Predictable Mistakes of the Developer - Summary
Tags: laravel, php, saas
Published: 2023-08-09 01:14:52

This is a summary of Ben Orstein Talk at Laracon US 2023, totally recommended talk for developers:


## Mistake 1 - Starting with SaaS

There are much more than code, like marketing, figure out what to build, sales things, learn all these at least at competitive level is hard... instead "sell something free".

##### Sell something Free

Growth an audience, a large group of people that trust on your work, became an expert in "xyz" technology is useful & create free content.

##### Sell one-time purchase

People resist a $5 dollar subscription more than something that costs hundreds of dollars a month.

Design a one-time purchase product will teach you about marketing, about sales & product design, while you are getting the skills to create a product that people actually paying, before enter to the hardest level with a SaaS.

##### Sell Something with Built-in Distribution

Sell something in a place with search engine, like app stores, plugin/extension stores, they handle billing for you, you have to give a cut to these platforms, but they handle the complexity for you as well.

## Mistake 2 - Pick a bad idea

Execution is important, but if you pick a wrong idea it would be hard to succeed, as developers we are week in evaluating the quality of an idea and tend to misjudge how much a business will pay.

## Mistake #3 - Sell to consumers & cheap businesses

Sell to businesses, they care about solving problems and the scale at wich they are willing to throw money at them who successfully have them solved will kind of blow your mind.

## Mistake #4 - Assuming competitors own the market

If there are competitors is a good sign, if you think about an idea and there are zero competitors probably you are wrong, in general you want to sell something that people are already buying.

Some people like Slack and other people like Discord, even when both do the same but, feel different. 

## Mistake #5 Not read "The Mom Test" book

Start by validating the idea and avoid feedback from people that would be care about hurting your feelings, instead of code for 9 months in a cave.

## Mistake #6 Not Selling Vaporware

If you cannot sell a dreamed piece of software when is perfect described by you, you probably cannot sell the real software.

## Mistake #7 Assuming that people are rational

Sometimes people do not buy by logic, do not assumed that something would be buy just because it would save time or money.

## Mistake #8 Not choosing a customer you like & Not niche down

You almost can not be too specific about it.

## Mistake #9 Not collecting Emails

It is better than twitter followers or youtube subscribers they help to make the business work, many companies have selling peaks when they send emails.

## Mistake #10 Be confortable with your pricing

If you feel confortable your pricing would probably is too low, people and businesses have different mindsets, a good starting point for a SaaS is $50 dollars.

## Mistake #11 Building anything that you have not been asked for

No Reset Password, No need fancy features, is so easy to overcomplicate an app, slim things as much as you can, you are going much faster and avoid mistakes.

## Mistake #12 Raise VC

If you are not building the next generational company just avoid this.

## Mistake #13 Worrying about taxes

In early days it wont kill your business, you can always come back and paid even with a penalty it would not kill your business, not building a product that people care about would kill it.

## Mistake #14 Doing it alone

You really need co-founders, being a solo entrepreneur is taking the hardest part of the game in the hardest mode.


## Mistake #15 Not finding peers

Go to different events with people that try to start software businesses, you can build a network with amazing people, it makes the journey more fun.

## There is a sequel...

There would be a second article about, templates to create a business, hope it helps and as always thanks for reading!