I Spent 30 Days Studying a Programmer Who Built a $230Bn Company Quitting 9–5 Job — Here’s My Learning on How To Start a $1 M SaaS
Killer Tips to Start Without Quitting Your 9–5
It sucks when you’re stuck in a 9–5 job and don’t know what to do next.
It sucks even worse when you know you want to start a $1M SaaS and yet you’re stuck in a 9–5 programming job.
Before 1999, Marc Benioff was stuck in a job at Oracle.
He had no idea what to do next with his career.
Still, he managed to get out of the 9-to-5 job and built a $250 billion SaaS company.
I’ll discuss 5 strategies to get you started on a $1M SaaS dream.
1. Don’t quit your job. Do this instead
A developer discovers an idea for a SaaS.
Reads about it on the Internet.
Gets excited.
Quits his job. Start building the product.
We developers think quitting our jobs is the only solution to all our problems, but is it the right thing to do in the early stage?
When you quit your job without validating the idea, you put yourself in a difficult situation. If by any chance it takes a long time to generate revenue, it will put a lot of financial pressure.
Marc Benioff, the founder of Salesforce, was in a similar situation when he was about to start Salesforce. He has worked with Oracle for over 10 years. He had become a corporate lifer.
He knew he had to change something.
“I had been there for ten years and was becoming something I had never anticipated: a corporate lifer.”
How did a sabbatical help an aspiring entrepreneur build a $230 B company?
Marc wanted a change, but he was confused about what kind of change he wanted.
He struggled to make a choice between leaving the company, launching a new venture alongside, or taking Oracle in a new direction.
In the middle of the chaos, he decided to take a sabbatical.
During his sabbatical, he met an old friend who used to run Oracle’s marketing department, and they talked about startups and the Internet’s influence on business.
His friend encouraged him to start his own technology business.
Marc travelled to India. He met a Hindu guru and spiritual leader, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar.
Ammachi, known as “the hugging saint,” inspired him to embrace the concept of giving back to the world alongside his career.
My sabbatical was one of the most productive periods of my career; it was certainly one of the most influential.
What can we learn?
Not every developer can travel to India independently, as it can be quite expensive.
Companies may or may not sponsor your trip.
But attaining peace of mind is something we can all do by visiting a nearby city, even if it’s just 50 miles away.
Start by taking a sabbatical and travelling to a nice city.
2. “Have a big dream” is BS advice
“Dream big and everything will fall into place” is useless advice I have ever received.
My problem with dream big advice is it forces us to become a massive procrastinator.
When I started writing online, my goal was to build an email list of 50,000 people.
But what really happened?
After one year, I only have about 1,500 people on the list.
My mistake was I only dreamed big but I hated my mini failures.
When my content didn’t get views, I got frustrated and delayed writing the next piece.
I spent many days without taking action because I was busy thinking about my dream. I was looking for people who had the same goal as me. I used to read their content and think about how I was going to achieve my big goal.
I kept adjusting my plans.
I thought I was being productive by thinking about my goals, but in reality, I was procrastinating. I was failing every day without even realizing it.
I wish someone had given me this advice when I was just starting out:
“Have a big dream but don’t just keep thinking about it. Take small steps daily even if you see mini failures.”
What was Marc Benioff's big dream?
Till 1999, traditional software companies used to distribute software with the help of CD-ROM.
Marc wanted to make it easy for companies to purchase, use and maintain their software.
He wanted to use the internet for software delivery.
In simple words, his dream was to build a SaaS company.
Why was it a big dream?
No company thought about doing this in 1999.
He wanted to use cloud computing to deliver the software.
Cloud computing was new at the time.
He thought from the customer's perspective.
In the CD-ROM era, companies struggled with significant upfront costs to purchase software, even if they wanted to use it for 6 months they had to pay full price.
To update their software they have to wait for months.
Software companies relied on distribution partners. They had no direct control of their product.
