Ask HN: How to make money with SaaS without network or VC funding?
I am coming to realization that job was more comfortable than building the startup. I haven't stopped working for last 6 months and consistently worked 15-16 hours. I have to do so many things such as write code to some extent, sales, marketing, administrative work, compliance, keeping track of accounts, managing churn. It just never ends.
It's been a hell of experience but we (team of 2) are not even bringing in survival money. We had two customers and lost one recently. What a shame!
We raised money from an unknown VC group (sub $100k) but it has been total disaster. They actually pulled us down, misguided us, and demanded things that we do things "their" way. I wish I had never applied or took funding. It has left a bitter taste in my mouth regarding VC. They have no network and in fact they bad mouthed us to a few investors we met with that resulted in some investers ghosting us completely.
Now, we are facing a dilemma. We are giving it one last push before we shut things down. Here is the problem - 1. We are in the domain where we have no expertise in. We are technologists and generalists (Data, ML, AI, Python, C++). Implementation and technical solutions are never problem for us. We can build.
2. I have read and come to realization that without network there is no business. Either you have existing network of founders, customers or you make one through VCs like YC. How sweet is that anything you build you have buyers lined up or at least providing great advice and early validation.
Should we pivot to completely new domain? We dont have expertise in one particular domains area (accounting, tax, supply chain etc.), but we have good knowledge of technology software (think data pipelines, ML, AI models). If we do software for software (e.g. Cursor, Lovable), we worry that closed source might hurt us. Do you think having open source would be a better path for making money?
We can back to job market but things are not green on other side and it is taking 6 months or so for people to get jobs based on my reading. I want to try one last time.
We are stuck without much guidance. What would be your recommendation?
1) Your VC is not the main issue
VC can cause a lot of harm. They often give bad advice and it's your job to decide when to ignore their advice. But if you're counting on your VC to drive your business, then I think you've gone into the relationship with the wrong assumptions. VCs provide capital. They sell cash for a stake in your company. Once they sign the cheque they've delivered 80%-90% of their value. They don't really have any significant insights into problems, simply because they're not really exposed to customers. VCs hear a lot of hypotheses from startups, but most of them are wrong/bullshit and difficult to interpret in context of what you're building. A VC's network may be useful if you already have something that works, have a sales/marketing strategy, and need warmer intros to potential customers/partners. But VCs are not there to discover problems for you ...
So I think it's important for you to readjust your expectations from VCs and investors in general. If they were good operators they'd be building their own companies ...
2) You are lost
I think it's good to have a candid conversation with your co-founder on not understanding any problems well enough to build a company. In this scenario, it's important to go into discovery mode, if you still want to build a company, and use your engineering skillsets to work on temporary measures for cashflow (like consulting, dev contracts, etc). You'll also need to manage your personal expenses to survival levels. Given your prior experiences at large tech companies, and the compensation associated with them, it'll be really hard to do mentally but not insurmountable.
3) Startups may not be your thing
I generally encourage people to try starting their own companies, but it's not for everyone. You really have to enjoy the "multi-hattedness" of being a founder and the early-stage experience. If you're not enjoying the company-building process, and would rather just build products, then you're likely better off going back to working at a more stable startup/company. You likely learned a lot of skills in trying to build a new company, and other startups will look favourably on that.
So I think you have to re-evaluate whether you'd want to keep going. The problems you're dealing with only gets worse as the startup grows. Pivoting at your current stage is the easiest it'll ever get. But the main question is whether you want to be in the game, so to speak, to begin with.
From what you’ve written, I wonder if you’re approaching the problem from the wrong direction. Rather than asking "How can I make money without a network or VC backing?" maybe the more useful question is:
- Who exactly are my users? - What painful, urgent problems do they have?
If that’s unclear, it doesn’t matter how technically great your product is or whether it’s built with AI or rocket science — it likely won’t stick.
Most users don’t care how fancy your tech is; they care if it makes their life easier, saves them time, or HELP THEM MAKE MONEY. If you can't pinpoint that user pain and address it clearly, even pivoting to another domain might lead to the same frustration.
One founder I spoke with recently built a job search platform. The space is totally dominated by big names like LinkedIn and Indeed, but their insight was super niche: they focused on foreign job seekers who needed H1B sponsorship. That tight focus helped them grow fast, even without VC money or big marketing budgets. It wasn’t a flashy idea — just solving a specific, urgent pain for a specific group.
Marketing is another area that often gets overlooked by technical founders. Maybe try strategies like: content marketing, Product Hunt launches, engaging with communities, even open-sourcing parts of your stack because it helps with visibility and credibility. Open source can definitely help attract users — but it still needs a strong value prop and ideally some paid tier or enterprise offering to make it sustainable.
One more insight: some of the best early adopters for AI tools right now are… other AI teams. They understand the value and are quicker to pay for solid infrastructure or automation tools. If you’re thinking of building “software for software,” maybe that’s a niche to explore more intentionally.
You're obviously capable builders. If you're going to give it one more shot, I'd say zoom in hard on the problem and the user. Get out of “build mode” and into “discovery mode” for a bit. Try talking to 10, 20, 50 people in a space where you think you can help. It might open up clearer paths than trying to guess from the outside.
Hope this helps, and best of luck — respect for sticking it out this long.