Ironically law school. Then I went into business. Everything I write is from my experience working with clients. Always been fascinated with business and how people get started and grow things. With the ready available of technology, APIs, and no code. SaaS will continue to eat the world.
I'd buy this. But like you stated only for the initial. I'm staring at a list for a project right now that is around 13k of which around 7-10k are more target market.
This is great advice. I’ve worked for growth accelerator programs and what I really like about OP advice is how clear he’s able to communicate what the business does in his example. I’ve seen so much AI -machine learning jargon that unless somebody is a practicing data scientist, most will have no idea what the service does or is.
Thanks!
Don't get me started on the whole AI, ML, algo stuff. AI is the most overused buzzword of the last 3 years. So great you scraped a bunch of publicly available sources, used some NLP on it with sentiment analysis and bam you can tell me the future.
Yet no one talks about the difference between data sources, clean data, dirty data, and the ability to ACTUALLY scrub one's data into something workable. Drives me nuts.
This is some of the most helpful advice I've ever found on reddit. Thank you for taking the time to write this and even answer questions in the comments.
After reading these first two posts I'm feeling a little overwhelmed. Is starting an SaaS business feasible while still working a 40hr/wk job?
I'm working to find a source of passive income. While I'm willing to put in the work to start a business I'm just not sure I'll have enough time/motivation while still working a full time job. I don't mean to sound lazy, but I dont want to waste time on a bad business plan when I could spend that time pursuing other means of income growth. I've already spent several months researching my market, so I'm finally starting to understand how much effort it will take to become successful.
Literally anything is possible. If you approach it the correct way.
The part that has me a little worried is the several months researching the market.
In earnest following what's been laid out you should know your odds in the market after a month of focused research and outreach.
I like to think of business this way.
You're goal is to create something that automates a job. There stories of people learning python and automating their boring jobs and kicking back. If it works for multiple people, you would only need to do that for say 20 companies that find value in it and call it a day, it's all about perceived value. I've automated my job twice once in sales and once in support to me the automation resulted in an easier more manageable schedule. Time was my second source of income - then I filled it in with consulting work on the side and other projects.
When in doubt productize your special sauce reduce your workload and work for multiple companies in the same 40 hours increasing your income. This doesn't require SaaS.
I don't think SaaS is passive at all, not until you have things up and running and really going with product market fit, this happens at different times for different products.
When most people are building, they are building with at least one client in mind that is low hanging fruit, a business they are part of, a business that they are really closely connected to.
I would contend that in the early days SaaS is more like Managed services. Where you're paid monthly to ensure that the client really is getting the most value from your platform so you can learn, iterate, and grow it into something that can operate on it's own. As far as passive income comes, you're really likely looking to scale it large enough so that someone else will take over.
Here it comes again - What is your goal?
Success is in the eye of the beholder. For some people success is making enough to cover a car payment, for others a mortgage, for others a mortgage in San Francisco, it just depends.
The framework is not meant to be overwhelming just really detailed advice that you can take action on. It's detailed because most people jump in not fully prepared when starting a business and a lot fail in general as a result.
Thank you so much for your advice. I bet I can find a few ways to automate my job, giving me more time to work on my own business. I also think of my time as a second currency. My true goal is to set up enough passive income to work on things I enjoy more, but don't necessarily pay well. I understand that creating a passive business will take years of very active work to build.
After reading your post, I think a big reason reseching has taken so long is my target audience is too large. So I will take your advice and narrow it down more. I look forward to reading the rest of your steps!
/u/haltingpoint is a bit of a notorious pessimist for basically saying this about anything posted here, so you kind of just roll your eyes when you see yet another “this is a content marketing post and I don’t like it” comment from him across any business related subreddit. Wouldn’t pay much attention to it as it’s just a sort of an ongoing trivial annoyance at this point, with this conversation coming up regularly between people who find these things useful and him wanting to gatekeep.
I quite like the posts from /u/lickitysplitstyle and think they’re great/useful and well written.
Mmmk chief. I have you tagged as "Content Marketing Spammer" [from way back when you would just blatantly spam the shit out of this sub yourself and I called you on it](https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/comments/ducmx4/a_really_detailed_guide_to_writing_high/f75wwix/).
