Awesome collection of content for developers trying to bootstrap their SaaS
This document is a curation of useful resources & advice about the Software as a Service business, especially tailored for developers.
NOTE: This repo is no longer being maintained, but you are free to fork and/or contribute to it.
It stands for Software as a Service. That is: you're selling a digital service via recurring payments.
For example, Dropbox offers you storage for all your files for a monthly payment.
It doesn't have to be a huge VC funded company. For example, a developer named Tyler Tringas built Storemapper, a simple store locator app, all by himself. He later went on defining what Micro-SaaS is:
It is a software as a service business owned and operated by one person or a small team. These businesses are location-independent, high margin, low-risk with predictable recurring revenue.
The core concepts are the same for SaaS and Micro-SaaS, with the former being more complex and requiring a lot more effort and investment.
Why should you consider building a SaaS company over something else?
There are a few reasons why SaaS businesses have had success in recent years. First, I need to split SaaS into two major categories: micro-SaaS and full-on SaaS. I use this distinction just to clarify that as a business model, SaaS can be a lot of different things and I'm going to focus more on the "micro SaaS" idea, which is suited for individuals and small groups, rather than companies with huge funding.
It's not all roses though. SaaS is becoming increasingly difficult to pull off. In fact, most SaaS companies fail. Read this article by John Solomon to know more about why.
Bootstrapping is building a company from the ground up with nothing but personal savings, and cash coming from the first sales. It is the opposite of a Venture Capital funded startup.
In the startup world this is very common. In fact, more than 80% of startup operations are funded by the funder's personal finances and the median in-startup capital is about 10,000$.
This is the process which outlines the necessary steps from idea to success of micro-SaaS businesses. Use this list to get a bird's eye view of the entire bootstrapping process.
đĄÂ Get ideas for your product
âïž Validate your best idea by getting early feedback
đ  Build your MVP (Minimum Viable Product) with your favorite tech stack
đ Launch to your niche and to popular websites
đ±Â Grow organically
đ°Â Monetize with recurring subscription plans
đ€Â Automate parts of your business
đ Scale by hiring people or automating even more
đ” Sell your product and start over [optional]
The goal of this document is to present you with as many different view points as possible in order to give you a broader understanding of the topics. Further personal research is advised, and you can start with the sources of the documents linked in the below sections.
Many people think the biggest road block to successful entrepreneurial life is having that one "great idea", but this is entirely the wrong way to think about it.
You should be coming up with at least five possible business ideas every day. This part should be basically effortless. The secret to coming up with a successful business idea is putting hundreds of ideas through the "meat grinder".
The process goes like this. You see a problem. You quickly sketch the outline of what a business that solves that problem might look like. Then you put that business through a brutal meat grinder of questions. Youâre actively trying to poke holes in the idea and stress test it. Beat it up. Be actively trying to discard it and move onto the next one. You need to refine the meat grinder, get really good and fast at obliterating ideas. And then move on to the next one. If it fails even one part of the meat grinder, ditch it. The worst thing you can do is hold on to that one idea, which is actually fatally flawed, and talk about it with your friends for decades never actually getting to the one that you could have actually built and launched.
Here are some example questions that you should use:
Look at what your daily challenges are. Then you see if you could make those challenges easier using technology you already know. Chances are you're not the first one to have such problems. You should focus on problems that are rare and niche because if you look at broad ones, they're probably solved/being solved by a billion dollar company.
Solving your own problem is also nice because you can better understand what features are crucial and what is secondary. You are the greatest expert at the problems which you've had for a long time.
"How well do I need to know a problem to make something for it? How much can I learn along the way?" Short answer: a lot. At some point, don't follow yourself anymore, and start using customer feedback as input.
Imagine a scenario where you build your idea and your company grows, and you stop becoming the target audience. You face the risk of not understanding the customer anymore.
Example: Rappers who start out in the ghetto and become world stars, then loose the inspiration to write since they're living in big mansions and aren't a part of their audience.
The best products happen at the intersection of an existing niche you are a part of already, and a technology that has not yet been adopted in that niche.
