My startup idea is probably wrong, that's fine.

If you are interested in seeing what a founder goes through when bootstrapping a B2B SaaS company - the product strategy, marketing strategy, execution, difficulties, pivots - I have something for you.

Be my virtual co-founder, and join me on this new endeavour. I'll be posting from conception* to wherever this journey takes me.

So let's get right into it. This is the story of Qualy .

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If you are starting or running a startup, the Startup J Curve, created Howard Love is really good. It gives you a roadmap, it manages your expectation, it makes you feel that you're not special, and that's good.

This is it. This is the J curve.

1. Create:?The "big idea" is here. Most people never leave this place. The idea, team and money come together to start the project. Getting investment is "easier", because nothing is real, you're selling the dream.
2. Release: Get it released and listen for feedback. Now we're talking, and reality slaps you on the face faster than your elevator pitch.
3. Morph:?Pivot and adjust to feedback. Several iterations may be needed until product market fit is achieved.
4. Model:?Optimise your business model.?And ROI, profit, etc. becomes very important for the next step.
5. Scale: You can generate money, profitably! Now do it more and more, I guess. That's capitalism after all.
6. Harvest: Sell, IPO, do whatever you want. But now you're an enterprise, not a startup anymore.

Where's Qualy ?

We have no PMF (Product Market-fit), we haven't even released Qualy yet, after all! So let's talk about the "Create" phase. And more specifically, let's focus on "The idea", "The team", and "The money".

The idea

We have to just assume the current idea I'm building Qualy on, is at minimum incorrect or incomplete.

Right now, this is not a grand-vision of a one-of-a-kind visionary (no matter how high of esteem I have of myself). It's a hypothesis, which based on customer feedback, research, etc, will be proven right or wrong. And most importantly, it will evolve. The idea = the hypothesis.

So what is Qualy then? Is it the holy grail of B2B SaaS? Just an opportunistic idea that takes advantage of a specific time in the market?

First, we have to start with the customer experience, and the technology should solve for that. We should solve for the customer success, not our own systems. And I think that's what's fundamentally wrong with current CRMs and tools that promise a streamlined customer experience. We have great internal tools, and lacking genuine customer connection.

We lack connection

I'm currently writing this from Brazil, Florianopolis. It's amazing to see the connection small businesses still have with their customers. I walk around and see small businesses becoming the centre piece of their little communities. I see people recommending restaurants, because "the food is great and the owner is my friend, tell him I sent you".

Businesses are made by and for people, but along the way, as money and scale became the goal. We lost a bit our way.

We have drip campaigns, deal pipelines, views, support tickets, automatic CSAT, reporting and workflows. But ultimately, the way we do "Customer Relationship Management" solves for the company, not the customer.

And I think, this is even more clear when companies sell services. We've "mastered" the best practices of selling physical goods via the internet: clear pictures, specs, descriptions, upselling, cross-selling and reviews. Speedy delivery, clear tracking, returns/refunds and customer support. NPS emails, and wish lists. From Amazon to Shopify, there's a map of best practices, here it is here you go.

But what happens when the product requires, 25 meetings, 7 forms, 5 documents, 99 different conversations. What happens when the product is nuanced, customised, unique, and has a long multi-step, collaborative plan so only then the customer can realise its benefits? What happens when the product delivery never ends?

I don't think we have really an answer, and the attempts so far are fragmented, and only scratch the surface. We fail to connect with customers, stakeholders, beneficieries

From the Hubspot focus on "Optimizing For Customer Connection" to Apple's focus in making their Apple stores more like a city-hall and less a store, more and more companies see it. Tbh, they try. But it still not wide-spread, genuine and reliable.

When thinking about Qualy , I think in three broad points need to generate genuine, high-quality and scalable customer connections.

Qualy stands for Quality. That's the goal. To enable businesses to provide top-notch quality services. And how we do that, by connecting with people.

Well, that's my hypothesis at least. I'll write more about each point soon, and how that coalesce into one product/company. Until then, let's look at "The team".

The team

Me.

The money

It's bootstrapped, meaning, ideally very minimum. So let's see:

Well, Raphael, you may be thinking, what about your time, development costs, marketing, etc? Fair enough dear reader. So here it is:

My time

The price on this one is infinite, this is the only resource I cannot get more of. Every second I spend on Qualy , is a second of my life I'm never going to get back. So that's where passion comes into play, IMO.

Do you need passion to run and start a business? No. Does passion enables you to whole heartily embrace all these hours you will be spending on your startup? Yes. Without resentment that you could be doing something else? Yes.

Do I have passion for challenges, businesses, quality, connection, psychology, helping people, growing as a person and professional? Yes. And that's how I justify doing this crazy journey all over again. I want to create something great, even if it's not a billion dollar company.

Development costs

I like development. While I don't consider myself a software engineer, because I don't want to do this as a job, I still can do it well enough, especially after all I learnt scaling EducationLink .

I'm using popular development tools for two reasons:

1. Popular frameworks have a lot of content, expertise and professionals in the market: this makes it easier to find professionals that already master the tech, makes it easier for me to learn, and allow me to provide the best experience with the minimum amount of effort.
2. Popular frameworks are battle-tested and can help you achieve a better architecture: especially when they are opinionated (as everything in life, it depends). But in this case, this is key. I'm not an expert in JWT tokens, API authentication and MongoDB ops. Frameworks and managed services are. Does this works forever? No. But it does start a solid foundation, that can be rebuild and improved later when necessary.

So here's the tech stack is:

1. The server: NestJS (Typescript/Javascript)
2. The DB: MongoDB ( Redis when caching is needed)
3. The frontend: MongoDB
4. The UI framework: MongoDB
5. And Google Cloud as infrastructure/platform as a service ( Firebase for hosting, authentication, performance)

Marketing & tools

I'm not considering yet the costs of HubSpot (?? <- expensive as hell if you want to start with a somewhat comprehensive solution) and other tools, after all we're talking about the "Create" phase.

But the GTM strategy will require more investment, from Marketing tools, to support ( Usersnap ?), organization ( Notion ?) and others, but also Ads? Does it require freelancers?

Anyway... we will get to this in the planning of the "Release" phase. No matter what though, no company is cost free, and if I have to invest in something, that will be definitely market and PMF validation.

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* Almost from conception, it's before Release, but long after I had the idea and starte