My solo entrepreneur journey so far | Hacker News Reader

My solo entrepreneur journey so far

5 pointsFlowCog18 comments

Last week I launched my startup called FlowCog, it's a fully pre-built cash and revenue projection model in Google Sheets.

I built everything myself, from the spreadsheet, to the Node/TypeScript accompanying Google Sheet Add-On. It took me about 11 months to build the spreadsheet, and to write and test the code that simulates staffing and customer behavior.

Oh, and I also livestreamed myself doing it on Twitch the whole time (handle is Here_for_the_life_lessons).

Now on to the hard part of selling it. There's a 14 day free trial, so any feedback on the website/product is much appreciated!

- Adam

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Looks like a useful product! I think it's neat how you built it directly on Google Sheets. I'd love to hear more about why you made that decision (versus building an independent tool).

Some feedback on the landing page:

- Would be nice with a 2-3 minute demo video

- Put the screenshots (or demo video) closer to the top, so they're visible without scrolling

- Some of the copywriting could be clearer. For example: "Pre-built financial models for SaaS companies, with plug-and-play software built directly in Google Sheets" could be just "Financial models for SaaS companies, directly in Google Sheets"

I think building it in Google Sheets is important because finance folks are comfortable with it and (if needed) can customize it to suit their needs. It's also hard to replicate Google Sheet's collaboration features like edit history on individual cells, real-time updates, comments/suggestions etc.

- A demo video is a great idea, I'll get started on that this week.

- Screenshots/video closer to the top is a good idea too, think maybe I need an image in the hero.

- Good point on the copy, I'll have to revisit this.

Really appreciate the suggestions!

Makes sense – Google Sheets is a great tool. No problem!

> I also livestreamed myself doing it on Twitch the whole time (handle is Here_for_the_life_lessons).

Suggest embedding a video of on the site.

Beyond the product/service offering— People buy from individuals the Know, Like, and Trust.

You’ve got a great story to share. Cheering you on!

Great point I'll definitely consider this, thanks!

Like the hustle and documenting everything while doing it! Great job also on the website. Quick question though. Aren't there other tools which SaaS companies/CFO's use to solve this problem?

Really appreciate it! There are other tools, but a couple of the features that stand out are:

- onboarding simplicity to get up and running quickly. I created a 10 question onboarding form for the user, and from those responses I infer a company persona to pre-fill all the model's inputs based on SaaS industry benchmarks.

- simulations for projecting a range of revenue outcomes. These simulations incorporate a bunch of the model's inputs to produce an expected distribution of outcomes based on customer behavior. Even models that split out customers into cohorts don't capture the actual risk to the business if there's lots of churn in a month. They also don't capture the interaction between hiring plans (in reality many are based on revenue) and how those hires themselves affect revenue along the way (i.e. hiring in the sales department).

Kudos on the launch. The website looks good. Just curious, did you have prior financial experience?

Yes I'm a CPA and was most recently director of finance at Stack Overflow. I've also done financial modeling consulting work over the years for many companies.

That's great. I recently started building something similar (although more rudimentary) for a community that I run in Austin. I'd love to connect and discuss more offline, if you're interested. What's a good way to reach you?

Absolutely! I added my email to my profile.

Thanks. For some reason, I'm unable to see your email in the profile (guess I need more karma or something), so I sent a LinkedIn request.

I'm not your target customer, but the website looks nice

Thanks, really appreciate that!

No problem! I wish you the best and hope you find success

Link?

https://flowcog.com

and https://www.twitch.tv/here_for_the_life_lessons

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