I think, as bootstrappers, we need to abandon the "long slow SaaS ramp of death" trope.
1. That talk is nearly 20 years old (lots has changed)
2. I'm not sure it ever really applied to most successful bootstrapped businesses?
3. For many SaaS I know, the ramp was pretty fast.
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If we go back to Gail's story, this is what "slow ramp of death" looked like at CC: Oct 2000: launched Apr 2001: 100 customers Sept 2001: 1000 customers Seems pretty fast actually! What's the problem? Scale. "We had 25 employees; we weren't even close to covering our costs."pic.twitter.com/ek8cOMvCuo
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In 2000, the costs for starting a SaaS were a lot higher too: "We had to license our billing system for $250k. Now, you can get it online for pennies." The SaaS ramp was "long and slow" partly because tooling was expensive, complex, and time-intensive to implement.
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Constant Contact's experience isn't a good model for most indie SaaS. "Every $30k we added in MRR required 1 additional engineer and $15K in sales and marketing."
"We achieved profitability at 15,000 customers. Problem was, it took $21 million of capital to get to that."
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My biggest concern with the "long slow SaaS ramp of death" is that new founders take it as gospel. They treat slow growth as a positive signal (when really, it's a false-positive).
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I'm mostly looking at this from the perspective of a small (1-5 person) company. The minimum bar is much lower (and often easier/faster to reach) when you're an indie bootstrapper. When you're small, the revenue needed to hit profitability might be $100k/year!
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As an example, in 2019
@_rchase_ went from Jan: $3K MRR
to
July: $9K MRR 

(Pretty fast SaaS ramp!)
For him, reaching $100k ARR meant:
- profitability
- freedomhttps://twitter.com/_rchase_/status/1156633632527855616 …
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The point of Gail's talk was: "It takes a long time for SaaS to get to scale." But... does it? If it takes the average SaaS 1.3 years to reach $100k in ARR, that seems pretty fast to me?https://twitter.com/Shpigford/status/997550774438842368 …
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Jason believes “slow SaaS ramp of death” is misunderstood: Gail was saying “it took us a long time to unlock the growth that got us to $250 million in ARR.” But most indie founders aren’t trying to hit those numbers! So why are we invoking “slow ramp?”https://twitter.com/asmartbear/status/1366251619483086849?s=20 …
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It seems many SaaS founders think the "long, slow, SaaS ramp of death" means: "When you're starting out, it takes a long time to build MRR to 'default alive' [3-6 years?], but growing slow is just part of the game." I don't think that belief is helpful (or even broadly true).
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Almost every endeavor will have "the dip," where your initial enthusiasm wears off, and the going gets tough. It's probably a better rubric for bootstrappers; especially since Godin talks a lot about the importance of quitting. Not everything is worth a slow slog.pic.twitter.com/brmn59lQbb
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The risk of adopting the "slow ramp of death" mindset is that "the world is full of people with 3-year-old 'side startups;' 99% of which will never work." (Jason Coen) "Long slow ramp" can't mean "5+ years of trying to hit $10k MRR" for most founders.https://twitter.com/asmartbear/status/1069939899044847622?s=20 …
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Good point by
@ianlandsman: "When that talk came out, this was a new idea ('building a subscription business takes time to ramp up'). These days, it's a given. Most founders know that if you start at $30 in MRR, it's going to take a while to hit scale."
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Also
@ianlandsman: "At the time, this idea ('long slow SaaS ramp') was especially helpful for founders who had previously sold installable software, where you get the revenue up-front. We weren't used to revenue taking so long to scale."Pokaż ten wątek -
Good point by Tyler here as well: the danger, these days, is "if you don't see a fast-ish ramp, the odds of success go way down."https://twitter.com/tylertringas/status/1366502084321964037 …
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Here are some reasonable questions to ask, which never really get addressed by "Long, slow, SaaS ramp of death." - How long are we talking about? 5 years? 10 years? - How slow is too slow? - If scale needed is small, how is ramp affected? - How do you know when you should quit?
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Anyway, I think this kind of questioning is helpful. In the science community, they regularly re-examine old ideas, challenge their beliefs, and stress-test theories. We need this in bootstrapping too! It's good to look critically at our axioms and ask if they're still useful.
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