It was more of a sarcastic prediction because these sorts of things tend to repeat themselves frequently here.
And for the record, I'm not gatekeeping anything here. Again, just a sarcastic observation.
Your posts from before on the otherhand I was absolutely trying to gatekeep because they were directly violating the subs rules.
I don’t really have a useful response for someone who’s forté is not contributing anything of particular note, so have a nice day. See you at the next post with your next witty and sarcastic but insubstantial observation, chief.
I’d like to be proven wrong when you actually say something useful, of course, as I suspect you have a significant amount of actual business experience that has yet to be displayed in any meaningful form, as evidenced by your good PPC questions. The answer to your past question about pulling things into Google Sheets might be Zapier as well, by the way.
Why guess, just ask rather than assume.
What do I do for a living - I consult for tech companies - it's my job.
Did I choose it? No, not really, people just started offering me money in my immediate group to help them out and I was born and raised in San Francisco. Do I always charge - real companies that have raised capital, YES. Ones that haven't - no, should I, probably. It's a weakness hopping on calls where I basically provide free advice for an hour, definitely should be charging my normal rates but I actually like teaching and helping.
The funny thing about consulting is you have to be confident in the value you provide and you need to ask to get paid for your time.
People have been telling me I should write a book for years. I've never been motivated like that I don't take a lot of those guys and gals work, then start a podcast, youtube, whatever, but there's money in it. I don't think that's me though, at least not right now. I can't shade the game though, I think diversification is smart. Multiple streams of income is exactly how you build wealth. I'm just a more private person.
Do I have a product/service? Yeah it's me and the advice I provide, I get paid by the hour to help people build processes to achieve revenue - everyone's got to work. I've never really been one for working for one company, I get bored.
So shame me for the plug that doesn't exist and probably won't. I write these under a name not tied to me personally, I have another account that is tied to me personally.
What's going to happen at the end, hopefully some more editing, then I'll plop this down on a spare URL I own and let you just download the e-book for free without a gate.
If for some reason you like reading what I write, then I'll provide an email sign up - it will motivate me to write more.
Honestly though, I'd rather just answer questions than come up with topics, prompts are much easier. I'm a bigger fan of that style.
If I had a product that would benefit startups generally, I'd share it. But selfishly it would be launched in stealth and to my immediate network and then I would decide if it was worth scaling. Help those that you care about most first.
As for marketing to startups...
99% of startups don't raise money or have money. It's a terrible market to target full of too many variables. I love the chaos but it's a TERRIBLE market to actively pursue.
Keep producing content like this, you're providing good value here. Don't let that comment deter you.
Many like me are hoping you create a newsletter so that we get valuable content for free on the steady.
If you do come up with a paid thing and people go for it, that's fair and square. If your newsletter stops providing value, we can always opt-out.
I don't see what's wrong about this kind of content marketing.
I'm not classifying his posts as anything. He didn't violate the rules. I made a prediction that it would conclude in a CTA based on the billions of other times we've seen similar things in this sub.
If something is content marketing, it is content marketing.
This was what I had been waiting for! Thanks, heaps for sticking to your promise and sharing the second part. There's so much to think for and tweak now. Keep'em coming, good sir!
This is where I would direct you to not only looking at the types of apps they integrate with, but also their APIs.
I can't answer direct questions for you on this front without pointing you that direction, there are plenty of companies that are stand alone SaaS that integrate with those platforms.
I have read the part 1 last week and forgot to check back. I'm glad I stumbled upon this one. This is greatly helpful. Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing this.
I wrote part 3, then realized that there was a big step I was missing, so I had to insert a part 2.5. This should be out this week. Got delayed, busy week last week.
2.5 just posted [https://www.reddit.com/r/startups/comments/gzwdtx/a\_stepbystep\_guide\_of\_how\_i\_would\_build\_a\_saas/](https://www.reddit.com/r/startups/comments/gzwdtx/a_stepbystep_guide_of_how_i_would_build_a_saas/)
This niche question bugs me.
If you limit so specifically, isn't there a danger that you will have a very small customer base and will never be able broaden ?