There's one approach which works very well with my mentees:
Do that for all the small groups you're part of, and you will find lots of ideas that aren't just "scratch-your-own-itch". They are 'scratch-an-itch-you-understand-and-know-how-to-remedy'.
There's so much debate around whether or not it is a good idea to scratch your own itch. CoderNotes.io is definitely my itch. It's the product I wanted to see in the world. However, as business advice, I think that we need to look deeper. In reality, "scratch your own itch" has two different definitions, and they are heavily confused:
I was listening to the sales for founders podcast episode with Frank Breckner, who took a product from zero to 5 figures in only five months! In the episode, Frank talks about how he saw that his company needed software like the one he wanted, he spoke to people in his network who were also having the same struggles around the problem, and went ahead and built it.
That's very a different (and much better) version of "scratching your own itch". If you're thinking of making a "scratch your own itch" product, consider which of the two versions it is before making the decision to move forward.
By now you've probably understood that finding an idea is all about solving a problem. So why don't you start in reverse by looking for problems and go backwords? Once you've found a problem, it's pretty easy to come up with ideas on how to solve it.
Here are some methods to find inspiration for ideas if you don't know where to start:
Method #1: The Job Search method: Find an industry, and look for job offers in that specific industry. Pay attention to job descriptions. Look for the responsibilities that this job requires. Then, start building keywords of responsibilities that align with the current industry you chose.
Lastly, Google the keywords you found and research if there's a place for a micro-SaaS product.
Method #2: The App Store method: Choose an app store (Apple, Salesforce, Chrome, Shopify, ...) and a category in that store. Sort the categories from top to bottom based on reviews or installations. Then, find the 1-star reviews of the top apps in that category, and you will find plenty of problems that people have with their current solutions. Look for reviews where people discuss problems they care a lot about.
Method #3: The What-they're-using-Excel-for method: Listen to what people use Excel spreadsheets to. There are probably many competing ways to solve the problem, some involving employee time and paper, some involving spreadsheets, and some involving one of several competing software solutions, none of which have dominant market share.
This much activity suggests that people are genuinly having this problem, but there isn't a total stranglehold on the market by a company which you'd have to fight for mindshare.
In the beginning, your best strategy towards finding customers will be direct outreach leading to 1-on-1 conversations via phone or in-person. That's usually the easiest way. You'll be much more persuasive than any landing page could be, and you'll learn crucial lessons from these conversations.
The only reason big companies don't do this, is because it's expensive and it doesn't scale. You don't have that problem because you're a small company. Stop thinking like a big company if you're not.
Later, however, scale is important. It's not enough just to launch your product on Product Hunt or Hacker News because you can usually do so just once. You need to put some thought into scalable, long-term, repeatable sales channels.
Luckily, since you've already met your customers and talked with them, you should know what platform they make the most heavy use of. Analyze those channels and use them to keep growing. If you can't think of anything decent, that's usually a sign that you don't know enough about your target customers and how to reach them.
This is the kind of advantage you can only get if you've identified a customer and their problems before you started on the solution. Otherwise you'll build something generic.
Short excerpt from Pieter's book "MAKE book", explaining why you should start small and not focus on your long-term vision. You can find and buy his book here.
[...] Your first idea does not have to be (and probably should not be) earth-shattering. You start with something small. Don't think too big. Then slowly, you can get the big part by extrapolating, scaling your idea to a bigger market, from a niche market, and to a bigger more abstract idea (just like Uber went from a taxi hailing service to an autonomous car vision).
[...] You don't know what you're going to end up with. That's another point. You need constant feedback from your users in the market to see what people want and what people use and whatnot. You can't just think of that. You can't think big immediatly: you have to start small.
Sources: good micro-saas-ideas, makebook#2, meat-grinder approach, AskHN: looking for ideas, find saas ideas, nugget, first principles
You wouldn't build a house without knowing how tall people are. You don't build a product before knowing if anyone will use it. â Arvid Kahl
The goal of the idea validation stage is to answer this question: how do you de-risk product creation by verifying that there exists an audience who will pay for your solution prior to that solution existing?
