Everyone can learn something from this teardown

Discussions
#1

Patrick McKenzie posted an absolutely brilliant teardown of an SAAS he uses

http://www.kalzumeus.com/2014/04/03/fantasy-tarsnap/

The post is packed full of gems. Every SAAS operator should read it, twice.

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#2

It was pretty good, and "Pure Patrick"™. :slight_smile:

Of course, he was starting with a site that did everything wrong. I have a feeling that if Tarsnap takes onboard even half of what Patrick suggests, it will change the owner’s life dramatically - financially, and in level of work for himself. And that may not be what he wants.

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#3

Ironically we looked at using Tarsnap in the early days but it was too complex so we went for something else which had a GUI, notifications of failed jobs, reporting etc and we are now paying them over $200 a month and we are still small.

The guys we use also have some of the same silly ideas like they send a notice when you are at 25% balance and the next notice you get is at 0% when backups stop working and also they do the we will delete your backups after x days if you have forgotten to pay which pissed me off before reading Patrick’s post but at least we are not alone on that front!

#4

That was my understanding from the very beginning, long ago. Not everyone wants to build a business.

Patrick’s zeal starts to look like that proverbial hammer when everything else is seen as nails.

#5

Not everyone wants to build a business.

Indeed. And not everyone wants to write hard-sell mailing copy and learn how to (read: copy) a particular style of SaaS marketing, etc.

I find groupthink takes hold pretty quickly amongst any Internet business community, and if you don’t have the same goals nor the same methods as some eloquent people in the group, you can be seen as doing it wrong!

Example: You “must” offer three plans, with the unstated goal of driving people towards the middle plan.

Counter: A business is easier to administer offering one plan. It also saves my poor customers from going through the horrible “which one shall I choose…I just can’t decide” moment that we all go through way too often in this marketing-saturated world.

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