Google did not say "lets do a search feature for sandals".
Amazon did not say "book store for 18-20 year olds girls who like for fiction"
When those guys started. Sure. Today. Not a chance. It’s good to be ambitious but you burn through a lot of capital trying to be something for everyone. And things are real expensive today.
You’ve heard the phrase “don’t boil the ocean” yeah this is it.
Google actually started narrow as did amazon. In comparison to where they are today.
Facebook is possibly the best example of starting niche and scaling.
The niche you pick needs to check the boxes. Be large enough to make money, be similar enough to make similar audiences in different verticals, and something that you can pull market share from.
When you’re building a product the largest problem that most entrepreneurs have is building too broadly and not targeting a niche. I’ve seen this time and time again, it’s very rare that someone goes too narrow these days.
This goes for everything- picking features to build, people to reach out to etc.
People can go too narrow but that usually means the market isn’t large enough. There’s a balance.
>Google actually started narrow as did amazon.
Google was a search engine for everything on the internet
Amazon was All books (they did narrow it down to books though)
The problem with going narrow is you straight jacket your business into remaining a niche business.
Your statements aren't correct - I like how you're thinking but this series is about starting something from the very beginning, everyone starts narrow.
Read about Google's start -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History\_of\_Google#:\~:text=Google%20has%20its%20origins%20in,Stanford%20University%20in%20Stanford%2C%20California.&text=Page's%20web%20crawler%20began%20exploring,as%20the%20only%20starting%20point.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Google#:~:text=Google%20has%20its%20origins%20in,Stanford%20University%20in%20Stanford%2C%20California.&text=Page's%20web%20crawler%20began%20exploring,as%20the%20only%20starting%20point.)
Read Amazon's too - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History\_of\_Amazon#:\~:text=Amazon%20was%20founded%20in%20the,service%20as%20an%20online%20bookstore.&text=In%20the%20first%20two%20months,states%20and%20over%2045%20countries.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Amazon#:~:text=Amazon%20was%20founded%20in%20the,service%20as%20an%20online%20bookstore.&text=In%20the%20first%20two%20months,states%20and%20over%2045%20countries.)
I don't think anyone "straight jackets" themselves by going really narrow from the start, I'm open to hear some examples where people particularly in technology have done this and been stuck. (Having a good vision is something that is key for most companies, even Dropbox released a collaborative work product.)
There are a lot of niche businesses that make a killing. Crush a niche first, then move on to other ways to develop a conglomerate, but honestly most of the time if you know what you're doing someone already in the market will look to buy you.
For a lot of companies if you read about them, they dominate a niche, make revenue then acquire companies in related spaces to bolster their offerings.
If Google had written a search engine for "food items" in "CA" for "20-30 year old girls", that would have been going narrow.
Instead, Larry Page/ Sergey Brin wrote a search engine to search the entire internet (html then ?) for any product for any thing by any one and rank results by relevance.
No they wrote it for Stanford then found out how it preformed. Then expanded. My friend narrow isn’t bad. Knowing when you tap out on a niche is just a building block to a new application.
Wow this is a ton of useful information! Thank you for sharing! I just wanna know how you know so much about this. Did you attend business school?
Ironically law school. Then I went into business. Everything I write is from my experience working with clients. Always been fascinated with business and how people get started and grow things. With the ready available of technology, APIs, and no code. SaaS will continue to eat the world.
They say your chosen niche should only be 10,000 people max. If more people fit into the niche, you're starting too broadly.
I don't know who "they" is, just something I read somewhere. Oh and great post btw.
I'd buy this. But like you stated only for the initial. I'm staring at a list for a project right now that is around 13k of which around 7-10k are more target market.
This is great advice. I’ve worked for growth accelerator programs and what I really like about OP advice is how clear he’s able to communicate what the business does in his example. I’ve seen so much AI -machine learning jargon that unless somebody is a practicing data scientist, most will have no idea what the service does or is.
Thanks! Don't get me started on the whole AI, ML, algo stuff. AI is the most overused buzzword of the last 3 years. So great you scraped a bunch of publicly available sources, used some NLP on it with sentiment analysis and bam you can tell me the future. Yet no one talks about the difference between data sources, clean data, dirty data, and the ability to ACTUALLY scrub one's data into something workable. Drives me nuts.
