Ask HN: Is it finally time to quit?

Hint: people in academia are struggling. And they re not really used to paying for online services (i mean, hell they are giving their work away for free). That's why all the saas startups are targetting the cash-rich startups. You might want to think of an alternative funding model. Or maybe that the project is unmonetizable, but the experience will make your next project so much easier to build

Thanks. You're probably right. Academics are probably not a good target market.

Math professor here, at a large public US university. I think that academia presents a large, but challenging, market. My university has recently purchased huge amounts of software, not all of it of high quality.

Two questions for you:

(1) Who are the people whom you hope will buy your product? What positions do they hold? Are they professors? Administrators? Something else?

(2) Of these people, where will the money to buy your product come from?

For example, if it aids research, then it might come from individual professors' NSF or NIH grants. These can be large, and they are at individual faculty members' discretion. But they tend to require a lot of advance planning.

If it aids teaching, then you probably need to sell to an entire university at once. Department budgets tend to be meager, and the money is often spoken for in advance.

In any case, budgets tend to be idiosyncratic. It might be that your target audience is willing in principle to pay for your software, but that there is no suitable pipeline of money.

I recommend this website

https://academia.stackexchange.com/

to get a further sense of how academia "works", to whatever extent you don't already know.

Best of luck to you.

Thankyou. 1. My target is researchers in psychology, sociology, and similar fields.

2. I've tried to price the product so that the individual could make a discretionary purchase (have discussed the pricing with quite a few people with positive responses). The simplest plan is $480 per year and the next plan up is $780 and comes with a second account for an RA or student. I only need a couple of hundred users to be quite comfortable and successful do from done number crunching at the beginning I was pretty confident that that was a small % of TAM.

So far the software been used for both research and teaching but the teaching part was an unexpected bonus.

Thanks very much for the thoughtful reply. Excuse my terse response as I'm typing on a phone.

You might try to contact William Stein. He is a former academic (tenured professor at the University of Washington) that was the lead developer for SageMath, an open source product which he's tried to commercialize along vaguely similar lines. He's now working on a project called CoCalc, which I know less about.

Unfortunately, my impression is that he's had some bad luck, despite a fantastic product, and also despite being 100% an insider whom many research mathematicians personally know and deeply admire. Last I heard, he found us a difficult market to sell to.

Maybe his luck has turned around, I certainly hope so. I see him participate on HN every once in awhile. His email address is wstein@gmail.com (not private -- I merely saved you two seconds of googling), and perhaps he would be willing to share his advice.

One further thought. I am in mathematics, which is not the same as psychology or sociology, so take this with a grain of salt. That said ---

I think your pricing plan is wrong. Don't price based on a subscription model. Instead, sell your software outright, perhaps include more licenses (e.g. for all students and postdocs under the PI's direct supervision), and charge closer to $3-5K for it.

Here is why. First I recommend this entertaining article by Joel Spolsky on how to price software:

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2004/12/15/camels-and-rubber-...

The idea is the same, and the details are totally different. In academia, funding tends to be feast or famine.

I would never buy software that cost $480 per year. I'd be too scared that my funding source would dry up. Granting agencies and deans are way too capricious. If I got used to it and came to rely on it, I might end up needing to pay out of pocket. Which I'd probably do for $100, but not for $480.

Conversely, when funding does come, it tends to come in larger chunks. For example, my dean has a "small equipment purchase support" program, where I can apply for funding to buy equipment. Never mind the details (I'm not sure if software is covered, and apparently there is a minimum of $5,000, but let's pretend otherwise). If I were going to apply for $500, then I may as well apply for $5,000 instead. It's same amount of work, my chances are roughly as good. Looks the same to me, puts 10x as much food on your table.

An even better source of money is expiring grants. Often, if you haven't spent a source of grant money by a certain date, it goes away. So researchers will say to themselves "Shit. I have $7,000 I need to spend within the next three weeks. Is there anything I can justify spending it on?" If you're in the right room at the right time, then you will get $X, where X is the price of your software, as long as it is less than however much money they have left. At least in my field, somewhere in the low to mid four figures would probably maximize your expected value.

Good luck!

Thanks (for both replies)! I do have a lab plan as well (6 transferable accounts at $2460 per year) but as you've pointed out, that isn't a one off cost. The problem I have with the one-time purchase is recurring costs for storage, hosting, etc. as it's a web based SaaS. Nevertheless, excellent advice... I'm going to have to start researching my options on one-time pricing. Thankyou!

If you build it, they won't necessarily come; as you're seeing now.

I think you need to stop development. Don't put another minute into dev work until you've found someone to pay for this.

Sometimes it's helpful and motivating to approach the first few sales in a completely non sustainable way. Don't try to establish a customer acquisition funnel - try to find one single person willing to pay.