The ideal product for a bootstrapped SaaS solves a problem which is well-understood but poorly solved. There are many competing ways to solve a problem, some involving employee time and paper, some involving spreadsheets, and some involving one of several competing software solutions, none of which have dominant market share. This behavior suggests that people are genuinely having this problem, but there isn't a perfect solution available.
How do you figure out what people in your niche think of your problem?
Just ask them. Seriously. People love talking about their problems. Interview at least 20 potential customers.
Going back to the "Get an Idea" section, Tyler Tringas wrote that "you must have a clear sales channel for the first 15-20 customers". This fits perfectly with the interview process because people that you've interviewed and ARE INTERESTED will be your first leads. If nobody of the interviewees is interested, you're probably on the wrong path and you should go back to the drawing board.
By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail. â Benjamin Franklin
Planning isn't the most exciting task, especially at the beginning of the adventure of building a company. But there are good reasons to spend time in validating your idea.
In the beginning, your best strategy towards finding customers will be direct outreach leading to 1-on-1 conversations via phone or in-person. That's usually the easiest way. You'll be much more persuasive than any landing page could be, and you'll learn crucial lessons from these conversations.
The only reason big companies don't do this, is because it's expensive and it doesn't scale. You don't have that problem because you're a small company. Stop thinking like a big company if you're not.
Later, however, scale is important. It's not enough just to launch your product on Product Hunt or Hacker News because you can usually do so just once. You need to put some thought into scalable, long-term, repeatable sales channels.
Luckily, since you've already met your customers and talked with them, you should know what platform they make the most heavy use of. Analyze those channels and use them to keep growing. If you can't think of anything decent, that's usually a sign that you don't know enough about your target customers and how to reach them.
This is the kind of advantage you can only get if you've identified a customer and their problems before you started on the solution. Otherwise you'll build something generic.
There are many more ways than just Google to find out if someone has already built your idea or considered and decided to abandon your latest idea. Itâs all a question of finding the right information and evaluating it in the context of your idea.
Get started with brainstorming terms, keywords and potential names for your project. It helps to keep a Google Sheet for this. UberSuggest is a simple tool to get more ideas for keywords and other related terms. If your list is very short at this point it helps to write a short description of the key features and unique selling points (what makes it different from existing projects) - this is often called an elevator pitch. This way you should find more keywords/phrases describing your idea. Collect all of them in the sheet. We will weed the terms out as we go.
The following list is naturally not conclusive as there are many niche websites and communities you can consult, but it should be fairly comprehensive to get started. It contains a list of websites and platforms you can check to see if your idea has been built, discussed or launched. I recommend to check each of your terms on these platforms. After a few websites you will get a feeling for which ones arenât giving you any results and you might want to leave them out for future searches. But you can also pick some promising platforms if you are only after a first impression at this point. Letâs get started validating your idea:
The results of the research done on the platforms above should give you a fairly good idea of the interest in a solution around your idea. If you stumbled across a âno-goâ such as a competitor, you might want to reconsider this. Competitors donât mean your idea isnât good, it means that itâs good enough for someone to pursue it. If there are established players, even better. This means there is enough money to sustain these companies generated by the business.
This excerpt is taken from the book "Company of One" by Paul Jarvis:
Assuming youâve identified your target audience and developed a marketable skill set, youâre now in a position to provide a product or service for which they would be willing to pay money. You just need to convince them to take advantage of your talents!
Of course, thatâs easier said than done, and thereâs a whole process involved in reaching that point. First, you need to connect with your audience and learn about their needs, so you can know how to fulfill them. One way to do that is to reach out to potential clients and offer them free, no-strings-attached consultancy.
For example, if you were trying to establish a web-design side gig that could turn into a company, you could begin by finding people who were looking for a web designer or had already found one. By having conversations with them about their experiences, you could learn a lot of useful information, such as the manner and places in which theyâre searching for web designers, the factors behind their hiring decisions, the objectives theyâre trying to fulfill, the problems that lead to bad customer experiences and the questions they have about the web-design process.
