Software is a business first. Code is the easy part. The rest is rent, support, taxes, chargebacks, copy, and deal terms. If you are reading this in your text editor after midnight, coffee in hand, this is for you.
Today Google said it will buy DoubleClick. That is a reminder that distribution and dollars move together. Vista just shipped, the iPhone is coming, Amazon has S3 and a preview of EC2, and your app still needs paying users. The street cares about revenue. So should we.
What business are you really in?
People do not wake up wanting software. They want fewer headaches, more sales, more done. Your app is a tool. The job is the point. Name the job in a sentence that a customer would say out loud.
If your pitch starts with databases, frameworks, and your clever queue, you are selling to yourself. If it starts with pain, you are selling to them. Pain buys. Features decorate.
Who buys and who uses?
There is the buyer and there is the user. Sometimes they match. Many times they do not. A manager approves, a team lives with your buttons. Speak to both.
Small companies swipe a card. Big companies issue purchase orders. Both want trust. Show proof with a simple tour, short testimonials, and a clear refund policy.
Where do your customers already hang out?
They read a few blogs, a couple forums, a trade newsletter, and maybe TechCrunch if they want to feel edgy. Meet them there. Share something useful. Link back to a page that answers one problem clearly.
SEO still pays rent. Pick the exact phrases someone types right before they pull a card. Software for real estate leads. Bug tracker for client work. Write pages that answer those searches in plain language. Titles matter. URLs matter. Keep them short and readable.
What do you charge?
Free trials convert when there is momentum. Two weeks is enough for a tool that gives value fast. Thirty days fits a monthly cycle. Promise nothing you cannot deliver in the first session.
Start with three tiers. Anchor with a top plan that looks premium, add a middle plan that most will pick, and a basic one that makes trial folks feel safe. Price by value drivers like seats, projects, or volume. Avoid pricing by tech trivia. Customers buy results, not RAM.
How do you get paid?
PayPal is easy. Authorize Net and a merchant account feel real and let you do recurring billing cleanly. Recurring is the game for SaaS. Watch failed cards and expiry dates like a hawk. A polite dunning email recovers real money.
Send invoices that look like a human made them. Show the plan, the next charge date, and a link to cancel. Trust is a feature. Hide nothing and your refunds drop.
How fast do you ship?
Ship a small slice that solves a sharp problem. Then ship again next week. A two week rhythm with a tiny changelog beats a silent quarter. The blog post about shipping is part of the marketing. People buy momentum.
Rails is hot. PHP still runs half the web. Django feels tidy. .NET is fine if your buyers live on Windows. Pick the stack that gets your next release out the door sooner. Speed wins more deals than purity.
Where do you host?
Shared hosting saves dollars until it does not. A small dedicated box gives control. EC2 is tempting for bursts but still rough around the edges. S3 for backups is a gift. Keep backups in at least two places you control.
Set up Pingdom or a simple Nagios box. If you do not know the site is down before your users, you are not running a service. Uptime is marketing. People talk when things break.
Who handles support?
Email is fine. A tiny FAQ plus a few how to posts work better than a giant manual nobody reads. Tag tickets. Watch for repeat pain. Build the fix and close a dozen tickets with one reply.
Use FogBugz or Trac for bug tracking, Basecamp for project chatter, and Campfire for team chat. Support is a feature. Fast replies sell upgrades. Even a quick we are on it beats silence.
What copy goes on the home page?
Lead with the outcome. Save the stack talk for engineers. One headline, one subhead, three bullets with real language, and a single call to action. A short video helps if it shows the first win in under two minutes.
Remove fluff like next generation and scalable. Keep verbs. Show a price. Show a customer logo or a short quote. Clarity beats clever.
How do you get the first fifty users?
Call people. Send three personal emails a day for a month. Offer to set it up for them. Watch them use it. Note every win and every stumble. Those notes are your next release and your next post.
Submit to directories that still send traffic. Write a guest post for a niche blog. Join the right forum without being that person who only drops links. Help first and the clicks follow.
What do you measure?
Track signups, activations, trials to paid, churn, monthly recurring revenue, and average revenue per account. Keep a simple cohort sheet in a spreadsheet if you must. You can add fancy later.
Ask canceled users one question. What made you leave. Offer a quick reply choice and a text box. Read every word. Churn teaches more than any glowing review.
How do you keep users from leaving?