It sounds like your December 31 users are a good place to start. Send each one of them an email and give them an incentive to renew before the accounts expire. Offer them a discount or something for every referral they bring in for a trial or as a new customer or a discount that is a bit higher for every trial day they have left so people feel an urgency to move on it now. Try to convert ONE trial customer into a paid customer over the next three or four weeks. If you fail, it's not your software, it's your sales and marketing skills. Take that as a hint that you might need to bring in a new person to do that for you.

It sounds like you're quite adept at building product but it's not a business yet. It's time to stop building and learn to convince people to part with their money. Building a better tool isn't enough. You have to build a better tool, educate them on why its worth it, eliminate their reasons not to buy, and then ask them to take action.

I recommend taking a break and then consider bringing in some outside expertise. Someone who knows how to sell online.

Nobody builds an empire alone. It just can't be done.

Whatever you do though don't be discouraged.

It cost me a $200,000 investment to learn this lesson - the longer you spend building something without convincing someone to open their wallet the more risk that you could be building something nobody wants.

Once I emotionally recovered from that failure, my next project started with a very tiny goal: earn $150 within two weeks on a new idea to afford motorcycle Insurance.

My approach meant that I spent literally all my time on marketing, and developed the product I was selling specifically for my first customer. That also means the scope was super small.

The experiment was a big success, and over the next two years I had trained 5 contractors to keep the machine running while I focused on finding people who wanted to pay someone to solve their problem.

I couldn't have been comfortable trying to sell the absolute bare minimum product as fast as possible without being very familiar with the pain of spending years on a product that nobody wanted.

Either you start getting excited about learning how to sell it, or you start looking for one of those people.

Thanks very much. I agree.

Thanks for this. Great advice.

If you weren't sounding so tired and burned out I would recommend that you double down on marketing and promoting. I wouldn't give up until I had given it a good flogging! But, if you're burned out you're going to find that difficult and probably it won't work with that kind of mindset. Either farm out the marketing to a new partner or wait and do it yourself but either way take a few months off!

Thanks. I do need to market hard. I think I need a break and then do as you suggest. Thanks.

You can start by providing link here. It might help.

Thanks for the suggestion but I don't think it's appropriate right now.

Are you being too nice not posting a link (or maybe you have a technical reason)? I was a little hurt when a friend said I wouldn’t be a good business man as I wasn’t cut throat enough. My friend wasn’t being entirely wise but there was a little truth in there.

I have been selling a subscription service to schools now for 10 years, enough for me to work part-time on the project. Biggest leap in customers I had was through an educational fare. It cost about £6000 to exhibit if I remember.

You know its time to quit when you:

1) Need the money that comes from a day job.

2) No longer like the work you are doing, and can afford to stop doing it.

3) Can think of something better to do.

For me I was working very hard on something I enjoyed but nobody else cared about. I needed money, so I went and got a day job. If I didn't need money, I would have kept doing my project.

Thanks.

I'm now buried so deep in this domain it feels like it's supposed to be a long term career. I enjoy my work and it's the best and most valuable (IMO) work I've ever produced.

We don't _need_ the money as we live a very simple life, but not being able to earn a living is having an effect on my self-esteem.

Good luck to you!! If you are willing to risk the peoject, you could go after revenue more aggressively.

If it works, great! If it doesn't work, the consequence will be based on how deeply you care about this project and if you can just transfer your skills to something new or not.

Wishing you the best :)

It almost sounds like you're experiencing a kind of post-partum depression.

I would recommend that you not "quit", but rather "step back." If you've launched the project, and it's being used, then how much more do you really need to do?

You must have monitoring that you can check occasionally, so maybe you can just let the thing simmer[0] for a while. Take your mind off it, do some other stuff that you enjoy, then take a look at your logs in December. The watched pot and all that.

[0] https://chefmimiblog.com/a-basic-omelet/

Thankyou.

Perhaps I am a bit burnt out. It's practically dominated my waking life for the past 3.5 years. Maybe I should have a break.

You'rewelcome. :)

You know one thing that's helped me live a more balanced life (I think) has been exploring the lessons of the tarot deck. I just pulled the 10 of wands, and thought of you.

This site has some good interpretations: http://learntarot.org/

Agree with @buboard below that academics likely aren't the right target audience.

Before giving up, I recommend testing two paths to validate whether there's real opportunity or not.

1. User Research: if you haven't already, reach out to your user base to get real input and guidance from them on how they use the tool, the value they see in it, how they would promote it and what $ they would pay for it log-term. I recommend doing this a 1:1 conversations on a platform like Zoom so you can chat live and record the conversation for further review. You'll likely uncover some gems on positioning, utility and organic marketing opps. You'll be surprised how much people love to participate in these kinds of sessions as it's a validation for them and stroked the ego a little bit.

I would lead with a personal email invite asking for the time. If that doesn't work you can always default to a survey.