By answering those questions, you could then begin to position yourself not just as a consultant, but as a trustworthy authority in your field â someone with valuable expertise from which other people can benefit and on which they can depend.
But again, youâre not charging any money at this point; youâre not even offering or trying to subtly push your services. Youâre genuinely just trying to help your audience, in small but meaningful ways.
The word âsmallâ is crucial here. Youâre not redesigning someoneâs entire website for free or anything like that. Youâre just offering answers to questions, as well as advice, second opinions, brainstorming sessions and so forth â mini-consultations, you could call them.
By doing all this, youâre both learning about your audience and building a reputation â and developing mutually beneficial relationships with them. Indeed, by the end of your mini-consultations, theyâve already helped you, and youâve already helped them, and you havenât even done any paid work for them yet!
Having established these relationships and demonstrated their value, who do you think your audience will go to next time they need to pay for a web design service: a stranger â or you, the person they already know and trust as an authority in the field?
In the authorâs own experience, the answer was the latter; nearly everyone with whom he consulted went on to want to hire him.
Imagine you are hungry, and decide that you are hungry for an apple. You know that you like apples, you've had apples before, and in particular you're a fan of crisp, red apples. Suddenly, someone comes up to you and offers you a banana. "Thanks," you say, "but I'm looking for an apple." "Actually," they respond, "a banana is much better for you! You'll be more full after eating this banana, my bananas taste better than apples, and in fact there are no other bananas quite like mine!"
The banana salesman has spent time and energy into convincing you into the sale. But for all his effort, he was trying to pitch you a solution to your problem that didn't fit the solution you had in mind.
When you have a product that customers don't already know, you will spend a lot of time selling it to them. Instead, if you can compete in a market where a customer is already solution-aware ("I want a red apple!") you simply need to compete by being the best in one specific category they care about (in this case, the crispness of the apple).
Is it possible that the banana company will be successful? Yes, but they need to spend time convincing the apple-lovers that bananas are the way to go. That's going to take a lot of marketing, and they are relying on a change in consumer behavior to get that result. For a bootstrapped company, fighting that battle doesn't make sense.
Many startups compete in established market categories and do so successfully by first breaking up the market into smaller pieces and focusing on one piece they can win. The goal of [this strategy] is to carve off a piece of the market where the rules are a little bit different - just enough to give your product an edge over the category leader. â April Dunford, "Obviously Awesome"
Compliments are warning signs. If you catch yourself or your teammates saying something like this, try to get specific. Why did that person like the idea? How much money would it save him? How would it fit into his life? What else has he tried? If you don't know, then you've got a compliment instead of real data.
Rule of thumb: Compliments are the fool's gold of customer learning: shiny, distracting, and worthless.
â Rob Fitzpatrick, "The Mom Test"
Sources: validating product ideas, business idea validation, how to brainstorm business ideas,Company of one (book)
The Minimum Viable Product is that version of a new product which allows a team to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about customers with the least effort.
Since this reference is aimed at developers, I won't include tools like Github or BitBucket. I'll assume that you're already comfortable with a toolbox of technologies. That being said, here are some tips on the production aspect which put technical founders to struggle.
You shouldn't start coding a single line of your MVP until you have a CLEAR sales channel for your first 15-20 customers. This point is discussed in the Get an Idea section above, but it's too important so I'll repeat myself. You mustn't build your product and THEN find a sales channel, but quite the opposite.
For my first product, I thought that the main thing I was building was... well... the product! Turns out, the actual product that you build is only a piece of the puzzle. A business isn't just a product. It's a system:
I've learned that, instead of thinking of a business as a legal entity that collects money for a product, it's better to think of a business as a set of puzzle pieces, all of which need to function for the whole thing to work. Conceptually, I think you can break this up into three pieces:
In other words, a product is only 1/3rd of the final "product".
Sources: MVP vs MLP
David is a strong advocate of the "audience first" approach, which is becoming ever more common these days, and for a good reason. These tips are valuable if you're publishing anything from a blog article to a full-blown SaaS company on the Internet.
