Startup Stock PhotosIn my last post, I touched on questions to ask yourself if you’re thinking about starting a SaaS.

Considering that staffing, outsourcing, bug fixes and insurance are all pressing issues, it’s important to take a well-rounded look at what your company will really need.

But most importantly, having someone to maintain the system is something that should take deeper consideration.

Finding the right person or outsourced team to run the system (if you’re not doing it yourself) is vital to the life of your company.

So, here are a few more things to consider:

Do You Need Someone on Staff?

Whether it’s you or someone else, the answer is yes, someone has to staff this business venture.

If you’re building a smaller system, you may not need an excessive amount of help, if any at all. But, if you’re building a system while keeping your full-time gig, or if your system is a bit larger, you’re going to need at least a little bit of help.

So What Exactly Needs to Get Done?

photo-1458419948946-19fb2cc296afIf you’re questioning the need for outside help, consider this: There are aspects of the business that you may not be well-versed in or equipped to handle properly.

Some of those things include:

  • Additional development work – bug fixes, user requests, and general maintenance of the system won’t handle themselves
  • Marketing – getting the word out there is a full-time job in and of itself
  • Sales – you can market all you want, but if you don’t actually land a sale, what’s the point
  • Billing – someone has to manage all of those invoices
  • Account management – because taxes and payroll are kinda important
  • Answering the phone – aside from handling customers, don’t forget about all those telemarketers who are going to want to talk to you now that you’re big time
  • Making coffee – believe me, you’re going to need it. A lot of it.

What Happens When Customers Request New Features?

Who is going to respond to all those feature requests? Developers? Probably not.
Initially, it’s probably going to be you.

Think about it, though…

  • Now that you’ve got all these fancy requests from your awesome, soon-to-be-paying users, what do you do with them?
  • How do you decide which requests are doable and which aren’t?
  • Who’s going to talk to all these people and let them know that you’re working on their problems and that their problems are done?
  • Do you do a newsletter for everyone or just the people with problems?
  • What systems do you use to log all these issues and know when they’re done?

What Happens When Your Server Gets Hacked?

photo-1461749280684-dccba630e2f6“Hacked? What do you mean ‘hacked’? We’re going to have the best security money can buy” said one client that I worked with.

“Perfect, what is your security budget?” I asked.

“What do you mean, security budget?” he responded.

Sigh…

I think you get the point here. On a long enough timeline, you’re eventually going to be a target and your system will probably be compromised in some way.

So what do you do? What precautions are in place? Does your team know how to deal with this? Can your team fix the hole in the system? What happens if your users’ data has been compromised? How do you let them know? Will this end things for you?

Don’t worry, it didn’t for Target or the Federal Government, you should be fine.

But seriously, you need to think about this stuff.

So what else is there to consider?

Well honestly, one of the biggest things: customers. But that’s another blog post for another day.

Stick around for my next post! I’ll be addressing some questions to consider when it comes to customers and sales.

Got any questions you want covered? Leave a comment below and I’ll answer it in my next post!