How to Build a Small SaaS: Tips for Beginners
How to Create your SaaS Idea
In different online indie startup communities, it’s difficult to get anywhere without hearing about SaaS startups that are making waves. (If you don’t know what a SaaS is, may I recommend my earlier blog post about that very topic? Perhaps? Feel free!) Discussions abound about plucky individuals quitting their 9-5, pulling together every resource they have available to make a platform work, and using that to make millions and end up with the life of their dreams. Followed immediately by 95 similar stories that didn’t work out, and the creator moved onto their next idea to try again (hopefully!)
The stories of success are infectious, spreading far and wide. For example, Docusign started as a team of 3 back in 2003. (Check them out in our top 20 list of SaaS companies to see how they compare!) This leads many people out there to wonder, could I start a SaaS company on my own? The answer is emphatically, yes! Anyone can decide to create their own SaaS company starting right this very minute, but that doesn’t guarantee success and completely removing oneself from the rat race. While it is possible, it is rare, but having a good plan can help you achieve this dream for yourself.
The only thing you need to start a SaaS company (because you’re reading this on a computer, so that requirement is already checked off), is an idea. Finding and choosing the idea you wish to tackle with your SaaS company can be difficult, but you’ll face far more challenges if your idea for a SaaS isn’t properly vetted in the first place. Making a product that no one needs will result in stealing motivation you have to succeed with your SaaS, necessitating good research before moving to creating your SaaS platform or product.
If you’re having a hard time figuring out what market you’d like to be in or what problem you’d like to solve, try looking up SaaS companies you know of on G2. As a software review website like Yelp, people leave comments all the time about what existing SaaS companies don’t deliver on. Positioning yourself to follow in the footsteps of market leaders and making products that improve upon their missed opportunities is an easy way to create a SaaS that will succeed.
But if a competitor is already serving that market, doesn’t that mean that all the customers are already spoken for?
Is the SaaS Market Oversaturated?
The short answer is no. SaaS as a means of delivering tools and solutions to customers has been around since the early 2000s, and new success stories are written every day. Not to mention, we just went over how people are dissatisfied with their current software solutions. Imagine being a founder for Lyft or Uber and looking at taxi companies. It would be easy to say that people who need taxis are already being served by the market, but having a competitive advantage in terms of offering, product, availability, and features allowed them to completely carve out a space in the market. Don’t worry about the space being overcrowded- by fixing different problems that people don’t like dealing with, you make room for yourself.
So you’ve qualified your idea in the market. How do you find your customers, and the audience who will support your SaaS?
How do you Create a Community in SaaS Development?
Having a community around your SaaS product solves two problems. One, it provides feedback from people who are not personally invested in the success of your SaaS. You don’t want your family and friends to give feedback on what you’re building, as they’ll likely tell you what you want to hear in order to see your happy for their input. What you want is a hungry base of people who want to use your product regularly to provide insight in to what they need from the product. The other problem having a community to bounce off of is that they serve as cheerleaders for your project. Repping your brand, suggesting it to friends and colleagues, having good things to say about you as a founder, all these aspects go into making your SaaS product better and better with each discussion.
So we know that communities help SaaS platforms and products produce to their full potential. How do you get one?
Some easy answers are to tap into the connections you already have. Hobbyists, entrepreneurs, professionals, anyone and everyone who has an interest in your SaaS can be a part of your community. But what if you’re starting from scratch?
You could put the word out on the internet that you’re looking for people in the space your SaaS pertains to, and hope for the kindness of strangers to steer you forwards. You might reach out to people who are already successful in the niche you’re looking to enter, looking to build strong professional relationships that could serve you down the line. You could just start going to forums and websites that are generally SaaS related and talking to people and offering help and connecting with the members over time. The most important aspect of any of these approaches is to stay humble and connect with earnest intentions.
No one knows about slimy sales tactics more than indie makers trying to sell their own products. Most everyone has had a bad experience with a pushy merchant trying to force a sale that you simply weren’t interested in. It leaves a bad taste in your mouth for ever interacting with that person ever again, and leaves you feeling used. Avoid being pushy or moving someone directly to a sale at the first pass. Genuinely make friendships and offer assistance or advice whenever it’s asked for, and you’ll have lifelong friends that can serve you with your current goals or with anything in the future. But it won’t happen if you treat people like business opportunities, so be friendly and helpful first.
From there, start building. A popular movement called “Build in Public” has made speaking to the work you do and issues you face developing a program or product into a journal, marketing opportunity, and means to connect with other professionals. Unless you’re working with proprietary information, anyone can build in public and gain experience and feedback as they go. Even if there are limits to what you feel comfortable sharing with the internet about your product development journey, sharing milestones and success stories can be more than enough to connect with other indie makers forging their own paths at the same time.
Does Creating a SaaS Require Coding?
So you have a business idea and know how to connect with others while sharing your progress. That leaves one important question yet to be answered: how are you actually going to build the thing? If you aren’t already a programmer, do you have to hire someone to do it for you?