Judging by the sheer volume of threads and comments on the topic, people expect great results from their Product Hunt launches. So is it worth a try? Let's have a look at a couple of popular writeups.
It appears that blogging about your Product Hunt launch will drive more traffic to your page than the launch itself. And still, why would you care about the traffic? Traffic is a vanity metric. All that matters are your profits. Is PH useless then?
Product Hunt is a Twitter or Facebook of sorts - a place you mindlessly check to get a quick dopamine boost before getting back to work. The products that thrive are the ones that draw attention and entertain, not solve problems. It's unlikely launching your product on PH will make it magically start growing. That's not to say it's completely useless.
An Indie Hacker had a cool idea with these intentions: "This past week I spent building Startup Gifs: A collection of gifs to brighten up your startups Slack channel. The idea is (fingers crossed) I can use this it as a honeypot, to draw some attention and then from that some new users check out my main project: "Marketing Examples"! I made sure to host the project on my own domain. That way if I get any backlinks the âlink juiceâ will flow to other pages on Marketing Examples helping them rank better". The project itself was just a few gifs. And it became the #4 product of the day.
Similarly, Dan Siepen recently got 3000 page visits and 400 newsletter signups from his campaign that included a Product Hunt launch. The product? A list of fourty articles. Read more about how he executed his campaign. Dan is an expert growth marketer and made several Product Hunt launches before. Most for the same product. Free guides and newsletters get the most upvotes. Products? Not so much.
Chris Messina, the #1 Product Hunter, recently launched a new version of Slack. They already had the copy and the screenshots. This launch looks like it took 15 minutes. It didn't get much attention, but I dare you to find an easier way to get in front of a few thousand eyeballs.
How to get started then?
Give Product Hunt users what they want: a freebie that fills up time, but isn't too demanding. Make a side project. Make it free and entertaining. Insert CTAs for your money-making product in it. And then launch. Here are some examples:
And after you launch make sure to stay around (or configure a monitoring tool like syften) and reply to comments.
Sources: David Perell, Marker product hunt strat, checklist of pre-launch marketing, launch multiple times on PH, 4 steps to a successful launch, build buzz on a bootstrap budget,Where to launch your SaaS, 100 places to share your startup
How do you start building traction? The key is to create a traction channel, that is, a way to market or distribute your product.
The most effective sales strategies involve trying multiple traction channels and being open to change.
The Bullseye Framework is a 5 step process to help you find the best traction channels for you.
Traction will determine the success of your business. This is why you should take time to develop a well thought-out strategy. To do so, set clear and specific goals and frame your strategy around them.
Even great products don't sell themselves. A start-up stands or falls on the customer base it can build. This is why you need to think about traction early and often, and build your company's goals around achieving that traction.
Sources: traction channels, Traction (book),
Consider everything before Launch to be the first half of the entrepreneurial football game, and scaling up the second. Mid-game scores don't count, what's important is how the match ends. â Geoffrey Moore
I've found these questions rather commonly on forums and social media. Here are the best voted answers.
âIf you cannot measure it, you cannot improve itâ â Lord Kelvin
SaaS/subscription businesses are more complex than traditional businesses. Traditional business metrics totally fail to capture the key factors that drive SaaS performance. In the SaaS world, there are a few key variables that make a big difference to future results.
In this regard, this blog post by David Skok goes in-depth and explains a lot of the main principles of SaaS metrics. He also has made a talk at #WebSummit about this topic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RR6M_d6eKc&feature=youtu.be
Note: This article focuses on bigger SaaS companies. You probably don't need all these fancy metrics to get started as a small group or even by yourself. I still recommend watching the video because it highlights some crucial growth tracking metrics that you can adopt later on.
The wrong way: you built your MVP, ask a friend for feedback, launch it on Product Hunt, and nobody uses it. Then you Google "How to sell my product".
The right way: when you still haven't coded a single line of your project (or if you prefer, only build a landing page), gather feedback on your idea. As much as possible. Then get your first 10-15 clients who are willing to pay, and only then start building your MVP. Then, you won't be agonized by not having any users, and you'll be motivated to keep building and doing a proper launch.
