Searching for SAAS | Multithreaded Income Episode 16 with Nate Bosscher

Welcome back to the show, everyone. I'm joined by my good friend and guest, Nate Bosscher. How are you today, Nate?

I'm doing well. How are you, Kevin?

Good. I'm so glad to have you here. We've been in the same community for ever. And it's fun when I get to talk to my friends about stuff that they're doing, because I feel like I should know more having be in the same community with you.

Well, that's a high praise. Wow.

Well, let's go. Let's start there. So you do. We're not going to talk about the clients that you have, but where do you find some of your clients for consulting?

Well, honestly, a lot of it is word of mouth. Like, um, yeah, I just kind of found a way into a network and just, yeah, just talk to people, do your best, and hopefully they tell other people. Hmm.

It's kind of amazing how that works, right? If you do a good job, people know you do a good job. The work kind of finds you

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I just try to be a service and help out however you can, right? And, um, it's pretty neat.

Uh, so on top of the consulting that you do, you have a, let's say a variety of products. Uh, do you mind talking to us a little bit about the projects you currently have going on?

Yeah. So I have a status list, which is a uptime monitoring service. Um, so I've been running that for a couple of years. Um, yeah, it's a nice little SAS, nothing too crazy. Um, then I also have testing taxi, which is, and it's infancy, uh, so that's probably, uh, I don't know, three or four month old project and, uh, we're just getting into, uh, alpha testing, uh, just a small group of people and, uh, kind of getting the initial polish figured out. So, yeah.

Where does the idea for the SAS has come from? So let's say statusless. Where's the idea for statusless come from

So status list, um, came from a friend. Friend was saying, Hey, like, wouldn't it be nice if we could just have one place to, you know, kind of aggregate all the, all the status pages that are out there, you know, let's say I'm running my app on AWS and I also have an email service and whatever else, you know, wouldn't be nice to aggregate it. And, uh, that was a cool idea, but it didn't really pan out so well. So then you kind of pivot and figure things out.

when you built a statusless? Well, we'll just kind of pick on statusless for a minute. You, you build that. How do you. Start the process of promoting that marketing out to people. How do you get people in the gates to even use the product?

Yeah. Well, it was status list. That sure was a bumbling road. Um, I think when I first started it, I, um, there, there's a, I was trying to get it listed at the Heroku store at that time. And one of the requirements of the Heroku stores, you have to have 10 people sign up for your private, uh, alpha. And, uh, I remember being like, Oh no, where am I going to find 10 people? And like, how much do I have to pay them to use my app and all that? And, uh.

Well, let's rewind a little bit. We're talking about what you're doing now, but one time you were working a full time job and you decided that wasn't. That wasn't what you wanted to do. You wanted to make the move out into, I would assume consulting and then off the products, you want to tell us a little bit about that tipping point. And when you decided you didn't want to work the full time job anymore.

Yeah. So I was working at a, uh, a place that did a daycare software and I actually really liked it there. We had a lot of fun. Um, there's, there's a small team, uh, had a lot of, a lot of kind of, yeah, insight into different areas of the team and things like that. And I really enjoyed that. But, uh, yeah, at some point you kind of, I kind of wanted to get out of there. I wanted to do, do kind of my own thing.

So for people that don't know what ERP

And there's enterprise resource planning software, and that is a big fancy way of saying how to like, you know, keep track of shipments and production and like, uh, like think manufacturing and that sort of stuff. And, uh, basically it's just a, yeah, it's like kind of like accounting software, but for like the day to day operations of like a factory.

means,

And, uh, so, yeah, I thought I would build this product. And, um, so I kind of set out to do that. I spent a couple of months. You know, working nights and weekends to try and build that and, uh, kind of had consulting in my back pocket as sort of a, a bit of a backup plan. Um, but yeah, totally just jumped off the end, quit my job with like, yeah, not, not a real big plan of like, you know, what's, what's next.

did you have any sort of foundation already in place before making that jump or was it just a, all right, I have to start making money now.

Hmm.

or else I

Yeah. So I kind of, yeah, I thought that this product needed to work and that I had enough of a product there that I could sell it. So, you know, week one was let's go sell the product.

Uh, that's a, so so much more risk than I think a lot of people I've interviewed before, uh, would have ever taken. Um, are you still up for making big risks like that? Or are you a little bit more conservative? Now,

So I am definitely, like, very conservative, I think, compared to a lot of my friends, um, when it comes to that sort of thing. Sure, like, that was my, my one jump off the, the edge of the cliff, but I think it took all of two weeks, and I had a very different idea of how I was going to do things. Um, I, I, very thankfully, I was so blessed to have like some friends who ran a consulting company and, uh, they said, yep, we, we could use your help. Um, and I ran away, jumped on that.

so speaking of time, how much of your time now is consulting versus working on your products?