These things forced Marc to dream of a world where software would be delivered over the Internet. He dreamed of companies having to pay only a monthly fee instead of purchasing the entire software.
What did he do after this?
He wasn’t like me.
To make the dream come true, he knew he had to keep moving forward with this dream.
If he was like me, he would have continued dreaming about it. He would have spent all his time reading articles about this new concept. He would have imagined the future and kept thinking about how he could implement the idea in new ways.
He did the complete opposite.
First, he talked to one of his friends, Tom Siebel, who ran a company called Siebel Systems. Tom appreciated his idea and asked him to join Siebel Systems, but he failed to understand the big picture.
“I had a number of conversations with Tom Siebel about creating an online CRM product.”
Marc declined his offer and talked to a few more friends. One of those friends helped him hire his first few employees.
What could we learn from this?
He kept moving forward.
In the beginning, when he faced big challenges, he didn’t quit.
He didn’t continue dreaming and using it as a means to procrastinate.
Instead, he talked to people and hired his first few employees.
If you’ve taken a sabbatical, definitely enjoy your time, but don’t spend it entirely scrolling through social media. Think about your big dream and what steps you are going to take to move forward.
Become biased towards action. Don’t spend all your time dreaming about your big idea, do something about it.
3. Your unfair advantage is to prioritize what’s important
I wish someone had given me this advice as a 20-year-old programmer.
I got the idea to create an Android app after reading an article. I told my idea to my friend and he liked it.
The idea was to create an application like Amazon but for local businesses. I spent my first month collecting the features of the app.
I read articles on how to build an online store.
Next month I designed a full prototype in Adobe Xd. It wouldn’t have taken me a month to design, but I was trying to create the perfect prototype.
I was also doing a course on the side on how to build a perfect prototype using Xd. I spent over $500 to purchase premium courses from creators on YouTube.
I skipped my university lectures. My college grades suffered.
How did I mess up learning Java?
After designing the perfect app, I started building it.
I was a new programmer. I learned how to write basic HTML, CSS and Javascript 6 months ago. To create the Android application I have to learn Java.
I tried to learn everything in Java.
Obviously, I failed. You can’t learn everything. I spent 2 months learning Java.
What did I discover after creating the app?
I started building my mini-Amazon.
Used Firebase to manage Gmail login and other database-related things. I had limited knowledge of Firebase.
I had invested around 5 months. I thought I could build it in 2 months.
After building my app with poor code, I found that the application could have been built with basic knowledge of Java.
How many installs did my app get?
10 installs in 2 months.
I had no knowledge of marketing.
I just announced my app on my WhatsApp. My friends downloaded it.
I had 0 followers on Twitter. I had 20 connections on LinkedIn. I had around 50 followers on Quora. Due to my low follower count, I didn’t announce my new app on any of these platforms.
Since I didn’t invest my time in bringing local businesses to my platform, my app ended up being worthless, and my friends uninstalled it within days.
I was afraid to talk about my app because it was ugly. I couldn’t turn my design into reality because I didn’t have the necessary skills.
I compared it to the polished apps on the Android Play Store.
Don’t do things like me. Do things like Marc
While creating my first version of the app, I focused on creating the entire app.
I thought my users would need all the features.
Marc wasn’t like me.
He had a job at Oracle for 10 years, and he understood that when you start making something, you should really pay attention to the important stuff.
They built the first prototype in a month.
These developers already knew about sales force automation. He hired smartly in the early stages. He only hired people who had prior experience in sales force automation.
“We built the first prototype within a month. It didn’t take very long because the developers knew sales force automation from their previous experiences.”
The team’s goal was to keep the user interface simple.
They built only what was necessary. They focused on the 20% that would bring 80% of the difference.
What could we learn?
If you first want to start with an audience. You should focus on creating high-quality content in your niche and growing your email list.
Don’t waste time creating content like “10 Chrome Extensions Everyone Needs.”
If you want to start with an app. You should focus on finding the most important features and developing them. You could focus on SEO or run ads.