Selling is difficult. Here are some simple tips:
The SaaS customer lifecycle covers the acquisition, engagement and retention of your customers. Depending on where they are in their lifecycle, customers need different things from your company to help them achieve their desidered outcomes and move beyond the next stage in the cycle.
Read more:
https://thebootstrappedfounder.com/newsletter/episode-29/
There are many ways to publish your first product or MVP. Here are the best websites that are solely focused on giving exposure and attracting users to your website.
Note: This isn't a complete strategy. You should take time to publish to each of these platforms but keep in mind that you'll get general traffic, not targeted to your niche. It's more effective to publish your MVP on forums and communities that you're a part of, and that are devoted to your niche.
A landing page is the minimum requirement for any online businesses. Don't underestimate the value of a good website for your product. It's your shop window.
If you're a web developer you can probably spin up a decent-looking landing page in hours. Let's be honest though, everyone knows that you'd spend weeks fine-tuning every small detail of your landing page until it's perfect. This isn't compatible with the fast pace at which you'll be updating and changing content on your page based on feedback you get from users. You need to move fast, and you probably can't devote too much time in landing pages. This is why page builders can be a good idea for micro-SaaS. Here's a list of the best page builders for SaaS:
This is another good option to enforce good design and best practices on your landing page. These themes are specifically suited for SaaS. You can also simply use them as examples for inspiration.
These websites are endless wells of examples from which to take inspiration when designing and building your landing page:
These articles are useful for getting ideas and advice on key aspects of web design optimized for conversion:
You need to track how much traffic you're getting, and how users are interacting with your website.
When choosing an analytics tool, there are 2 core business models to evaluate: services that are free for you but sell your customer's data, and services that cost you but are private. I highly recommend going for a private and simple tool because Google Analytics is blocked by all mainstream ad blockers.
Getting feedback early on is crucial for your SaaS business. Here's a list of feedback collection tools.
The core of SaaS is that you're collecting payments via monthly or yearly recurring subscriptions. Many developers choose a ready-made solution to handle payments because there are so many edge cases like card validation, fraud detection, card expiring date, invalid payments, different providers, etc. to take care of.
Most of these tools offer great free plans (up to 50k$ processed for free).
As a developer, it's your choice to choose to either develop from scratch or use a starter. From personal experience, boilerplates can save you a lot of time if you already master the tech stack.
Most SaaS have a lot of common boilerplate, like marketing pages, login/signup flow, protected routes, dashboard, admin area, CRUD services, and more.
Here's a short list of some Micro-SaaS companies bootstrapped and run by a single person:
In July 2018 I quit my job and tried to build a profitable SaaS with a friend of mine. And we failed, hard. $600 MRR after 1 year.
We tried again and had a bit more luck: $7,8k MRR within 1 year. Here's what I wish I knew when I began:
"I run S3stat and Twiddla by myself and they combine to bring in a nice living.
I built both with the stated goal of bringing in recurring income while minimizing the amount of time I actually spent "working". As such, I had plenty of time along the way to bootstrap via consulting work and to travel and otherwise lead an interesting life while the product businesses ramped up in the background.
They're both ticking away nicely now, to the point where it's Officially Silly to continue working for anybody else, ever. As a result, "work" hours are defined as the ones where it's raining, the kids are in school and I've been mountain biking recently, or it's been sunny for a week and I need a rest day. Even with those constraints, you'd be surprised how many new features get shipped.
I mention this side of the business by way of convincing anybody sitting on the fence that it's probably worth giving this whole SaaS thing a try. It really doesn't impact your life in the way a "startup" would, can be done while still doing gainful work for others, and doesn't take much in the way of capital investment.
But if and when it starts paying dividends, it does in fact get as good as it seems it should".
"I run Improvely and W3Counter alone. I initially developed Improvely in 2012, and W3Counter in 2004. They, along with some other side projects, are how I have made a living for most of the past 10 years".
At W3Counter, which is a web analytics tool, how do you monetize it? Aren't you afraid of competing with Google Analytics?
