News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

saas_startup

Re:Shatner is making an album with 35 metal icons on Monday February 23, 2026 @08:15PM (#47131573)
Captain Kirk is climbing a mountain, why is he climbing a mountain ?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HU2ftCitvyQ

Having a well paid side-hustle while working in tech leadership

I have been running a side-hustle SaaS for the last 7 years that has finally reached mid 6 figures. I am in a niche so further growth is unlikely. My time commitment is probably 10h a week (weekends) and I have one employee.I do have a full-time career as a tech exec with mid 6 figures as well and maybe on the path to low 7 in the next 5 years.I generally love to work and don't plan to stop, I...

( Read More... | 1 comment | 2 points | on HN )
Re:Ask HN: One-person SaaS apps that are profitable? on Sunday October 05, 2025 @10:18AM (#45481669)
For us a its a mix of word of mouth, cold emailing, AdWords and Reddit. At the beginning I also did cold calling. Some of the cold calling clients are still with us after 6 years! We are B2B so TAM is quite small.

Ask HN: For those who build a successful side-hustle, what was your next move

I have been running a side-hustle SaaS for the last several years that is finally going to reach mid 6 figures over the next year. I am in a niche so further growth is unlikely. My time commitment is probably 10h a week (weekends). I do have a full-time career as a tech exec with mid 6 figures as well and maybe on the path to low 7 in the next 5 years. I generally love to work and don't plan to...

( Read More... | no comments | 3 points | on HN )
Re:Ask HN: Books about lifelong engineering/technology career on Sunday February 09, 2025 @10:55PM (#42996768)
Those are really good :) Already ordered, thank you!

Ask HN: Books about lifelong engineering/technology career

I am looking for books/blogs that cover a lifelong career in technology (or engineering). Most of the materials typically focus on singular engineering achievement (building Apple I/II (like iWoz) or sending a rocket to the moon (any books about Von Braun) rather than focusing how one builds a life-long career.The closest I ever found was a post by Will Larson:...

( Read More... | 4 comments | 2 points | on HN )
Re:The Surreal Magnificence of Fatherhood on Sunday December 08, 2024 @12:09PM (#42358309)
There is a high societal expectation that fatherhood (or motherhood) should look like the one in this article. Having had 2 babies in the last 5 years and observing most of our friends going through parenthood in the last 5+ years I think this is a very biased view that does not reflect reality.

My sample might be a bit biased as most our friends are PhD educated and in Tech or Academia.

My own observations:

- I was not terribly interested in our kids between ages of 0 - 2. This does not mean I did not fully participate in their life, but this was a muscle I had to exercise. I went to therapy as I thought I was somehow broken because thats not how people should feel. What I learned is that feelings are much more common than it is widely accepted.

- Once they started to speak, ask questions, and being more emotionally regulated it became very different. At this point I spend more time with my kids than my wife and generally love spending time with them, its almost effortless. Explaining things, buildings legos, became one of my favourite activities.

- Having daily help (live in nanny, live in grandparents) is an enormous help both from kids and relationship perspective. Seems like a trivial thing but if you do not have live in help you are likely to never be alone again as a couple for more than 24h (i.e. you can't go on a short trip).

Observations about my friends:

- Trying for a baby and being unsuccessful for years or going through multiple miscarriages can make couples extremely sad. You can reduce this risk by trying early.

- If your mental health is not amazing before kids it is likely get worse. This is about functional people that have mild mental health problems. Two of our friends developed severe mental health problems that in one case ended in a divorce and in second case multiple years of unemployment (father who was not primary care giver). This were generally reasonable people that sought mental health help from both therapy and medicine perspective.

- The societal expectations that women should be super excited about motherhood is not always true. Within our friends group probably 50% women are less involved in raising their kids than fathers. Some (reluctantly) admitted that they don't really like how motherhood negatively affected their job prospects, bodies and mental health.

