The SaaS Playbook

What Hacker News says

1. bpiromanOct 2024
   The Saas Playbook! Also includes a lot of good references for further reading
   thread
2. christiangencoJun 2024
   Congrats on launching! Most people who have an idea for a project like this never build it. Most people who build their projects never launch them. You're doing great!

   Something that rattled me several times when releasing my own projects like this is that once I released my thing I'd expect people to start using it. Most of the time, after I built things nobody cared. I felt really discouraged and would try working on something else to see if people might start using the new thing, but the same thing would happen.

   What I've come to realize is that building things is its own skillset distinct from the skill of figuring out what needs to be built which is distinct from the skill of telling people about it. I wasn't (and still am not great) at the last two, but I've been working towards getting better at it by practicing things like:

   - talking to customers like a researcher (ie: without asking leading questions like "do you like it?"). Deploy Empathy and The Mom Test were great resources for this.

   - figuring out where potential customers hang out online, what their problems are, and how they talk about them. 30x500 was a great resource for me here.

   - learning an explore/exploit system for marketing to figure out how to build machines that take in a dollar and spit out more than a dollar. Traction by Gabriel Weinberg is the best resource I've found here so far.

   For a good overview of the whole system of building profitable SaaS businesses I've recently really enjoyed The SaaS Playbook by Rob Walling.

   Show morethread
3. kohanzMar 2024
   I recommend The SaaS Playbook: Build a Multimillion Dollar Startup Without Venture Capital by Rob Walling.
   thread
4. el_benhameenNov 2023
   I haven’t done it myself so I can’t speak from experience, but Rob Walling’s book “The SaaS Playbook” has a whole chapter on hiring and building a team. I found it insightful. The whole thing is a quick read/listen and I thought it was worth my time.
   thread
5. el_benhameenSep 2023
   I’ll second this advice, and add that he recently released a new book, “The SaaS Playbook”. It has a lot of concrete advice for the kinds of issues OP is asking about. Never met Rob and not getting anything out of the recommendation; I just really enjoyed the book.
   thread
6. vanschelvenMay 2025
   A tough subject. A few thoughts:

   * Know that "pricing is part of the PMF". * What things _did_ you think about so far? * Rob Walling's SaaS playbook has some thoughts on this too

   thread