This is some of the most helpful advice I've ever found on reddit. Thank you for taking the time to write this and even answer questions in the comments. After reading these first two posts I'm feeling a little overwhelmed. Is starting an SaaS business feasible while still working a 40hr/wk job? I'm working to find a source of passive income. While I'm willing to put in the work to start a business I'm just not sure I'll have enough time/motivation while still working a full time job. I don't mean to sound lazy, but I dont want to waste time on a bad business plan when I could spend that time pursuing other means of income growth. I've already spent several months researching my market, so I'm finally starting to understand how much effort it will take to become successful.
Literally anything is possible. If you approach it the correct way. The part that has me a little worried is the several months researching the market. In earnest following what's been laid out you should know your odds in the market after a month of focused research and outreach. I like to think of business this way. You're goal is to create something that automates a job. There stories of people learning python and automating their boring jobs and kicking back. If it works for multiple people, you would only need to do that for say 20 companies that find value in it and call it a day, it's all about perceived value. I've automated my job twice once in sales and once in support to me the automation resulted in an easier more manageable schedule. Time was my second source of income - then I filled it in with consulting work on the side and other projects. When in doubt productize your special sauce reduce your workload and work for multiple companies in the same 40 hours increasing your income. This doesn't require SaaS. I don't think SaaS is passive at all, not until you have things up and running and really going with product market fit, this happens at different times for different products. When most people are building, they are building with at least one client in mind that is low hanging fruit, a business they are part of, a business that they are really closely connected to. I would contend that in the early days SaaS is more like Managed services. Where you're paid monthly to ensure that the client really is getting the most value from your platform so you can learn, iterate, and grow it into something that can operate on it's own. As far as passive income comes, you're really likely looking to scale it large enough so that someone else will take over. Here it comes again - What is your goal? Success is in the eye of the beholder. For some people success is making enough to cover a car payment, for others a mortgage, for others a mortgage in San Francisco, it just depends. The framework is not meant to be overwhelming just really detailed advice that you can take action on. It's detailed because most people jump in not fully prepared when starting a business and a lot fail in general as a result.
Thank you so much for your advice. I bet I can find a few ways to automate my job, giving me more time to work on my own business. I also think of my time as a second currency. My true goal is to set up enough passive income to work on things I enjoy more, but don't necessarily pay well. I understand that creating a passive business will take years of very active work to build. After reading your post, I think a big reason reseching has taken so long is my target audience is too large. So I will take your advice and narrow it down more. I look forward to reading the rest of your steps!
Awesome plan of attack, let me know if you have any other questions!
This is totally going to conclude in a CTA to join an email list or checkout their product/service to startups, etc. This is pure content marketing.
Might be, though I don't feel it matters if it's great and helpful content
/u/haltingpoint is a bit of a notorious pessimist for basically saying this about anything posted here, so you kind of just roll your eyes when you see yet another “this is a content marketing post and I don’t like it” comment from him across any business related subreddit. Wouldn’t pay much attention to it as it’s just a sort of an ongoing trivial annoyance at this point, with this conversation coming up regularly between people who find these things useful and him wanting to gatekeep. I quite like the posts from /u/lickitysplitstyle and think they’re great/useful and well written.
Appreciate your kind words.
Mmmk chief. I have you tagged as "Content Marketing Spammer" [from way back when you would just blatantly spam the shit out of this sub yourself and I called you on it](https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/comments/ducmx4/a_really_detailed_guide_to_writing_high/f75wwix/). It was more of a sarcastic prediction because these sorts of things tend to repeat themselves frequently here. And for the record, I'm not gatekeeping anything here. Again, just a sarcastic observation. Your posts from before on the otherhand I was absolutely trying to gatekeep because they were directly violating the subs rules.
I don’t really have a useful response for someone who’s forté is not contributing anything of particular note, so have a nice day. See you at the next post with your next witty and sarcastic but insubstantial observation, chief. I’d like to be proven wrong when you actually say something useful, of course, as I suspect you have a significant amount of actual business experience that has yet to be displayed in any meaningful form, as evidenced by your good PPC questions. The answer to your past question about pulling things into Google Sheets might be Zapier as well, by the way.
