I am releasing my app starter framework built on top of the Rails framework. I call it the Olympus business framework. It is intended to be the fastest way to get a SaaS business up and running and can save companies hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars over the course of their business.
Background:
I love iterating and building products. Having people utilize and enjoy the products one makes is addictive. A few years ago I had a long list of apps I wanted to build. The fun part of course is building the core of the product. The not fun part is everything else. Billing, security, hosting infrastructure, analytics and support and so on.
I started my career in development to learn how to build my own apps to start a business. I wanted to figure out how to get a product shipped out the door as fast as possible. After 12 years I discovered the key to building good products has very little to do with having highly skilled developers. I know that statement will sting to the developers reading this and hear me out before you raise the pitchforks.
I moved from Enterprise to startup about a third of the way through my journey. I eventually came to describe myself as a “Rails rescue developer”. I found a niche at companies that had problems delivering at the speed or quality the management wanted to deliver at. During this time I found the same set of behaviors repeated over and over leading to their current quagmire.
I’ll expand on these in more detail as time goes on but what I found is that developing software quickly is not a developer talent problem. It’s an organizational people challenge on all levels. It ultimately flows from management (or lack thereof) and trickles down to the product and design teams. By the time ideas get to developers to implement the developers are already set up to fail no matter how skilled they are. Now, developers aren’t perfect citizens in this either. They will put self interests first in regards to the tech they choose or what they choose to focus on and often not work on behalf of the company.
In order to move these companies from an underperforming to higher performing state requires a two pronged approach.
- Exemplify and teach the personal interactions required
- Provide heavier hitting tools for developers to be more effective.
I intend to make public everything I learned starting with the launch of the Olympus dev framework to give your devs heavy hitting tools. As time goes on, I’ll continue to add supplemental docs to help guide the people and process side as well.
What does it include?
The Olympus dev framework is intended to include everything you need to start building any SaaS application. It is built on top of Ruby on Rails and is intended to supplement, not replace it. Out of the box Olympus contains the basic application structure and functionality needed for most companies.
It organizes the app into 3 major sections:
- Dashboard - The logged in area of a SaaS application
- Marketing - Public pages to host your own marketing area
- Admin - To administer the application
Just delete one if you don’t need it! For instance many companies will use something like Webflow for their public site.
The data models are intended to work with any type of application. With very minor tweaks a wide variety of use cases is easily achieved without having to rearchitect the application.
Authentication:
It includes the most common forms of authentication for password login and OAuth logins. Coming soon will be a token auth provider for API’s.
Billing:
A complete billing schema is provided and gives revenue reports and subscription billing.
Security:
Data encryption and key rotation are key to ensuring that your data is secure even in the event of the most egregious data breaches. Encryption without rotation isn’t very useful. Olympus has built in key rotation available from the start to meet the strictest security regulations.
Tracking:
A complete tracking system that stores your events internally prevents vendor lock in and makes analyzing and exporting your data easy.
GDPR Compliances
An export and data scrub system is in place and ready to utilize for your customers. Launch with GDPR compliance in mind to be able to server the broadest possible audience.
Two factor authentication (2FA)
Olympus has all types of two-factor authentication ready to go. It supports security tokens and mobile authenticators out of the gate. The OTP (one time password) code could be sent via SMS as well at extra cost. The admin area is set up to be authenticated with 2FA out of the gate. It’s recommended to provide your admins with token devices like a Ubikey. After Google rolled out their token devices, they have not had a single compromised employee account.
Style Framework
An easily modifiable style framework with a style guide and brand guidelines page.
Do I need all of this?
If you want to start a real company, then yes absolutely. Over the past decade the myth of the MVP has decimated start ups. This isn’t to say that there is no kernel of truth in the idea of an MVP. The online blog-o-sphere is largely regurgitated, boiled down, impractical advice to your long term success. It feeds the desire for instant gratification.
Can you launch without these things? Absolutely. Does it make sense? Absolutely not. Imagine you are building a retail store. However, the only thing you want to spend money on is the inventory because that’s the only thing that sells. You don’t spend any money on finishing the store space with floors and ceilings, or shelves to put the product on, or cash registers because a piece of paper will do, or an accounting system because who knows if anyone will walk in, or cleaning supplies to ensure a nice environment and so on. This would be silly. Yet that is how we approach SaaS businesses.
We don’t spend time on the intangibles because it’s expensive. Software development costs a lot. We defer costs to later on that are essential to running the business. The problem is we get used to our current situation. We say a piece of paper for accounting is not that bad. We convince ourselves to think our inferior situation is good and we miss the opportunity to move to a place where we can be more effective.
Olympus lets your dev teams be as effective as possible at no or minimal cost (read more on pricing). It doesn’t have to be a matter of expense anymore.
What’s in store for the future?
This is very much an initial “alpha” (maybe even pre alpha). Over the next year or two I want to drive this towards its version 1.0 launch. At that point it will have all the kinks worked out and include one touch deployment and infrastructure code as well. There is a lot more to come. I want to drive down the cost of launching a SaaS business by 75% over the current costs.
Pricing
Olympus is much more than a simple framework of a bunch of preconfigured gems. It's custom written systems based on over a decade of experience in the SaaS software world. It includes condensed business experiences in areas like compliance, security, and processes that many new devs just aren't aware of.
Bootstrappers, hobbyists, new unfunded companies
I want to support bootstrappers and individuals to create and launch their business ideas. If you are a company or individual with less than $250,000 in revenue / income, then you can use this at your leisure at no cost.
Funded companies or bigger businesses
For those businesses that have raised VC money, or have more than $250,000 in yearly revenue, then I am putting the starting price of $1000 on the framework. Olympus has hundreds of dev hours to get to this point. At some point in your business you will need these features and it will end up way more costly if you pay your own devs. This money gets put right back into helping other small and bootstrapped businesses.
Get started
Olympus Framework docs and homepage (currently just docs): www.olympusframework.com
Code repo: https://github.com/colinpetruno/olympus_framework