Ask HN: Founders, do you ever feel like packing it in when things are going ok?

Re:Ask HN: Founders, do you ever feel like packing it in whe... by codegeek on Saturday June 06, 2020 @08:02PM (#23443468)

Yes a lot of time. I run a bootstrapped SAAS of about 15 of us and I think about quitting almost every 2-3 days lol. It is the nature of the beast. This shit is hard. It grinds you down. Oh is it 7 PM ? Guess what, your customer doesn't care. Bam, 6 new support tickets in queue while you wanted to get up and go play with your kids. Ok we can leave them for my support team but wait, 1 is critical and needs attention. oops, I gotta do something. All "employees" are gone for the day. While doing this, I get an angry email from another customer about some crap and why they only want to talk to me, the founder about it. All this when I have 15 people. I can only imagine the plight of solo team founders :).

But then I close my eyes and imagine myself NOT doing this. Oh well, a shitty corporate job where I feel soul less. And right then, I am back to the grind. This is my own shit. I get to decide. I can scale back if I want to. Some days, I can tell the clients to wait 3 hours. Some days, I am just not in the mood and that wouldn't make my boss upset (I have none. Customers can again wait). Just made a new sale. What a feeling. I am back on the high horse. Woohoooo. Rinse and repeat.

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Re:Ask HN: Founders, do you ever feel like packing it in whe... by askafriend on Monday June 08, 2020 @12:59PM (#23458325)

You need to put in place processes that scale. Your current support system doesn't seem like it's scaling well (based on what little context you provided us).

Do the ROI calculations and figure out if you need to hire more. If you can't hire more then you can experiment with a distributed rotational responsibility for that task (Increase pay of your team if needed).

You can put guard rails around the unpredictable.

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Re:Ask HN: Founders, do you ever feel like packing it in whe... by codegeek on Monday June 08, 2020 @01:42PM (#23458759)

Yea its definitely a process issue around support. Trying to solve that issue with a lot of trial and error.

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Re:Ask HN: Founders, do you ever feel like packing it in whe... by quickthrower2 on Saturday June 06, 2020 @08:47PM (#23443698)

If there are 15 of you could there be a rotation of out of hours support?

Also this is where a distributed team might shine - someone will be at work at 7pm.

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Re:Ask HN: Founders, do you ever feel like packing it in whe... by codegeek on Monday June 08, 2020 @01:45PM (#23458785)

Not all 15 can do support. But yea, I hear you. We are already distributed to an extent as well.

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