What is the point of having multi-year contracts in SAAS if the customer does not pay upfront for the 2nd year?

there is Balanced, Dwolla, Braintree but none of them seem to work in India yet.

This is not my specialty, however, I have been in your position many many times -- maybe this will help. If the product is in-tangible, then look for JV partners on the Internet. Try to find an expert that deals with these JV opportunities (like me). If the product is physical, then look for sales organizations that have networks of sales people across the country. You do the deal with the organization and the independent network of sales people sells your product. It's a sweet setup if you can negotiate a margin that works for everyone. Hope that helps - Cheers - Nick

I started a large SaaS Company for B2B where perfection in code is as importante as it gets. So here is my advice, DON'T CODE until you know what the Saas Really is. First start understanding what the problem REALLY is. Interview people and actually spend 100% of your time doing Customer Discovery. (This sounds easy but it is a skill you'll have to develop far more important than coding). Once you understand what the problem is, come up with a value proposition. Still no code. Then make a sell. If you can actually find things already existing that you can Hack and put it together then use that. Then make another sell. If you can sell it to at least 50 people if you are B2C, or if you are B2B you should have at least 1 customer. Once you do that then start automating some parts of the solution that you have hacked and so on. But THE most important thing is to be in constant conversations with your customers and hot leads. Remember you are a customer making machine not a coding machine, the first one is where the money is. Hope this helped you, if you want to talk more about customer discovery and customer development, just give me a call.

I was involved with a SaaS product that launched a landing page and made clear that the product was still in development, but that we would give earliest access to people who pre-paid for the product. We also allowed people to choose what they paid, and promised them that payment would stay in-effect for several months. We generated revenue the first day of posting the landing-page publicly and increased revenue month-over-month. However, we discontinued the product as it was simply not big enough of a market for us to justify continued time and energy. But I would encourage you to pursue a similar model in that it's a great way to test and validate the pain others experience for the problem and a great way to ensure you're building the product to satisfy real customers. Happy to talk this through in more detail in a call

It depends on a number of factors but I'd boil it down to two key things to start: 1) What is your real cost to provide a free plan or trial? 2) Who exactly is your customer and what are they used to paying and who and how do they pay today? When you say "online workforce marketplace" it sounds as though you're placing virtual workers. If that's the case, or if you're paying for the supply side of the marketplace, the question is how much can you subsidize demand? Depending on where you're at in the process, I'd also question how much you can learn about the viability of your marketplace by offering a free version, assuming again, that free is actually a real cost to you. I was part of a SaaS project that started charging people for early access based mostly on just a good landing page (we clearly stated they were pre-paying) and were amazed at the response. I've also run a SaaS product that offered free trials and realized that the support costs and hand-holding and selling required to convert from free trial to paid wasn't worth it, this despite the product's significant average ARR. You might be better off providing a "more information" sign-up form (to capture more leads) and let them ask for a free trial while only showing your paid options. I've been amazed at the lead capture potential from a simple "have questions? Click here and we'll contact you" This is all the generalized advice I can offer based on the limited information I have, but happy to dive-in further if you'd like on a call.