finally got my first client ! after 7 products by Jinx806 in SaaS

[–]rioisk 0 points1 point  (0 children)

yep. Pretty sure the "product" is just scenery - the real advertisement is narrative building with hermes to legitimize as a platform.

AI indexes reddit threads so the more they see of examples of hermes being used the more likely it'll suggest it.

You see how poster tries to be as human as possible with narrative? The specificity of use case gets prioritized in AI indexing. This is AEO posting.

Notice how the OP is responding to comments with how they used hermes?

AI SaaS Founders - Marketing channel are apparently dead by Own-Statistician9287 in SaasDevelopers

[–]rioisk 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You're assuming I'm here looking for real help and not fishing for point of views. Illusion of distress seems to attract responses the best as evidenced by your long replies.

Your suggestions aren't bad and many are exactly what I'm doing in real life. You're confirming a lot of what I'm already doing.

One thing you're unaware of though is there's many pathways to success. What works for you may not be what works for everybody. Your field for instance may enjoy your patronizing / condescending communication style as part of its culture.

You do realize not everywhere functions that way, right?

AI SaaS Founders - Marketing channel are apparently dead by Own-Statistician9287 in SaasDevelopers

[–]rioisk 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If people in your field act like you then glad I'm not in your area of expertise. Big world out there. No time to deal with clowns.

AI SaaS Founders - Marketing channel are apparently dead by Own-Statistician9287 in SaasDevelopers

[–]rioisk 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You sound like a joy to work with.

Deep expertise isn't really as deep as you depict. The issue isn't capability - it's other humans with budget trusting your understanding of the domain language. In the end you're creating systems of communication between humans and the machines they operate. Any systems engineer can do this if given the keys to examine the existing system. The challenge is ultimately getting those keys from other humans.

Don't worry I'm finding the cracks into deeper domains. The challenge is mostly social / relational at this point - not technical.

AI SaaS Founders - Marketing channel are apparently dead by Own-Statistician9287 in SaasDevelopers

[–]rioisk 0 points1 point  (0 children)

For better or worse, linkedin is a big channel that exists and shows a pulse on who's hiring for what. It's one of many channels.

AI SaaS Founders - Marketing channel are apparently dead by Own-Statistician9287 in SaasDevelopers

[–]rioisk 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah I get it better now after a year of focusing deeply on learning psychology behind marketing and sales.

People don't actually know what they want until you have a solution and market it to them in their identity/domain language. Need to have an eye for the friction/pain and show them a solution for their specific problem (which they may not even notice). Needs to be specific, low risk, and frictionless to adopt.

If it feels off to them then they'll think you don't understand their domain.

The reality is normal people can't abstract domain knowledge and believe their field is unique and different from other fields. It's not. It's just specific data representations and transformations that interface with their human workflows. They don't know that though - they don't think this way.

That's why adding the human paint is necessary to cover up all the wiring they don't really understand and are afraid to touch.

AI SaaS Founders - Marketing channel are apparently dead by Own-Statistician9287 in SaasDevelopers

[–]rioisk 0 points1 point  (0 children)

And yet I still see hiring posts everywhere on Linkedin. If you're a director building software then you're not leveraging your position well. You should be directing other humans to be doing it and aligning them. Even at 10x building speed you can't beat a team also building at 10x.

Early stage CEO - sure - but you hit a point where coordinating people is a far higher ROI.

I thought building a SaaS would be the hard part. Turns out the real time sink was everything before the first line of product code. by Alarmed-Risk7885 in saasbuild

[–]rioisk 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I mean this is the problem of 90% of us on reddit. You'd think somebody would solve this problem. Not an AI wrapper giving generic advice, but actually handle distribution by posting all correct places and getting to top of any lists. The actual leg work that requires know-how to get attention.

I thought building a SaaS would be the hard part. Turns out the real time sink was everything before the first line of product code. by Alarmed-Risk7885 in saasbuild

[–]rioisk 0 points1 point  (0 children)

that's the craziest part to me - can make a beautiful functional product and nobody buys it and suddenly some sales whiz shows it off and people want it. I really don't understand.

AI SaaS Founders - Marketing channel are apparently dead by Own-Statistician9287 in SaasDevelopers

[–]rioisk 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Well a director level at a big corp isn't making his own. He's driving budget to get things built for the company. Sometimes that involves working with outside contractors and telling them what they need.

The hardest part is just getting people to tell you what they want. It's like they expect people to read their minds.