- If you do happen to get divorce with young kids it is likely going to be a life changing event. Situation has to be pretty bad to get divorce with young kids so most likely you will be better off but from the two cases we have seen this typically means severe financial burden and inability to sustain long term relationship afterwards. If you are a women and somehow loose custody there is also going to be pretty severe societal judgement against you even in very progressive locations.

It may sound as a little bit depressing view of parenthood but this is more reality check for those reading only the bright side. Overall, I am extremely happy we have kids and our relationship is stronger than it was before but thats not the case for everyone and it required work.

Ask HN: Side Project on Resume

I am currently at a director level and looking for a VP role. Over the last two years I have successfully founded a profitable SaaS business. My company is aware of the project and this is not an issue.My question is to those at VP level whether I should be listing this project on my resume/LinkedIn. This is not compliance/IP question as if needed I can sell my shares. This is rather an optics...

( Read More... | no comments | on HN )
Re:Ask HN: Will getting a PhD lead to a more interesting life? on Monday September 30, 2019 @01:16PM (#21117536)
TL;DR: For me personally Ph.D. has been the greatest decision I have ever made.

I am not going to cover the typical discussion regarding the diminished lifelong earnings of Ph.D graduates as I don't think everyone is optimizing their life 100% around money. If that's the case I would recommend looking holistically including choice of life partner and their earning potential as well where you live and the job market there.

I have a PhD in Computer Science from one of the top 5 schools in the world and Masters from unknown university in a medium size city.

Through the years I have struggled with being an outlier at my unknown university where people did not understand my passion for CS. I took part in open source projects, went to meetups and read tons of CS books just to satisfy my curiosity. at the same time there was nobody I could talk to regarding my passion.

When I entered Ph.D this turned out to be the greatest social experience ever. Almost all my current friends I have met during Ph.D. They are geeks in their own respective area (CS, Chemistry, Biology, Social Science, Theatre studies) and we can talk for hours about our research which never happened with me before. I met my life partner there and chances of finding of someone who I can talk to about theorem proving in a "normal" world are close to zero. On top of it she also understands the value of hard work and long hours I commit to work which has always been a struggle with my partners from general population.

Now the bad parts. You should expect that Ph.D. is a long and lonely journey that you have to execute by yourself. You are likely to go for months without any tangible results and you need to be happy with that. I did not suffer any mental health problems during the Ph.D. but they were fairly common between my friends due to pressure to publish and loneliness of the pursuit. If during Masters you are already dealing with some anxiety Ph.D. may not be enjoyable. In the end all my friends turned out fine and graduated but expect ups/down during the process.

Ask HN: Monetizing Website Guests

I am running a website with a high producer to consumer ratio. I am currently monetizing on the producer side through monthly subscription. On the consumer side I am unable to show ads but I am gathering quite a lot of information in terms of what consumers are looking at which are typically high value goods in a particular city (exotic cars). Is there a way for me to monetize on this information?

( Read More... | no comments | on HN )
Re:Ask HN: Business insurance for SaaS startup on Saturday February 09, 2019 @11:06PM (#19126319)
What are cost for GL, E&O and Cyber I could be looking at?

I doubt we need cyber as the only information we store that is not public is their name and email address, though this is typically available on their website as they are artists.

Ask HN: Business insurance for SaaS startup

We are starting to offer our SaaS product to the clients. We incorporated a company and I am looking at what other things we should be getting.The largest possible risk for us is that in a freak accident all our databases get wiped out and the clients need to go back to paper-based process or use another vendor. The service we offer costs $100 a month. I assume in first year we will make $20k...

( Read More... | 6 comments | 13 points | on HN )

Ask HN: My SaaS startup is getting a partner, how much I should charge them?

I started an SaaS startup that is aimed at very specific hosting for civil engineers. I do have a basic product but to have something ready to general public I need additional 6 months and input from the engineers. The current costs of running the software are very low (~$100 a month). I developed the project in my evenings so there is not fixed cost there either.I am talking to one engineering...

( Read More... | 2 comments | 2 points | on HN )