I do have a question. How do you go about finding a programmer for your SaaS businesses? We’ve been hiring out projects, but we feel we need a fulltime programmer that’s apart of the team, but are struggling to find one. Any advice?

I know you say that content marketing has been your best acquisition channel bc of your target market (online marketers). Do you think investing in content would be good for getting in front of SMBs? Would a blog make sense or other content designed to provide value like white papers, case studies etc?

Thanks!

Does content marketing only work long term?

Hiten – My question is less about the actual management of your SaaS and more about management of life. I’ve been following your content for quite some time and it appears you have been able to achieve work-life integration fairly well. Between business ownership, mentoring, investing, friends and family; how do you do it all? Do you block off your weekends or evenings? Do you manage one biz and Neil the other? How do you make time for the family? I’ve learned lots on this from folks like Rand Fiskin, Brad Feld and Mark Suster – Would love to hear your take as well..

https://www.myeasydocs.com

Our SaaS rips verification admin cost out for institutions and it’s free for them. It’s patented, reduces freud, it’s weeks faster than what they do now and it sits next to whatever paper system they’ve used for centuries as an option. The individual user pays – less than they would using existing “quill & ink” systems – but the challenge we always face is it’s FREE for the institutions so the value proposition is not attached to any of their pain points, except in rare and unique situations, it’s simply great for students / visa applicants. The bureacrats don’t necessarily see a clear reason to adopt (believe it or not…). The ones that adopt LOVE it but during a cold presentation I never get the value prop positioning correct.

Hiten, my question is how do you walk into a room full of old school baby boomer academics, some of which don’t even know what SaaS stands for, and bring everyone up to speed with the benefits of the SaaS model in a clear, concise way? i.e. Do you have a battle tested analogy that works across generations? I feel that if I can do this more effectively and efficiently I can then position myeasydocs to better effect but maybe I’m approaching this incorrectly? Thanks for any and all forthcoming. Will definitely be following!

Really loved it – Actually interviewed Neil on my podcast a few weeks ago too!

My question(s) for hiten :

My first SAAS company is 95% of the way to completion and launching it’s MVP. I’m the idea/marketing/business entrepreneur (not a coder). We’ll be launching it on a budget of under $6-8k but it has not been coded from scratch because we do not have the budget for it currently. So hired a very small scale development team to roll something out. The MVP is extremely usable and has already attracted a lot of attention within its industry.

So my question is, at what stage do we decide to re-build the platform from scratch from the ground up before we stop supporting the current MVP and/or make the transition?Do we aim to keep spending money on supporting/building the MVP – or aim to migrate and re-build asap?

Do we wait for the revenue to hit $xx/look for investors so we can afford to hire a developer to re-build our concept from scratch or rather give away xx% of the business in return for a coder?

Would love your insight on this!

Great Blog @alex_turnbull:disqus. We actually just signed up with Groove for this example I’m talking about – looking forward to it!

We’ve created a product (https://elev.io) that we know can produce better results and lower support costs for site owners than using a standard knowledge base by making it contextual (among other awesome features), however part of convincing people of the benefits is also telling them that what they are currently doing is wrong.

How can we convey this message while not upsetting people, and telling them they’ve invested time and effort into something we can do better?

I think for a lot of us, it would be nice to get some feedback on how you start from $0 to $1,000, $2,500, $5,000. Basically to first reach the survival threshold on your own.

For solo-entrepreneurs like me, without funding, it’d be very valuable to know how you survived the first few months, when you’re between the idea stage and a beta. Some of us (including myself) are not seeking outside investors and in the beginning, there is no team involved, for a lack of resources. A DIY startup for the lack of better words.

It’s still a mystery for me to start from 0 subscribers to my first 1,000. I know it probably sounds very low-results but that’s my point. I understand everything you’re saying and they all make a lot of sense when I’ll be there but for now, this is not the case. I have to remain modest and accept what there is today.

Thanks again for all the great content,
– Vincent