Hi everybody,
Here is a MVP of my invoicing app Tinybill.co. (I’m a bit shamed for very limited functionality, but it’s a good sign, right?)
The target audience of this app is basically my dad, who is a taxi driver in Northern Finland. He needs a simple way to generate invoices, and he has been using an excel spreadsheet I’ve created years ago.
All feedback is appreciated! 
–tuomas
I get a HTML error on the invoice page, their is <span class= in the company name box, see http://imgur.com/P5Mqnqw.
It does seem like a good start, but I would want to at least be able to add my company logo or some sort of personalisation, at the moment I create my invoices in word, and I don’t see what this gives me over that. But keep at it.
Thanks for the feedback!
I’ve fixed that localization <span class bug. I’m localizing it for languages, and it’s a annoyingly hard to keep the localization files in sync.
Nice work!
Have you found anyone besides your dad who would pay money for this sort of thing? One thing I did wrong with my first several product attempts that I did right with Snip was to build up a network of business owners right from the start who were good customer candidates. If you haven’t done that yet, I might humbly suggest doing so.
In any case, good work and props for actually building something and getting it into production.
Thanks @jasonswett
I haven’t really done any proper idea validation. (idea is not validated until somebody is willing to pay for it)
There are at least one big problem with whole invoicing concept. It does not have a niche built in the product. It’s just invoicing. It works for every company, which usually means it doesn’t work for anyone. I definitely need to find a good target audience, which I can reach. Once I found a suitable market, I can start testing pricing and the way I communicate the product.
Good point. Just curious, have you done any keyword research around the term [invoicing software] or related? If I could arbitrarily pick any market at which to point my product, I’d probably lean toward the one(s) easiest to reach online.
Hi @tuomasj! You’ve done a remarkably good job making an HTML form print-friendly, but for an invoicing product I think an MVP would need to include the capacity to generate a clean invoice with all formatting included. There are a lot of libraries build to output a PDF from arbitrary input, and I’d recommend investigating options for your platform. Not only will this improve formatting, but it will allow the user to email the invoice, print the invoice and keep a copy for their business. Even if you plan on adding user management in the future and save every invoice, people are almost always going to want to be able to export a clean copy.
Also, I personally would prefer to see labels on the two big text fields even if they are simply there to suggest what a user could enter. A huge part of online interaction is trying to make your users think as little as possible, and if I load that page and just see two empty text fields my brain has to go into analysis mode and check the rest of the form to find out that there are no other places to enter address and description. I also agree with @Charlie that there should probably be the option to upload a logo to personalize the invoice further than just the company name.
Excellent start though - keep it up!
@jasonswett Good idea! Keyword research is something I need to pay attention a lot. Most likely I do it just plain wrong. I just open the keyword planner and start looking for phrases that might work. Do you have any good resources for doing proper keyword research for a niche saas product?
@thegrandbonce Yeah, you’re right. It needs a PDF export. It is the artifact (deliverable) that people expect as an end result when they start creating an invoice.
I’m a keyword research novice so I’m afraid I can’t be of much help. So far I’ve mostly just used Google Keyword Planner. I did plug [invoicing software] in there just now just for kicks, and the only industry-specific keywords I noticed were related to the automotive industry. That’s a good example of what I was getting at. Maybe you could specialize in invoicing for auto repair shops. I Googled for [automotive invoicing software] and it was hard to tell how strong the competition is, but there is some competition, which I think is a good sign. If I were looking to start a new product I would pick something where the competition a) exists and b) isn’t very good.