First off, congratulations. This is quite the accomplishment for anyone of any age.
I started a niche B2B SaaS company with a co-founder when I was 23 (www.gingrapp.com). We sold it off when I was 27 and I stuck around for 2 years after acquisition. By the time I left there were 30+ employees and 8-digit ARR.
I’m currently 30, married with a toddler and semi-retired. The last 10 years of my life have been absolutely nuts and like you I wish I had someone who’d been through it before to talk to. It can be hard to relate with others as a founder. A frequent refrain I encountered when trying to talk with friends/family was that I had “first-world” problems that weren’t worth talking about. Ugh.
First off, I don’t think age matters per se. I’ve known founders in their 40s and 50s to flounder just as often as founders in their 20s, just usually in different ways.
The first piece of advice I’d give is that this whole experience will be a roller coaster and you can’t always control what happens next. It helped me to remember that I’m but a passenger on this journey.
I think I’d have a lot more to share with you privately. If you ever want to chat, my email is in my bio. Would be happy to talk further.
Here is a piece of actionable advice.
Join a supoort community in your area. You are looking for something for entrepeneurs in holland ideally. These usually have a price of admission like $300/yr but can be worth every cent
For example, ecommercefuel is fantastic for ecomm sites. Mastermind may have something to offer for your geography. Its going to boil down to reputation and how much you put in too.
You need a forum of entrepeneurs for people that are dealing with the same issues as you: payroll issues, VAT issues, engineering best practices, accounting advice, dealing with fraud, chargebacks, churn prevention, sales , banking contacts, brand registration and protection, outsourcing copy, and most importantly, advice on how to hire key staff
As you can see, its a lot. You need a whole village to figure that out. I am not sure whats out there for EU virtual "villages" for SaaS, but HN may be able to help.
From one entrepr3neur to other: if you dont have a crm already for sales leads, and your sales cycle is not self serviced, try the streak plugin for gsuite.
Good luck.
Hi, since someone else mentioned your product's website I looked over it and I'm curious.
As far as I understand students need to install your app and the app requires users to log out and when they log in, it's launched automatically in full screen mode and users cannot escape until they submit their answers.
What if I install your app in a sandboxed environment (like a windows box in a vmware virtual machine)? While the app is in fullscreen mode inside it, I think there would be nothing preventing me from using host machine's functions (like accessing internet via browsers or opening documents). Have you considered these kind of risks?
For those requesting a link to the company of OP, it's this: https://schoolyear.nl/
I assume it's ok that I post this, it was easy to find (2 clicks from your profile snerual)!
Good job, I think it's cool what you're doing! If I may ask: how do you prevent students from cheating on a test by using their phone for example? Or is your service for in-class tests where phones are forbidden?
Here's a counter-advise ( take it as you will ) :
Do not join any communities. You are a 19 year old who is at 250k ARR at 10 months. You are Bella Hadid. You don't have peers here, among IG influencers pretending to be important at 12K followers. It is lonely there, where you are. There's a reason for that.
P.S. You will make it.
As a bootstrapped SaaS founder myself: congratulations! This is an unbelievable growth rate for a bootstrapped SaaS. It usually takes many years to reach these numbers. Very happy to see people build sustainable businesses this way — venture funding is not the only way to go!
I'd be very interested to learn more, things like: is it a B2B or B2C SaaS? What is your ARPU and LTV, are you spending on marketing, and if so, what is your CAC? (I do realize you might not want to share these numbers, just saying that this is what I'd love to know :))
Hey there!
I'm from France, 18yo and founded a SaaS with a friend when I was 16 (https://kaktana.com). It's been doing ~$800/month for the last 1.5 years as I had to stop working on it for a very intensive school program (la prépa for the Frenchs). Currently thinking of building a v2 next year when I have more time.
Would love chatting with you, see my page: https://alextoussaint.com
My current sass startup I bootstrap to 20 million arr in 4 years before raising money. This my third software company bootstrapping to millions in arr. Shoot me a message down to give you whatever advice I can and intro you to other people who have been on this journey. Gmail account is Oconnoroisin
You might want to check out MicroConf Connect. I'm a founder of a bootstrapped startup and find the Slack community pretty interesting. https://microconf.com/microconf-connect
Congrats, thats some impressive growth in a short time.
If you want to know what not to do, I'm happy to chat, email in my profile. I've made almost every possible mistake in the last 20 years ;-) Despite all the mistakes my current company is a couple of stages past the 250k ARR and I'm on the right track.
In the end most advice in this situation is not rocket science, like for example:
- reserve time to work on your business, not just in your business
- build a team, not a group of individuals
- leadership becomes important in this stage, start reading on the subject, there is a ton of information available.
And most important, try to enjoy the ride. There is not one big moment you are working towards, it's all the little moments that mather.
I see that most of the posts here do not mention the companies that each person founded - I would love to see what everyone has created! Please share your companies!