There are more than a couple of ways to answer this question, the first being reassurance that, no, you do not need to be a coder yourself to put together a SaaS product. Multiple different tools exist which allow drag-and-drop designing of code functionality to allow different aspects of a program to speak to one another, not requiring any coding knowledge or skill. Some examples include:
· Bubble
· Zoho
· AppyPie
· Bravo
· Stage
· Retool
And that’s not even all of them! Anyone can jump in and begin designing a SaaS platform with these tools and have something that functions just as well as a custom coded solution.
There’s also the answer that hiring someone to code for you isn’t the end of the world. Hiring a freelance developer has never been easier, and guarantees a solution that delivers results while not having to handle the coding on your own. This also helps to build the skill of delegation, which will be important to have if your SaaS product takes off. Being able to pass work onto other people and hold them to reasonably explained expectations doesn’t come naturally to everyone, so better to build the techniques necessary to do so sooner rather than later!
The benefit of going through the process of building your own SaaS product is that it will shine a bright spotlight on gaps in platform/product development. These gaps are ripe for other SaaS products that you can develop to make other entrepreneurs’ lives simpler. The process of developing a SaaS will give you insight as to other SaaS needs that are yet to be solved, as you’ll be encountering the problem yourself! This helps not only to give more ideas, but to generate new solutions which you already empathize with, making selling them as a solution that much easier.
How do I grow my SaaS?
Now that you’ve started work on your own SaaS platform or product, the most important piece of advice this humble author can provide you is to see it through to the end.
There will be many different parts of development which will drag on, seem impossible to deal with, or test the limits of your patience when it comes to product design and launch. But! Don’t give up! Seeing things through to the end, even if the market doesn’t accept the product gives you incredibly valuable insight to help your future products do that much better. Not to mention, being in the trenches of SaaS development lets you connect with other makers and builders, further building social connections via shared struggles. Keep your chin up, and keep moving!
In terms of actually growing the SaaS, it is best to start the hype marketing campaigns before the product has even left development. You should aim to have 10 customers ready to use your SaaS before it launches, though more is always better. Early adopters will be your social proof for enticing future customers, making them invaluable to attain and pay attention to in the early weeks post-launch. Check in with customers, ask what they like and don’t like, and improve based on their feedback. Even if a customer doesn’t know how to fix something, they can always point out where holes in your plan have been worn through.
From here, you’re free to continue into launch and development. You didn’t think that the launch date was the end of your production cycle, did you? Feedback and bug fixes will be your bread and butter, providing you with the opportunity to better meet the needs of your customers in the present and future, and giving your product more buzz as each changelog brings eyes back to your product again. Keep fixing, keep updating, and keep going!
A note on launching- do so as soon as your first customers are in place and you have the MVP (Minimum Viable Product) ready to go out into the world. Every launch will feel like it’s happening too early, so get used to the feeling of holding onto feature updates until the product has hit the market. The only thing worse than a bad SaaS platform that launched is a perfect SaaS platform that never did.
Once the SaaS is ready for the market, it’s time to use the social connections you’ve been building. Let everyone know that your SaaS is available for customers, and how it solves the problem you identified. Ask your connections to share the good news with their connections, as well. You could even go the route of pushing paid ads to get more eyes on your product, though that’s a skillset all on its own.
How to get reviews and feedback on your Saas
So your SaaS is released and you have your first customers! Well done!
The next step is to decide what the future of your SaaS will be. Is the SaaS making good progress on reaching an audience, keeping customers, and growing? If yes, keep iterating and developing the SaaS so it can blossom into its most successful version of itself.
If no, consider keeping the SaaS on maintenance mode and making room for developing your next SaaS product. By having the SaaS you already built on the back burner, you free up time to develop new solutions and try again to match a market with a solution. Some developers may end up having launched 7 or 8 products before they find real success, others may get it on their first or second go. But the only thing keeping you from taking all the valuable lessons you’ve learnt and turning them into a viable SaaS product would be your willingness to give up.
Ultimately, the decision is up to you. No one can decide for you the difference between needing another shot and needing to try something else entirely, but having an entire business and product developed is certain to help you no matter what you choose to do.
What Else is There?
Deciding to put your hat in the ring and create a SaaS product or platform is a big move to crafting the life you’ve dreamed of, so pat yourself on the back for making it this far.
Remember, building a product is difficult and requires multiple different specialties. You don’t need to go for it alone, or even all at once. If you do decide to go forward and develop your own SaaS product or platform, consider reaching out to specialists to help program or market your solution. You’re already on the blog for a marketing specialist right now, as it turns out. Funny how that works.
I wish you the best of luck in your SaaS journey, and hope you can talk to me in the future about how this article inspired and informed your decision to create your own SaaS! I’d love to hear from you and feature your story if this helped you in any way. And remember, the only thing that can stop you is choosing not to keep going!
Dan Riemen