Hello, I am a technical founder of a bootstrapped B2B SaaS company. Our solution is a very horizontal process automation platform that has the potential to adapt to a lot of different industries and company sizes with the goal to automate pretty much any business process. I do 100% of coding and my co-founder does sales. Our pricing model is $10/user/month.
We started working on the product 4 months ago, and are still in the validation phase of the idea, which is showing a lot of potential, yet this hasn't materialized into revenue / paying customers just yet. Trying to look objectively at our progress, it seems we have accomplished a lot in 4 months: we have a working product, 5 signed pilot agreements (to start once we finish a couple of features), and we definitely get a 'wow' impression when we showcase our product. Business process consultants seem to particularly see the potential of our platform.
We have only 8 months of runway left, and will need to raise capital to stay afloat. My questions are:
- Most blogs seem to suggest that in order to raise a seed round you need around $100k in ARR. How are we supposed to get anywhere near that, considering we started working on the product only 4 months ago? Even if we go through the rest of our savings, I don't think it is likely we can hit such a number in the next 8 months.
- Is the advice from these blogs for startups in a later stage? How likely are we to raise money without the kind of traction these blogs talk about?
- What strategy would you recommend for companies in our stage? Is friends & family / business angels our only option at this point? How much would be a good amount to raise from them? We think that if we could hire 4 - 6 people we would be able to move significantly faster. Even if we have a good product, it still needs a lot of work.
EDIT:
Product link: www.seliom.com
You have no paying customers yet. But you are going with a "horizontal process automation platform" which means you are very generic. When you are starting out, it is better to find one specific niche and go hard at it. If you get great at it, you can then expand slowly.
If you are selling to everyone, you sell to no one (unless you are amazon but that takes 2 decades). You need to get more specific about the immediate value your product brings and to which audience ? Every business technically can automate their processes. But are you really selling to every business ? 99.9% chance you will fail if you are not established already.
Few more things:
"platform that has the potential to adapt to a lot of different industries and company sizes with the goal to automate pretty much any business process".. You are just starting out. This wouldn't work for now. Get more specific. Think of one industry to start with and then expand slowly.
"5 signed pilot agreements (to start once we finish a couple of features)"..Sorry but the moment the contract is contingent upon features, it is in trouble. The customer should have seen enough value already even though I am not undermining it completely. This is risky for you. What if you are not able to convince the customer that those features are now delivered. How specific were those features ? I would count this as no customer yet. brutally honest.
Ok, now the good news:
You have a working product. That is awesome. STOP DOING ANY MORE CODING. It is time for sales and marketing like yesterday. What marketing and sales strategies do you have in place if any between you and your cofounder ? When you say "my co founder does sales", what does that mean ? Right now, you both need to focus on Sales and Marketing.
Sorry for the long post but this hits close to my heart being a bootstrapped SAAS founder so I thought to share my own experiences.