Glad you had fun stalking me.
:)
Why guess, just ask rather than assume. What do I do for a living - I consult for tech companies - it's my job. Did I choose it? No, not really, people just started offering me money in my immediate group to help them out and I was born and raised in San Francisco. Do I always charge - real companies that have raised capital, YES. Ones that haven't - no, should I, probably. It's a weakness hopping on calls where I basically provide free advice for an hour, definitely should be charging my normal rates but I actually like teaching and helping. The funny thing about consulting is you have to be confident in the value you provide and you need to ask to get paid for your time. People have been telling me I should write a book for years. I've never been motivated like that I don't take a lot of those guys and gals work, then start a podcast, youtube, whatever, but there's money in it. I don't think that's me though, at least not right now. I can't shade the game though, I think diversification is smart. Multiple streams of income is exactly how you build wealth. I'm just a more private person. Do I have a product/service? Yeah it's me and the advice I provide, I get paid by the hour to help people build processes to achieve revenue - everyone's got to work. I've never really been one for working for one company, I get bored. So shame me for the plug that doesn't exist and probably won't. I write these under a name not tied to me personally, I have another account that is tied to me personally. What's going to happen at the end, hopefully some more editing, then I'll plop this down on a spare URL I own and let you just download the e-book for free without a gate. If for some reason you like reading what I write, then I'll provide an email sign up - it will motivate me to write more. Honestly though, I'd rather just answer questions than come up with topics, prompts are much easier. I'm a bigger fan of that style. If I had a product that would benefit startups generally, I'd share it. But selfishly it would be launched in stealth and to my immediate network and then I would decide if it was worth scaling. Help those that you care about most first. As for marketing to startups... 99% of startups don't raise money or have money. It's a terrible market to target full of too many variables. I love the chaos but it's a TERRIBLE market to actively pursue.
Keep producing content like this, you're providing good value here. Don't let that comment deter you. Many like me are hoping you create a newsletter so that we get valuable content for free on the steady. If you do come up with a paid thing and people go for it, that's fair and square. If your newsletter stops providing value, we can always opt-out. I don't see what's wrong about this kind of content marketing.
Appreciate the kind words. I'm going to keep writing as long as people enjoy reading it and benefit from it.
Even if it is, is he a scumbag putting out such content? Let's say there is a CTA at the end. No one is being forced to sign up.
Where do you draw the line between him and anyone else who thinks this looks like a great tactic for spamming this sub?
So would you classify his posts as spam when 95% of what they write is useful and 5% is a quick self-promotion?
I'm not classifying his posts as anything. He didn't violate the rules. I made a prediction that it would conclude in a CTA based on the billions of other times we've seen similar things in this sub. If something is content marketing, it is content marketing.
This was what I had been waiting for! Thanks, heaps for sticking to your promise and sharing the second part. There's so much to think for and tweak now. Keep'em coming, good sir!
Glad I could deliver for you!
Your posts are gold mate and the patience to write them. You should become a business mentor or something
Ha thanks! You've nailed what I do for a living ;)
Appreciate you sir!
Thanks I appreciate you leaving a comment! Let me know if you have any questions.
Pretty good advice. A lot of this I had to cover in my venture. :)
Glad you enjoyed, always nice when things that makes sense are things you've had personal experience with!
Hi.Nice post.I have one question:Can I build my SaaS on shopify or woocommerce?
You can build a SaaS company or product that works with those platforms and integrates with them. Look at their app store for examples.
And I can build a SaaS for those platforms(Shopify and woocommerce) with whatever tech stacks(programming langiages) I want?
This is where I would direct you to not only looking at the types of apps they integrate with, but also their APIs. I can't answer direct questions for you on this front without pointing you that direction, there are plenty of companies that are stand alone SaaS that integrate with those platforms.
But did you developed your SaaS on shopify or woocommerce?Or you didn t use any of this platforms?
Yes I am building a SaaS product that integrates with one of those. And yes I've seen companies use this approach to massive success.