Get them to the first result in the first session. Send a short welcome email with one task. Send a second email three days later with a tiny power tip. Do not drown them in features. Walk them to value and step aside.
Inside the app, celebrate progress. A small check mark on a setup step beats a wall of text. Add in app help where they stall. Friction is churn. Sand it every week.
How do you compete when giants enter?
Giants win on brand and bundling. You win on fit and speed. Pick a niche slice they will not bother with. Integrate with a tool they ignore. Write the best guide on the planet for that slice and own the search result.
Win on support, clear pricing, and a roadmap that listens. Offer clean data export. Trust keeps accounts when the sales rep from the giant calls.
Do you raise money or bootstrap?
Money is fuel and pressure. If your market is ready and you see a short window, funding can make sense. If you can reach default alive with a few dozen customers, keep control and keep shipping.
Either way, treat cash like oxygen. Keep a simple budget. Watch receivables. Pay for things that move revenue or save time. Everything else can wait. Runways are built from restraint.
What about legal, privacy, and trust?
Write a Terms page and a Privacy page in plain language. Use SSL. Do not store full card numbers. If you take cards directly, learn PCI rules and keep the scope small. If this makes you sweat, use a processor that handles the heavy lift.
Respect email inboxes. One or two helpful messages after signup is fine. A monthly update is fine. Anything more should be opt in. Respect earns referrals.
How do you say no?
Each new feature request feels like a sale. It can also be a trap. Keep a list. Score requests by impact and effort. Build the ones that solve the root problem for many, not the one off for the loudest voice.
Say no with care and a reason. Offer the simplest workaround. Invite them to subscribe to the feature announcement. Boundaries keep products clean.
How do you write a roadmap that survives contact with customers?
Roadmaps are guesses. Use them to align your small team and to show customers you are awake. Update monthly. Never promise dates in public unless you are ready to eat crow in public.
Keep a Now, Next, Later list. Ship Now fast. Re sort Next each week after you read support and look at your funnel. Later keeps dreams without burning cycles. Focus is a feature.
What do you outsource and what do you own?
Own your product, your customer list, and your billing relationship. Rent email delivery, monitoring, and CDN style assets. If something breaks at 3 am, ask who can fix it without waking you. If the answer is a vendor, test the path.
Do not outsource the voice of the company. Write the home page. Write the welcome email. Record the quick tour. Your voice is part of the moat.
How do you plan for failure?
Disks die. DNS goes sideways. A purge script hits the wrong rows. Prepare. Nightly backups with restore drills. Feature flags for risky work. Read only mode for database work. A status page you can update from your phone.
When you break things, own it. Be clear, be fast, and explain what you are doing to prevent repeats. Postmortems build trust when they read like a human wrote them.
What stories should your site tell?
Show a day in the life before and after your product. Share numbers when you can. I saved two hours a week. I closed three more deals last month. Your copy should read like a friend explaining a trick, not a brochure.
Add a tiny changelog to your footer. That line proves the lights are on. Tie releases to benefits. Not just Fixed bug in scheduler, but Appointments now load twice as fast.
What do you learn from the giants buying ad tech?
Distribution and attention decide winners. If your product sells to people who live inside the browser, you are competing in a world financed by ads and clicks. Learn to buy traffic profitably. Know your customer acquisition cost and lifetime value before you touch AdWords.
Start small. One keyword group. One landing page. One goal. Keep the math simple. If a click costs two dollars and a customer is worth two hundred over a year, you can scale. Spend where the math works.
What is the daily checklist?
Every morning. Check uptime. Check signups. Check failed charges. Read support. Pick one needle to move before noon. Ship a fix or a tiny improvement. Post a line about it. Repeat.
Every Friday. Review metrics. Archive logs. Push backups offsite. Write one helpful post that answers a common search. Say thanks to a customer by name. Small habits compound.
Why does this matter right now?
The tools to build and host are cheaper than ever. The noise is louder than ever. The winners will be the ones who talk to customers, ship faster than they brag, and treat trust like the scarce resource it is.
There is no perfect time. There is only now, a text editor, and a list of people with a real problem. Make something useful and charge fairly. The rest is just practice.
Compact wrap up
Build for a clear job. Price for value. Ship small and often. Keep uptime high. Write honest copy. Measure what matters. Learn from churn. Spend where the math works. Say no to the wrong features. Treat support and trust as features. Do this for a year and you will have a real business, not just code that runs.