This is the talk I delivered at the 2015 Podcamp Halifax. It was all the fails building multiple web products within my agency and the lessons learned from it.

1. Brutal Lessons
Learned Building
In-house Products
@kyleracki

2. A little about me.

3. A little about me.
- Designer since 2003
- Started Headspace in 2008
- Built 4 SaaS products
- Sold Headspace in 2014
- Currently CEO of @Proposify

4. 1.Site Tea

5. 2. Social Gopher

6. 3. Extrify

7. 4. Proposify

8. LESSON 1 Market validation
is everything.

9. “If you can't find 15 people
to talk to, well, imagine how
hard it's going to be to sell to
them. So suck it up and get
out of the office. Otherwise,
you're wasting time and
money building something
nobody wants.”
Lean Analytics

10. Anybody will say your idea
is great if you annoy them
for long enough.

11. Do we
understand
this industry?
Are we
building the
right product?
Will they
pay for it?
Does
anybody
care at all?
More on market research

12. LESSON 2 Hire a dedicated
developer.

13. ‘How’s
the
product
coming
along?

14. “Project managers have
targets to invoice each
month. Because Get Sign Off
wasn’t a paying client it was
pushed down the priority
list. It wasn’t going to help
the project managers meet
their targets.”
We say a sad goodbye to Get Sign
Off

15. LESSON 3 You’ll probably
need to raise
money.

16. Equity
Investment
Borrow
money
Government
grant
Options

17. LESSON 4 Eventually you’ll
need to shit or
get off the pot.

18. What investors want.

19. LESSON 5 Launching
something is
only the first step

20. “If you build it, they will come.”

21. Dream

22. Reality

23. “Do whatever is required to get to
product/market fit. Including
changing out people, rewriting your
product, moving into a different
market, telling customers no when
you don't want to, telling customers
yes when you don't want to, raising
that fourth round of highly dilutive
venture capital -- whatever is
required.”
Marc Andreessen

24. LESSON 6 The SaaS isn’t
always greener
on the other side.

25. SaaS Metrics

26. SaaS Metrics
CAC

27. SaaS Metrics
LTV

28. SaaS Metrics
MRR

29. SaaS Metrics
Churn
More on SaaS metrics

30. Thanks.
@kyleracki