Wow, this is really inspiring! As a college student under lockdown, building something like this would be my dream. I have so many questions: How do you manage to juggle the responsibilities of school and running your business? What kind of technical expertise do you need? How did you find your idea and gain traction? Do you have employees?
So happy about this thread and the increased presence and support of European techies on HN. It's about time.
Entrepreneurs' Organization has been incredibly helpful to me. I've been a member for six years now - it changed my life. It's not cheap, but well worth it if your local chapter is well run.
Happy to chat anytime, email is in my profile. We’re going to hit £1m ARR this year and I’d love someone to chat with too.
It can be a weirdly lonely place at times.
Im UK based so TZ should work well, plus I’m a frequent visitor to NL (Pre CV) so it would be great to chat over a beer when we can.
Hi. Knappe prestatie. I’m from Amsterdam, 31. Don’t have a Saas but a fast growing e-commerce business (€660k last year). Recognize your feelings. If you feel like it, send me a line at info@pedicuremotoren.NL.
250k ARR might seem like a lot, but once you pay taxes, insurance, etc adding more than a handful of employees is going to dwindle what you're actually taking home. This is where having a degree counts and/or understanding how much work scaling is really going to take.
Incredible work, but also remember you are certainly not the norm. Be humble, acknowledge that your work has paid off and try to give back to any communities that got you to where you are today ;)
Talk to Ives and Bas at CodeSandbox. Very similar situation — Dutch college students whose side project took off. They raised venture funding.
MicroConf is the longest running community for bootstrapped and mostly bootstrapped founders. Also check out the sister podcast, Startups for the Rest of Us.
We started both of them a decade ago to connect folks in your situation to one another (as a multi-time bootstrapped SaaS founder myself).
Over the past year and a half, we just went through this — growing more than 10x from $60K ARR. Our focus has been building a sustainable work-life balance for ourselves and our team.
Happy to share learnings and just be there as a sounding board if you need it. Email in bio :)
Congrats on the progress!
You're in the right spot – IndieHackers is a pretty great community for this kind of stuff too!
From Amsterdam, dev and founder before, looking into setting up Saas, would love to have coffee
I am similar -- I took a small boostraped venture to $1.3m ARR in about 3 years. To this day i almost spend $0 marketing. Email me so we can connect or whatsapp somid3 /\-at-*_- gmail ^dot& com or +1 five-1-zero 499 5497.
Lekker bezig hoor!
Not a founder myself, so no tips on that. Not super clear what your website does (if it's the one in your profile).
If you're ever looking to security / pentest your platform reach out to me. For the rest good luck and keep it up!
Hey Man, I love your post and its really inspiring. I would love to know how did you came up with the idea. what was your process like when finding the problem you tried to solve with your SaaS solution
If you would like some advice I am more than happy to connect. I've written books on SaaS selling and SaaS customer success, and if nothing else know a lot of folks in the space.
Hey there, I'm founding a SaaS in the Netherlands also. Congrats on your success! Would love to chat sometime and build a community, you can DM me on Twitter (@j4yav).
Check out Indie Hackers (https://indiehackers.com), it's a great community I've found.
I find that amazing that in a crowded SaaS market you can still find opportunity everywhere, yet alone making a SaaS that makes money a $250kARR.
Where do these people find ideas?
OP, maybe you should talk to someone like Pieter Levels or gumroad founder
Don't lend family and friends money and expect it to be returned.
I don't have much to say besides Congratulations!
Yes, it's insane (and I've been to less overwhelming situations). But hey, if people were perfectly rational and risk-averse nobody would start anything.
Interested to know more and see where it ends up, alstublieft.
What is your startup?
Care to share your website or what your company does?
Can you please share the link to your saas?
indiehackers and reddit are also great communities
Best of luck and share some tips with us
I've never been in your exact situation but from personal experience stop writing "I'm <young>yo and I did <crazy thing for my age>", at best you'll get some patronising praise and at worst people will disregard what you say because of your age. Your work will speak for itself. Let your age be nothing more than a fun piece of trivia.
You're already in one of the best communities there is: Hacker News. Don't underestimate what you can learn just by carefully reading the threads here.
I went from "idea in my dorm room" to interviewing and hiring executives in their 40s and 50s within 24 months. The best lesson I learned is that there are way fewer "rules" than you think, and smart, disciplined, focused entrepreneurs can accomplish way more than they assume. It's reasonable to reflect on your inexperience in order to prevent mistakes, but you should never feel intimidated by it, or let other people intimidate you. The world (and YC's portfolio) is full of "inexperienced" people like you who have built billion dollar companies that disrupted industries and became pillars of the economy.
If you post contact information in your profile, I'm sure at least a few people with relevant experience would reach out and offer to be a resource for more specific advice. I've done that a few times here with mostly successful results.