How we were building the wrong product

Re:How we were building the wrong product by rubidium on Thursday March 10, 2016 @09:59AM (#11259522)

"5 basic events through the Kilometer.io API (website visit, user signup, app visit, user cancel and user billed) so that we can automatically calculate 25 charts and metrics we believe every SaaS company should have."

25 metrics from 5 data sources seems... overkill?

SaaS for Saas companies seems to be a hard market, because the SaaS company is likely to just build what they need themself, no?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:How we were building the wrong product by andorov on Thursday March 10, 2016 @10:30AM (#11259734)

From a similar experience I have found this to be true. Specifically:

  - one size fits all is very difficult to do.  most companies have a critical feature that is unique to them

  - the CEO is likely to view this kind of product as 'trivial', without really considering how much engineering effort it will take / they really need that custom feature.  so yes they build it themselves.

  - very small companies are not comfortable providing 3rd party access to their db

  - larger companies want more than this

  - the selling cost to companies tends to be high enough that going the low cost / high volume route is difficult, quickly driving you into consulting level prices / a more fully featured & tailored product

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:How we were building the wrong product by tarr11 on Thursday March 10, 2016 @10:33AM (#11259751)

Another problem is that for startups, these metrics change all the time. Often you start measuring something to diagnose a problem.

Once you have done that, you don't need to diagnose it any more.

Also, I'm not sure how a few pretty charts help me here.

[ Parent | on HN ]