"W3Counter is freemium. People pay between $5 and $50 per month for extra features. It's really not hard to compete with Google Analytics (especially when you start before GA existed). There are a ton of large companies making millions and billions in the analytics space".
"I run Nomad List, which is not exactly a SaaS, but it is a subscription revenue based business. Nomad List is a website where you can find cities in where you can travel and work remotely. That's what I've been doing for the last five years. And this website lets you filter all these cities on things like internet speed, weather, safety, just anything you can think of pretty much. I've collected data and I let you filter on it. So for example, most people like probably mild to warm weather, so you can find places in January that are warm with fast internets that have kind of a nomad scene, so there's a lot of other remote working nomads there. So you can socialize with them".
BuiltWith is a free tool that allows users to type in a website address and then discover the technology that is powering that website. After some time, people started asking for niche-specific data, saying that they would pay for it. Gary then realized the commercial potential of BuiltWith and started a SaaS by implementing a membership subscription model.
Tyler Tringas is the creator of the whole "micro-SaaS" concept. Back when he created StoreMapper, it was really unconventional for a solo founder to navigate in the SaaS world. It was perceived only as a multi-million business model.
"I run Formcraft and formcraft-wp and both are profitable, netting over 150k+ a year in total (posted in July 2016). They were my side projects when I was in accounting school."
"I started Complice 2.5 years ago while in university, with the goal of making enough money by graduation that I didn't have to get a job. I succeeded at that, and have now grown it to about twice that, and it continues to grow, mostly via word of mouth and a few communities.
I mostly work on it one day a week, when I have a super maker schedule day and code for like 14h straight. The other days of the week I answer support emails and sometimes write blog posts. Total time these days is about 20h/week, and if I want to it can easily be 4h or less.
I've written a bit about my experience getting to here.
In some senses it worked fairly smoothly for me, but I'm not assuming it's easy. Some basic advice:
By following these principles, you know that at each step of the way, you're building something that people will pay for, because you have people paying for it. This also forces anyone you talk to for advice to take you more seriously".
"As of today, we have 2300+ paid teams from 70 countries. The main thing our customers love is how fluidly we integrate into third-party project management systems. Suppose your team uses Asana, that all of your tasks live there, and the staff is there too. Why constantly switch between Asana and a time tracker? Why duplicate data? Instead, connect Everhour to Asana and track time right there. We integrate with Asana, Basecamp, Trello, Jira, GitHub, and more.
We received our first paid client in September, 2015 and have been steadily growing since then without any external investment and with a small team of seven people. This month, Everhour crossed the $1.4M ARR mark".
"I was unhappy in my corporate job despite being 'at the top' as a Technical Director. I discovered Micro SaaS when I was looking for a side project to get me back into programming again.
I started building small chrome extensions for a micro niche (Merch Wizard & KDP Wizard) which I eventually doubled down on and spent all my spare time on them and after scaling them up I was able to quit my unfulfilling day job. I've never looked back and love the freedom that you get as a Micro SaaS founder. I can't every imagine going back to cubicle nation!
Recently, I exited and sold my apps for a life changing amount of money and I'm now passionate about helping other software developers realize they can leverage their existing skillset to start a side hustle or even quit their job. So, I've started a blog and have written a 12 chapter free eBook called the Micro SaaS Handbook.
My advice is to simply take baby steps to get started and get some early momentum, build something to fix a small problem that you or someone you know is facing. Start small, embrace failure, fail fast and fail forward. You never know where it might lead!"
While adding success stories and examples, I couldn't not include some failures too. It's natural that a lot of SaaS businesses fail, like any other company. There's a lot to learn from people who have failed. I thereby consider these stories precious insights and the people who've shared them are real contributors to the community.
staffer.space (by u/valenso)
Like the title says, I built a SaaS software for 2 years and got 0 users.
My product is most suitable for businesses where working hours are a key. It is a powerful tool when you need to plan work sessions and track results. Maybe I'm wrong, but from my perspective, there are a lot of cafés and restaurants who would love to use this type of software.