2. Rethink the solution. Take academics out of the picture and strip back to the basic functionality, features and solution you provide. What are other verticals or user audiences that could benefit from it? What are competitive companies doing in that space that you could improve on or offer something totally different?

3. Bonus thought...look back at your competition. What are they doing that's driving their success? Sure, they make have an inferior product from your POV, but they're doing something right to be winning. What are they doing that's winning? Can you emulate that at all as another final validation on the vertical and audience?

Good luck!

Thankyou. Plenty of good advice there.

Absolutely, happy to help. Feel free to ping me if you have any more questions.

Is it me or is there a worryingly large amount of these kinds of posts. Where people feel tired, lost or straight out depressed.

I don't see this that often on designer or some other professional forums.

I am not complaining, I am just worried is there some underlying problem with this profession? We are worried about technical debt accumulates in our codebase, we might forget about social debt that accumulates in our life.

i think everyone over ~35ish is quietly desperate in a corporate job (not just tech people). The fact that there are now more opportunities for remote/self-employment may make more people turn to it

That's true. I suppose some professions do not have propers venues and forums to vent their frustrations.

There's definitely a trend though, it could be that this is the first wave of internet age IT professional hitting mid-life crisis.

It would depend somewhat on if you can conclude there is absolutely no one (or not enough people) who are willing and able to pay money for what you have made. And also if you need to earn money again soon to live off.

Is there any avenues to find out from the market why they are not buying. I'd suggest calling everyone who was on the trial and interviewing them. Come up with a set of questions that is to discover why they didn't buy. Maybe they loved it but couldn't get approval? Maybe they were just trying out because they liked you or are friends but the product doesn't really solve a problem for them?

I'd give it a deadline (3 months). Spent that time trying to proving beyond any doubt the product is a failure so you can finally scrap it. If it isn't a dud then use the information to form a plan to sell your solution to people. Also keep an eye out for a pivot.

Thanks. I'll be doing some interviews. Good advice, thanks.

I feel for you. I have been there as well. I knew it was time to quit when I found out exactly why the idea wouldn’t work after taking to multiple people in the industry and seeing it in real life.

So, my question to you is, do you still think you idea will work? If so, take a break and come back to it in a few weeks and continue to try. You need more feedback form people that will give it to your straight.

You already have a product so actively find the reason why just having a better product won’t work. If you need someone to talk to, I can give you more insight.

If you're saying you launched in July, that's like a couple of months. The three years before doesn't matter, I mean it seems like a mistake, should have launched something after 2-3 months but in any case that time is gone. It took over a year after the launch of my SaaS to get the first paying customer. Need to find a way to market to these academics.

Thanks. You're right.

You quit when the problem is solved where you find you don't care enough about the problem. And if you allow yourself to feel the pain of the problem you remember why you want to keep working.

you mention psychology and sociology researchers but can you be more specific about the the pain point they're dealing with?

"Build something that people want." It really is the best advice ever.

Maybe more specifically helpful, I would figure out a pivot. I bet there's an idea that can build on the work you have so you're not throwing away all that work. But, even if you are, better to do so sooner than later, if no one is using it.

That's what I thought I was doing. Seriously. I talked to so many people that had the same problem. Over and over again, throughout the entire process. I've talked prices, solutions, everything with both people I know and people I don't from students to RA's to professors.

The SV cliche of "get cash from them before building" wouldn't wash in this niche and I wouldn't have been comfortable taking money for such an extended period of time whilst creating the product.

Having said that, there are competitors (who I think I have a competitive advantage over) and many OS/free/self-hosted alternatives (still missing the competitive advantage).

I don't know if I just need to get well known (most people in the niche probably don't know we exist) before I can even make a sale or what. Perhaps I need my content to mature?

I just don't know any more.

Thanks for the advice!

Based on my friends who are in academia, money might be a serious problem for people. Even something better than other tools.

(however, let's see what happens when their free accounts come to an end on December 31st)

Set a deadline and set some goals for financial objectives. Start prioritizing monetization.

If you can't meet those goals, then go get a job or do what you need to do to take care of yourself financially.

Thanks.

> niche academic domain

> Officially launched in July and everything has gone silent

Of course I can’t tell whether it is a significant factor, but July and August and even early September aren’t the busiest months in academia.

Thankyou. I had forgotten that when I posted. The US is my main target market and it is the quiet time of year.

Can you bring in someone with marketing/biz dev chops? You've hit a dip, it sounds like someone new to the project with fresh eyes could give you and the product a boost.

i think tech is great career starting point but you should look to ‘exit’ at some point - take skills you’ve developed and apply them to a different field.

I've done that somewhat with this venture. Sure there's plenty of tech involved but it's also made me a domain expert in this (non-tech) niche (to the point of writing journal articles).

Perhaps I need to turn my career now to marketing as another commenter has suggested.