Don’t just waste time creating an app that will be used by everyone and has all the features.
4. Avoid communication with your potential customer is a recipe for disaster
I wasted six months to create the perfect app.
I thought I knew what my ideal customer wanted.
Based on my assumption, the UI of my app looked ugly. It was difficult to find important features in my app. Adding an item to the cart used to take 5 to 6 steps.
Most programmers think like me.
When we work in a company everything is organized for us, we feel like rock stars.
This is where we make a big mistake.
This mentality forces us to believe that we know what the user wants. But in reality, we don’t know.
When the Salesforce team started building the first version, Marc knew the importance of talking to potential customers.
That’s why he invited some of his friends to test the prototype.
“I invited friends and colleagues to visit the apartment, which I called the Laboratory, and asked them to test the prototype and offer feedback.”
What did he learn from asking for feedback?
We developers believe that the customer cares more about functionality than whether the site is easy to navigate.
When I couldn’t turn my perfect prototype into a real product, I told myself that functionality is king. Nobody cares about the user interface.
I have come to understand the importance of user interfaces the hard way.
When a website is not easy to navigate, people abandon it and rarely return.
If I had interviewed users instead of acting as an expert, I would have learned the lesson sooner.
Marc wasn’t like me. He not only invited his friends to share his opinions about the product, but he took their comments seriously.
One of his friends told him to make the site easy to navigate with as few clicks as possible. He listened and asked engineers to design salesforce.com to be easy to navigate.
Other friends talked about the problems associated with the traditional software ecosystem.
The team made sure that Salesforce.com was not like enterprise software products.
He hired a company to help them with reviews and videos of people using their software.
Using the videos, the team discovered that a button was placed in the wrong place and people couldn’t see it properly.
What could we learn?
If you start with the product, you will need customer feedback quickly. Do something about it. Find the right users and share your product with them.
If you start with the audience, try different types of content. See what sticks with people. Decide your next content based on how people interacted with your previous content.
Keep iterating until you find a programmer-content fit.
5. “Don’t hire someone from your previous company” is a stupid opinion
I have never hired someone to work with me.
But when I was studying the history of Salesforce I had some preconceived notions about hiring.
I believed hiring someone I knew would blur the line between personal and professional relationships.
I thought if I hired a friend to work with me I would ignore their mistakes. I would give them easy tasks and high raises. This could bring down the morale of the team as I don’t hold everyone to the same standard.
But after reading about Marc I can say that you should never hesitate to hire people you know.
Marc had worked with Oracle for the past 10 years. He was a senior vice president of the company. He knew some excellent people at the Oracle. He was a friend of Larry Ellison.
I thought he wouldn’t hire people from his previous company, as relying on former colleagues could make him overly dependent on his past network.
He did the opposite of what I thought.
How many people did he hire from Oracle?
Larry believed in Salesforce.com.
He invested $2 million in the seed money and joined the board of directors.
He knew Marc needed top talent but suggested keeping Oracle hires at three.
That’s why Marc only hired three people from his previous company.
“I obliged Larry’s request to limit my use of Oracle as a recruiting fair, but I was ecstatic about the opportunity to handpick three talented and well-trained individuals to help build salesforce.com.”
These people were going to handle:
Recruiting and human resources.
Hardware on which the software will run.
These people helped the Salesforce team to grow quickly.
The apartment they started working in became packed with Salesforce employees.
What could we learn?
Marc started in 1999.
For him, there was no choice but to hire aggressively to grow a SaaS. But now, in 2023, there is less need for too many people, especially at the beginning.
You can handle various things with the help of no-code tools, pre-built software, and standalone tools. That’s why you should avoid hiring as quickly as possible.
But if you feel the need to hire anyone.
The first place you should look is your network. Previous colleagues, friends, or someone in your family could be a great hire.
Summary
Don’t quit your job. Take a sabbatical.
Have a big dream but keep moving forward.
Focus on what’s important.
Initial customer feedback is gold.
Hire someone you know if necessary.