Mistakes I made:
Most voted replies on Reddit:
You focused way too much on the product, not on the business. (by u/Fewshot)
If you 'fixed' every item on your problem list, you still wouldn't have a single customer. The reason folks didn't buy you isn't because the color scheme sucked, or because you didn't write QA tests. It's because you didn't build something that they were convinced was worth paying for.
Focus less on making your own life easier and more on making your customer's life easier.
In any SaaS business, before you write a single line of code, the job to be done is to interview the hell out of who you think would buy it (at least 20 interviews) and grill the shit out of them on what problems they're having and what they'd be willing to pay to solve. Then go build that.
I see so many SaaS projects fail because the introverted founder is more excited about being able to code a thing themselves intuitively than having conversations with the people theyâd be selling the thing to.
You don't need to be working in the industry for years to build a SaaS. It's not a requirement. Shopify knows a lot about how to do e-commerce without selling anything themselves.
Your business failed because it operated in a vacuum where "creating a product people would buy" wasn't even an afterthought. (by u/RyanMatonis)
Iâm not even exaggerating. You just eulogized a startup you never sold or marketed without mentioning that a lack of sales and marketing was the reason you failed.
You just made a 4 page Reddit post deeply analyzing why you failed when the reality is you have no idea.
That deeply reflects the core problem; you donât really care what anyone thinks, you donât ask what they think, and you just dig in and create without considering whether or not what youâre doing is useful, accurate, desired, rational, etc.
Itâs all just based on whatâs in your head and what you think will work and you never challenge your ideas in the real world.
You didnât even ask the real world why you failed. You just decided yourself in your own head that itâs because your codebase was bad.
Your real world feedback system sucks and you will suck at every single thing you ever do with your life until you fix that. Once itâs fixed youâll start being awesome at so many things because youâre full of drive and ambition and you can code products and stuff. But until you learn to put your ear to the ground and not your colon youre gonna have a tough time.
This is a list of some of the best SaaS books. I haven't read them all yet but I've read great things about every single one in the list. I even asked about book suggestions on several communities in the SaaS niche. In particular, one answer on my IndieHackers post struck me:
The problem with book lists is that the value you get from those books depends on where you are in your life. None of those are original toughts, so if you're reading your third book about habits then "The Power of Habit" will be boring for you, even though it's been life changing for many. â by akfaew
Keeping that in consideration, here are the best books for devs trying to make it in the SaaS world:
Zero to Sold by Arvid Kahl
The Lean Startup by Eric Ries
The Founder's Dilemmas by Noam Wasserman
Scaling Up by Verne Harnish
Impossible to Inevitable by Aaron Ross
The Science of Selling by David Hoffeld
Zero to One by Peter Thiel
Rework by Jason Fried
Measure What Matters by John Doerr
Crossing the Chasm by Goffrey Moore
Founders at Work by Jessica Livingston
Traction by Gabriel Weinberg
The hard thing about hard things by Ben Horowitz
Start small, stay small by Rob Walling
Sales is not Rocket Science by Hal Carroll
Growth Hacking: Silicon Valley's best kept secret by Raymond Fong
Competing against luck by Taddy Hall
The Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick
Obviously Awesome by April Dunford
When Coffee and Kale compete by Alan Klement
Running Lean by Ash Maurya
MAKE book by Pieter Levels
Getting Real by Basecamp.com
The power of Habit by Charles Duhigg
Deep Work by Cal Newport
Digital minimalism by Cal Newport
Badass: making users awesome by Kathy Sierra
On Writing Well by William Zinsser
Value SaaS basecamp guide by Thiyagarajan M
Micro SaaS Handbook by Rick Blyth
Did you think this document was long enough? Not even close. Iâve barely scratched the surface of what you should learn as a bootstrapped entrepreneur. This section is a list of links to additional awesome resources you may need at some point in your learning journey.
Made by Nicolas Racchi.
I've collected all this information over time. I'm trying my best to credit every single author so you can find more resources and research individual topics by yourself. if by any chance I forget to credit the authors correctly, please let me know by sending an email to [email protected].
If you'd like to add something to this document, please do by contacting me by email. Feel free to send PRs here on GitHub too.
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