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Comment by rwhitman | Hacker News Reader

It's 2021. There is very little opportunity left in SaaS that hasn't had mind boggling amounts of investor capital thrown at it. These are your competitors. In every single conceivable niche. Not bootstrapped companies. Venture backed. Millions in capital earmarked for marketing and sales. For things like mattress testing and sushi restaurant POS.

There is no playbook for profitable bootstrapped SaaS in 2021. The winners either have a special secret that they wouldn't share for the world or they're lying about being profitable.. or in most cases the "successes" are simply such amateurs they don't understand basic accounting and believe that "profitable" means "slightly more monthly revenue than the cost of the servers".

If you embark on this be aware, the days of having your own little saas as passive side income are long behind us. This is serious serious stuff now.

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Don’t listen to this negativity. This is absolute narrow minded hogwash. I’ve been part of two profitable-without-outside-investment companies that have started in the last twelve months. The only secrets are to be - or work with, experts in the field, and solve a problem. It’s the usual adage.

An expert can mean you’re qualified in the field or you’ve been in the specific game a long time.

Just make sure it’s a real problem and that you don’t spend months beavering away at your secret project without speaking to people and validating.

Just don’t listen to people like this who tell you the hotels’s full. There’s always space at the Invention Inn.

Good luck.

I think you and the GP comment both have valid points. Being unnecessarily negative gets us nowhere..but I do think for the most part VC funding has made things much much harder for startups that want to bootstrap.

VCs have created a winner takes all mindset. I think this is a net negative to the entire ecosystem.

The costs are 10x more for marketing and sales than it was maybe 10 years ago. Some might say do content marketing, promote on social media etc..these are long term strategies that make zero sense for founders starting from scratch with no following.

The costs for building products have become minuscule but marketing costs have skyrocketed.

I disagree. As a bootstrapped SAAS founder, company makes decent profits and I don't worry too much about Venture Backed competition even though there are plenty. Yes, you cannot compete with VC backed competitors on "growth" numbers but OP asked about Profitable SAAS business which has nothing to do with Venture capital.

"the days of having your own little saas as passive side income are long behind us"

You are so far off. In fact, I think the days of small/profitable/bootstrapped SAAS businesses are just starting. A lot of people are realizing that the glamor of VC is not worth the hassle and if they are looking to create a decent income for themselves with entrepreneurial freedom, it is definitely possible now. In fact, almost everyone expects to pay for subscriptions these days (we can argue whether its good or bad). It is much easier to start a SAAS business today with barrier to entry being so low. Of course, it is extremely hard to get success with it but that's the case with any business.

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