year, as I recovered both physically and mentally. In hindsight, I was pushing myself way too hard, and not doing the things I should have been doing w/r/t diet, exercise, etc.
On the flip side, we have done some things right. Probably the most notable is keeping the burn rate extraordinarily low. We spend a small enough amount of money that I can fund our current activity level out of my pocket nearly indefinitely. Which is a big part of why we're not out of business despite having no revenue. And now things are starting to look up, as we have one really solid prospect in the pipeline and are deep into the transition to a SaaS delivery model for the "old" products, and have a really cool new SaaS offering stirring as well.
The interesting point for us will be if we can sign even 3 or 4 relatively small deals and get some real traction established. Then we can decide if we want to go pursue outside money or not, or if we want to just keep doing the organic growth thing.
That said, I can try to distill out a few key points:
(in no particular order )
1. Doing this as a "side project" while the founders still work day jobs. I think doing that is fine, but it limits how fast you can move and how aggressive you can be.
2. And (1) goes hand in hand with this one, which is "not being focused enough". I should have emphasized a "what is the single most important thing we can do now to generate revenue" approach from the beginning. Instead, we worked on this "grand vision" which is pretty cool, but took forever to get close to having a shippable product.
3. Early on I was thinking mostly about on-premises deployments, with the idea of rolling the code into a SaaS version as "next step". In hindsight, that was probably exactly backwards. Going SaaS, and going "down market" in terms of customer size would have made it easier, I believe, to get initial traction. IoW, as Mark Suster put it[1] "hunt deer, not elephants".
4. Not taking my health seriously enough. As some of you may recall, I had a heart attack[2] near the end of 2014. And while I lived and was able to get back in the saddle, that whole ordeal happened at a really bad time from a company perspective and cost us basically the entire following year, as I recovered both physically and mentally. In hindsight, I was pushing myself way too hard, and not doing the things I should have been doing w/r/t diet, exercise, etc.
On the flip side, we have done some things right. Probably the most notable is keeping the burn rate extraordinarily low. We spend a small enough amount of money that I can fund our current activity level out of my pocket nearly indefinitely. Which is a big part of why we're not out of business despite having no revenue. And now things are starting to look up, as we have one really solid prospect in the pipeline and are deep into the transition to a SaaS delivery model for the "old" products, and have a really cool new SaaS offering stirring as well.
The interesting point for us will be if we can sign even 3 or 4 relatively small deals and get some real traction established. Then we can decide if we want to go pursue outside money or not, or if we want to just keep doing the organic growth thing.
[0]: https://www.fogbeam.com
[1]: https://bothsidesofthetable.com/most-startups-should-be-deer...
[2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8550315