Yeah. So I aim for three quarters consulting work, one quarter, um, uh, other projects, uh, kind of fluctuates a bit, but that's typically what I aim for.

How does, so you have status list and texting, um, testing taxi.

Hmm.

How do those look from a support standpoint? Are you spending time? Having to spend time supporting the customers there. Is there anything that could derail your consulting work? I know I have this problem as as a consultant where I'll be working on something and then there's a squirrel moment from the another client that so I have to deviate my attention. Um, and you're your own products. Does, is there any conflict there?

Yeah. So really with my consulting, like I really treat that as a tool to allow me to work on my, my side projects. And so I set up things intentionally such that I don't have to be on call 24 7 that, you know, I'm not pushing a release the day before I want to work on other things, right? Like I'm taking that extra time to test certain things or to de risk certain things, um, just to avoid that stuff.

I love it. It also gives you the opportunity to take a Take a day off if you want to.

exactly. Like, um, my son was in the hospital last, last year in the winter, a few times, uh, with asthma and that, and, uh, yeah, just to be able to just be there, right. And not have to worry about things. It's, uh, I, I feel like, you know, one of the benefits of doing your own thing or consulting or whatever is that. Like that's the kind of the point is at least for me to have that freedom right to kind of choose How you want to run your life?

Let's talk a little bit about failures. You kind of mentioned the ERP SAS idea that didn't quite work out. Uh, are there any other projects that didn't, that you had started made some progress on and decided they needed to not exist anymore?

Yeah. Yeah. Well, there's a long line of them. Um, I think the most, the most pointed ones that I can remember at this point are, uh, I did a receipts tax receipts program, um, for non for profits, um, that died pretty quickly. I did a product called product sonar, which was like a, um, a scraping utility for, uh, hardware stores. That one, that one lasted about a year, uh, before we finally shut that one down.

Well, I remember you talking about product sonar, uh, in the community that we're both in. And. It was a really cool idea and some of the proof of concept stuff you were putting out there was unique and I wasn't seeing anyone else doing it because as I remember it was. The price of a, a two by four at one hardware store, it might be cheaper to one place versus another place.

Yeah, exactly. Like, uh, contractors are very price sensitive, um, especially on commodities, which would be like your two by fours and that sort of thing. And, uh, anyone who's got the lowest price, you're, you're winning the, you're winning the day. And, uh, basically I was positioning it as like, how long, how long are you going to be the guy that's more expensive? Right? Like if you can, uh, find out that the guy down the street just put his price down.

And you were doing this kind of on the tail end of COVID pandemic. So like a two by four was six to eight. U. S. Dollars. It was crazy expensive for a two by four. Um, I know I was very sensitive for buying lumber back then. Um, what's ultimately killed product sonar? What's made you go? All right, this isn't working. I need to scrap it and move on to something else.

I guess really, um, it was just a traction problem. Um, I, I kind of held on for, for quite a while just because I would talk to all sorts of different people in the industry and they were just so excited. Um, they thought this was the next best thing. And, um, even had like some of the industry leaders that were, you know, lined up and ready to go. And, uh, yeah, just it, uh, there was all these promises, but never anything really fulfilled.

Well, it seems there's a lot of tech underneath this underneath the scenes. That's Makes a problem like that. Just fun to work on. Um, I know you're showing us some proof of concept like you, uh, essentially scraping data off of different websites. And here everything's in a different format. You try to get that all into a common format and then and then do comparisons and stuff like that on it.

That's a tongue twister, right? You

know, you screwed me up at least three times so far.

Uh, I think, I think I got to rebrand it and just call it taxi. I think that might work better anyways. Um, yeah, I did actually, when I was, when I was finishing up products owner, I was having a good chat with my friend Josh and, uh, he said, you know, what, what can we take from product sonar and build off of that into something else for another industry? And that's really where testing taxi came from or what we're calling just taxi for now.

So you mentioned josh and a mutual friend of ours. You have a podcast with them searching for sass, which is still going on. And friends of this podcast should definitely go listen to that. Because what I what I appreciate about searching for sass is you're having these deep conversations about identifying a Market building a product around it, the marketing aspects of it far deeper than I think anything this podcast would ever talk about.

Well, I appreciate that.

Yeah, absolutely. It's, nice to see podcasts go really deep and I wish sometimes there are 100 subjects. I just want to go deep in and you, you guys are going deep. Uh, but let's, let's kind of talk about that a little bit more. Let's say If someone out there is listening goes, I want to build, I want to build a sass and I think I think that's actually the question. We all start with is like, I want a product. I want to build a sass. I want that sweet M. R. R.