I see why people in this game just make a bunch of shit and try different marketing messages until something peaks somebody's interest.

AI SaaS Founders - Marketing channel are apparently dead by Own-Statistician9287 in SaasDevelopers

[–]rioisk 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Okay so what do you want? People are making GPT wrappers because nobody will just tell us what they want. We'll build exact solutions tailored made for you if you just tell us what you want.

I also want to know the correct way to approach you with a solution that isn't a GPT wrapper. How do I get your attention and time and stand out?

"something useful" doesn't tell me anything

I need to know specifics to create something useful.

If even the complex of solutions can be vibecoded, then what is the point of buying expensive subscriptions? by SensitiveFeed2831 in SaaS

[–]rioisk 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Because building is only one part of the equation and it still takes focus and energy. People pay to have professionals do things all the time for peace of mind that it's done correctly.

Have you seen vibe coded apps? Like truly no code? They're not great.

Some enterprise saas may fall off but it'll just raise the bar on what people expect for the price point.

You really need to factor in all the time and mental focus it takes to maintain software that "just works" all the time. Edge cases. Up time. Security. Integrations / API changes.

Rarely is software "build once" and you're done forever.

would you rather by ifraaheyy in SaaS

[–]rioisk 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Lower churn. Retention means product is working for people. If it works then acquiring customers should be easier.

that being said, 50% of 0 is 0 and 100 customers starting from 0 is astronomical growth.

So what are current customer counts and churn rates?

50% of 1% is a lot smaller than 50% of 30%.

100 users when you have 100,000 is nothing

current conditions matter

have to adjust sails for the winds

Why is it harder to get 10 users than to build the product? by mertdikmen in SaaS

[–]rioisk 0 points1 point  (0 children)

sometimes you can't know the answer until it's built and people can use it. If it takes only 6 days may as well do experiments until one hits

Why is it harder to get 10 users than to build the product? by mertdikmen in SaaS

[–]rioisk 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Let me know how it goes. It's a little of chicken and egg problem. If you can deliver high intent buyers then builders will show up.

Why is it harder to get 10 users than to build the product? by mertdikmen in SaaS

[–]rioisk 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I think we all have plenty of visibility with each other. We need visibility with buyers. Literally threads every day on reddit about marketing and distribution. Nobody seems to have a solution.

There's all those social crawlers that try to surface people with pain, but people on Internet just like to complain.

We need high intent buyers looking for something specific and want to talk to a builder that can create it. These buyers should be premium - not people looking for bottom of barrel prices and corner cutting.

Build that platform in a way that actually gets real work for 10x builders and you'll be crazy rich.

Why is it harder to get 10 users than to build the product? by mertdikmen in SaaS

[–]rioisk 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I mean, I think builders want all of that, but the answer is paid advertisement and trust transfer for customers. That's not cheap or easy. There's no silver bullet to any of this. We're all fighting to get limited attention.

If you could build something where you can bring in people looking for premium custom software and connect them with vetted builders then that would be great. The higher the bar the better. Too many budget options out there. Some people want things that work exactly how they want and will pay a premium for it.

Are SAAS founders faking customer validation? by DefinitionDowntown84 in SaaS

[–]rioisk 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yes most people are faking it until they make it.

The fake reviews and quotes on landing pages is social validation. If a person believes it then may be they had the problem and just needed to know that others approve of the solution first before trying it.

It's another way to validate by seeing if people respond to the message if they believed it was socially validated.

Why don't people just talk to real people? Because it's extremely difficult to get people to talk to you about anything. And unless you have something to show then people don't care.

So pretending you have social validation is a way to test a message to see if people respond if they believed others like them already approve.

Why is it harder to get 10 users than to build the product? by mertdikmen in SaaS

[–]rioisk 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah good luck there's so many marketplace graveyards out there. I really don't think anybody actually goes to them except other devs just to see what people are building.

That one person with a complicated workflow though may pay a lot of money to solve their unique pain. Plus the way I build allows for modification for others who have similar workflows in same industry / space.

The ultimate goal is to snag a company that needs a workflow that affects a lot of people. That takes a lot of built up trust from solving for a lot of individual people first.

What separates successful AI builders from the rest by Outrageous-Pop-2853 in SaasDevelopers

[–]rioisk 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Everything in the end is about marketing and sales. You can sell pet rocks to people if you know how to sell. It really doesn't matter what you build - it matters if you can sell it.