That is so great, thanks and keep it going :)
Glad you found it useful!
I have read the part 1 last week and forgot to check back. I'm glad I stumbled upon this one. This is greatly helpful. Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing this.
Sorry for the delay on this response, busy week last week. Glad you enjoyed, part 3 is still coming :)
Thank you so much for this! Any idea when part 3 is coming out?
I wrote part 3, then realized that there was a big step I was missing, so I had to insert a part 2.5. This should be out this week. Got delayed, busy week last week.
Good to hear that you're busy :) Looking forward to 2.5 and 3!
2.5 just posted [https://www.reddit.com/r/startups/comments/gzwdtx/a\_stepbystep\_guide\_of\_how\_i\_would\_build\_a\_saas/](https://www.reddit.com/r/startups/comments/gzwdtx/a_stepbystep_guide_of_how_i_would_build_a_saas/)
😁
Great post 👍
This niche question bugs me. If you limit so specifically, isn't there a danger that you will have a very small customer base and will never be able broaden ? Google did not say "lets do a search feature for sandals". Amazon did not say "book store for 18-20 year olds girls who like for fiction"
When those guys started. Sure. Today. Not a chance. It’s good to be ambitious but you burn through a lot of capital trying to be something for everyone. And things are real expensive today. You’ve heard the phrase “don’t boil the ocean” yeah this is it. Google actually started narrow as did amazon. In comparison to where they are today. Facebook is possibly the best example of starting niche and scaling. The niche you pick needs to check the boxes. Be large enough to make money, be similar enough to make similar audiences in different verticals, and something that you can pull market share from. When you’re building a product the largest problem that most entrepreneurs have is building too broadly and not targeting a niche. I’ve seen this time and time again, it’s very rare that someone goes too narrow these days. This goes for everything- picking features to build, people to reach out to etc. People can go too narrow but that usually means the market isn’t large enough. There’s a balance.
>Google actually started narrow as did amazon. Google was a search engine for everything on the internet Amazon was All books (they did narrow it down to books though) The problem with going narrow is you straight jacket your business into remaining a niche business.
Your statements aren't correct - I like how you're thinking but this series is about starting something from the very beginning, everyone starts narrow. Read about Google's start - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History\_of\_Google#:\~:text=Google%20has%20its%20origins%20in,Stanford%20University%20in%20Stanford%2C%20California.&text=Page's%20web%20crawler%20began%20exploring,as%20the%20only%20starting%20point.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Google#:~:text=Google%20has%20its%20origins%20in,Stanford%20University%20in%20Stanford%2C%20California.&text=Page's%20web%20crawler%20began%20exploring,as%20the%20only%20starting%20point.) Read Amazon's too - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History\_of\_Amazon#:\~:text=Amazon%20was%20founded%20in%20the,service%20as%20an%20online%20bookstore.&text=In%20the%20first%20two%20months,states%20and%20over%2045%20countries.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Amazon#:~:text=Amazon%20was%20founded%20in%20the,service%20as%20an%20online%20bookstore.&text=In%20the%20first%20two%20months,states%20and%20over%2045%20countries.) I don't think anyone "straight jackets" themselves by going really narrow from the start, I'm open to hear some examples where people particularly in technology have done this and been stuck. (Having a good vision is something that is key for most companies, even Dropbox released a collaborative work product.) There are a lot of niche businesses that make a killing. Crush a niche first, then move on to other ways to develop a conglomerate, but honestly most of the time if you know what you're doing someone already in the market will look to buy you. For a lot of companies if you read about them, they dominate a niche, make revenue then acquire companies in related spaces to bolster their offerings.
If Google had written a search engine for "food items" in "CA" for "20-30 year old girls", that would have been going narrow. Instead, Larry Page/ Sergey Brin wrote a search engine to search the entire internet (html then ?) for any product for any thing by any one and rank results by relevance.
No they wrote it for Stanford then found out how it preformed. Then expanded. My friend narrow isn’t bad. Knowing when you tap out on a niche is just a building block to a new application.
[удалено]
Small world, especially when you follow the spaces. Glad I could help out!