Mm hmm. Yes. Yeah.

that, uh, where would you recommend someone start? Like they don't even know what they want to build. They just want to build

Mm

Where do you go find some of those initial ideas?

hmm. Yeah. Huh. Like finding ideas, I guess is one, one air, one branch of the tree and maybe like, what would you do is the other branch of the tree? Um, I think, uh, yeah, to find ideas, I think really just, uh, one thing I've done is, uh, you know, remember RSS readers? I think nobody uses them anymore, but I love them. Um. You can, uh, you can get the, the RSS feeds to aggregate with something like Feedly.

do you think it's worthwhile to try to do a sass outside of, uh, an industry or a community you might not be a member of? Um, you know, like with the, we'll use products, products on our, like you were kind of focusing on, say, contractors, contractors who are buying. Uh, commodities at hardware stores or lumber supply stores. But I'm going to venture a guess that you're not a contractor buying lumber at lumber, uh, lumber supply stores. So you're kind of venturing out of your.

Yeah. Yep.

it's not something that I've ever worked on, but could I'm assuming it could work because I think people do that all the time. How do you make something like that work without taking too much risk?

Yeah. So I think like to. To be a part of a community, like to serve a community that you're not already a part of, I think is a really tricky, tricky challenge. Um, there's just so many, um, Hills to climb to get into there. Um, like first off, you, you don't know how to speak like those people. And so you're not really one of them. You don't really have a reason to be there. So you feel kind of awkward and, um, Yeah, you don't understand the fundamental problems that they have.

So back to controlling your time. I know you have a young family. Um, do you make any special concessions between for for life work balance?

Hmm.

to make sure you're not working all the time because you have technically 23 things that you're you're working on. Um, you're consulting in your products and then you have family time. How do you divide your attention between two very important things?

Yeah, so I guess that's, uh, you know, that's a tricky thing, right? Especially when you're getting started and you know, it's, it's, it's hard when you get started, you don't have a client list. You don't have like, um, yeah, good contracts or anything like that. I think, um, yeah, I really, I've sort of set a rule for myself that I'll just work a regular work day. And for me, that's eight to five. And, uh, anything outside of that is, uh, an emergency or a special.

I think you and I have very similar philosophies. I work my eight to four or five ish whenever. And when I'm done at the end of the day, there's, there's no more work to be done.

Mm

And that amount of time I'm at my desk, I'm here in my office. I have to be able to get work done on all the initiatives I have going on work wise or income producing wise. And that if I don't get it done, It doesn't get done until I come back out to the office at a later time, um, which makes it extremely stressful and difficult at times, depending on what what is demanding your time and effort.

I, I think that's a, I think that's a huge deal, just being able to, to switch focus on one thing, uh, and to, and then to turn it off. I think that's huge.

If we were to look kind of five years into the future, what's your ideal scenario? Is it still consulting and kind of sassing on the side or would you love to just go full time on one of your sasses?

Yeah. My goal, my goal has always been to go full-time on SaaS. Um, and yeah, basically my, my plan is to kind of stair step my way there. Um, yeah, already status list is, you know, making, making some inroads there. And, uh, I'm hoping that testing taxi will, will take off and, um, yeah, either support just me or maybe grow it out to a team or something like that. Um, obviously I'll, I'll need to, uh, take care of my consulting clients, the existing ones. Um, but yeah, that's the goal.

So actually I want to ask you, so both your SASSes are just you, you have no other members on the team, and so if you're looking at the two SASSes, whichever, I think you said status list is kind of the producing more at the moment than what the Testing taxi is, um, at what point do you hire another person to help you with that? Uh, and what type of person is that? Is that a developer? Is that a support person is a, I don't know, something else.

Yeah, I guess that's really, uh, like a business kind of decision, right? It's like, what's going to make the most sense here. Um, what's the, uh, the best return on investment, so to speak. Um, I try to try to run everything through that. Even my time, that seems to work quite well for me. Um, but, uh, yeah, for a status list, I think probably that's a support person. Um, I get pretty, it's pretty low volume support. Like it's, yeah, it's not much.

Nate, kind of wrapping things up here. Uh, any final thoughts for someone out there that might want to start their own sass? And,

Yeah, well, I, I think it's, uh, It's going to be different than you think it is, but it will also be better than you think it is in some ways. And, um, yeah, don't, uh, don't be afraid to screw up. We all do. And, uh, I, uh, I wish you all the best. Yeah.

and if we. One more information. We can go listen to searching for SAS, wherever you get your podcast from, uh, Nate, anything else you'd like to promote while you're here?

Yeah. Find me on Twitter, uh, at Nate Bosher and, uh, yeah, we'll see you around on the internet.

All right. Well, Nate, thank you so much for hanging out with us today and thank you everyone for listening and we'll see you on the next episode.

Great. Thanks, Kevin.