Title: Several years ago, I had a client whose salespeople were using Excel to generate sales proposals. This was inefficient and the resulting documents looked awful, so I developed a new process for them using a no-code platform. It featured a web form that was tied to a workflow engine, and a fancy PDF got emailed to the customer to sign.<p>When the client loved the solution, I knew I was on to something. However, the no-code platform wasn&#x27;t very customizable, so I decided to rebuild the process as a SaaS product. The client&#x27;s CTO wanted in and we became cofounders.<p>Today, we passed the $2,500&#x2F;mo. threshold, and couldn&#x27;t be more excited! (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;pricetable.io" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;pricetable.io</a>)<p>Things started slow. I wasn&#x27;t a software developer by trade, so I was constantly &quot;drinking from the fire hose.&quot; Also, my cofounder and I had disagreements regarding features, UX, sales strategy... you name it. We never fought, but initially there was a sense of disconnect.<p>Then one day, everything clicked. His company started to pilot our product, and after a few months became our first customer. Receiving feedback from real users was a breath of fresh air. It was also really eye-opening to see which assumptions we had made were slam dunks and which were hilariously wrong!<p>Things might have been easier had I picked a more mainstream stack like Rails&#x2F;Django, but once I got up to speed with Elixir and Vue, development became a Zen-like experience. Both communities are very welcoming and immensely helpful. HN has also been an extraordinary source of inspiration; reading success stories always makes me launch my code editor! Similarly, hearing from companies that didn&#x27;t make it helps us keep our expectations realistic.<p>Now we shift focus to finding new clients. We have a very solid success story and metrics to back it up. However, both my partner and I still have day jobs we need the income from, and the product requires a fairly high-touch sales approach. Any advice would be appreciated. :)
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