Your best advice for someone who wants to build a SaaS app

Hot take: If you're building in a market with a few existing competitors, the idea can be assumed as validated so there's no reason to let quality go out the window, too many half-baked projects out there with a wildly frustrating user experience.

Don't build shoddy products in a weekend or two and be disappointed when it doesn't take off.

Hey man, I hear ya. It's tough out there in the job market, but that's just the universe telling you it's time to blaze your own trail. Building a SaaS app can be an incredible journey, but it's not for the faint of heart.

Here's my advice: start small, but dream big. Don't try to build the next Salesforce right off the bat. Instead, focus on a specific problem that you're passionate about solving. Maybe it's a scheduling tool for yoga studios, or a CRM for small law firms. Whatever it is, make sure it's something you care about and that you know there's a market for.

Find a co-founder or two who share your vision and can help you execute on it. You don't want to go it alone - trust me on this. And if you can't find a co-founder, at least find a mentor who's been there before and can guide you along the way.

And also be patient and persistent. Building a successful SaaS app takes time and effort, and there will be ups and downs along the way. But if you stay focused on your vision and keep grinding away, you'll get there eventually.

So that's my two cents. Good luck. Also, remember this: the only way to fail is to give up. Keep pushing and keep hustling, and success will come.

DO NOT BUY A SaaS TEMPLATE! $700 dollars is crazy! 🤯 I just completely open-sourced my OpenAI SaaS app https://CoverLetterGPT.xyz -- the link to the code is in the footer

With that said, I'm thinking about creating a free, OpenAI SaaS template for the IndieHacker community. If that's something you'd be interested in, vote here: Free OpenAI / SaaS Template 🧙‍♂️

quit your job after you have validated the product.

Start with a clear problem to solve
Focus on user experience
Have a solid business model

Work at it on the side at first, and as soon as it becomes viable and can generate money start putting more and more effort into it until you can quit your full time job and devote all your energy to it.

Not an advice but Micro SaaS HQ can be a good starting point around Micro SaaS

Here are my few tips.

• Build something you have expertise in and are passionate about.
• Use a framework like Laravel and Laravel Spark to quickly get an MVP that users can pay for launch.
• Focus on marketing as soon as possible. Building a product is often the easy part. Finding users is way more difficult.

build something 100x smaller than you think you need to. Put it in front off 100x less people than you think you need to. Do it 100x faster than you think you can.

Not doing the above will set you up to be working on the same doomed project for 15 years...just saying.

Number one from me: focus on longevity. Choose the domain and approach that you will enjoy running with even in case you don't get immediate market affirmation.

@antovtok You are right in this point, as most of the larger companies are firing people from their jobs and the current situation is also not good. That's why many people want to start their own business.

If you want to start your own app, here are some steps you can take:

• First, consider your past experience and what your core expertise (languages, dev, tools) is.
• Analyze the products you have made in the past and check their current competitors and features what they need what you can add new features to make it more productive.
• Try to build a product where your previous experience will help you build quickly, rather than reinventing the wheel.
• Foucs on the problem which people facing in your industry with previous projects

I'm not saying to copy a previous product, but you should be aware of the requirements of the current era. Since you are starting a business for yourself, you will invest your time and resources into it. If you want good results, you can work on a new idea, but you need to research properly to determine if the product is good or not.

This is because you will be investing your time, money, and other resources into your project. I hope you understand my point.

Wish you best of luck for your future success!

Get debt-free. Reduce your living costs and expenses. Have enough savings to survive. Since you will have to finance your own business, not just eat and get a shelter, have at least 12 months worth of savings.

Something I learned recently is to share your idea with a community and see if there is even a market for your product before you even start building.

This way you don't waste your time building software that people are interested in using.

OR.

People find interest in your concept and you start to build a following of interested users.

By the time you launch, you will already have people that would use your product. Not only that, but you can ask for feedback and make sure the features you're building are useful to the users.

Don't be afraid to test new features if you've got the bandwidth to do so! Your early return customers tend to be more loyal so reach out to them personally and ask what they want then build it.

My advice is that you indeed always should start small. Find a niche that has a problem, which your solution can solve.

But: small does not mean that is must be an app that can be build in one month. Yes, you should launch fast, but an application that really solves problems (I speak for b2b SaaS), is usually not built in less than a month.

I also would warn for trend jumping SaaS. Solve a problem and do it good, but it is very difficult to jump on every hypetrain, just because it is a hype. Yes you can earn money by building a 150-line wrapper around GPT4, but come on guys, that isn't durable.

Start with a landing page and market it. Then see how people are reacting to the idea. This will help you understand if at all to make the product or not.

I am doing the same for my new product Marketee

Launch as fast as you can, do not try to perfect it before you launch. You don't need fancy technology before you get atleast your first 10 customers.

A number of no code tools allow you to launch your working product as quickly as you can.

You can then use something like https://salesfarm.ai (Disclaimer: I am the founder), to do a cold outreach and get your first few customers or beta testers.

I think validating an idea is a top priority here, before you build too much and realize it's not what you want.

Go with wireframes or if you need interactivity use something like Redwood (https://redwoodjs.com/ -> if you prefer graphQL) or Wasp (https://wasp-lang.dev/ -> RPC).

Just build something super simple and see how people react. Then once you figured that out you can focus on development again.

Try to create an MVP of the top 3 ideas that you can come up with and provide them as a "Service", to be able to know your customers, and have full supervision of the value you are providing to your customers.
When you tried which one is more appealing to your target market, then turn it into a full SaaS.
what I want to say is, when you want to run a new business you shouldn't start with all the hurdles of creating a tech-heavy solution but focus more on the value and the client.

Find another job and start in the side.

Here is my personal experience to build a SaaS from scratch: it took me 5 months to build my first SaaS. At the end of 5 months, it was still missing a lot of features like Email authentication, team support, multi factor authentication, etc... It took me another several months to add the missing features. So, I didn't took this time to improve my product or took this time to start marketing.

One of the best advice to build a SaaS app is to use a SaaS Starter kit. With a SaaS Boilerplate, you'll get all the critical features needed by a SaaS app like Landing page, User Dashboard, Email & Social authentication, Multi-tenancy, Subscription payment, etc.

The idea to use a Starter kit is to remove all the technical challenge you'll face by building a SaaS app. So, you don't need to lose your time with boring code and you can focus on the features that matter the most.

PS: I'm the author of React SaaS Starter kit

If you have good knowledge, then definitely go with a small startup in your own field💪

First things first, validate your idea, unless you're 100% sure it's workable.

Start today, launch tomorrow.

Try to validate your idea before actually developing it. Most early-stage founders I worked with had this issue. They didn't validate it, didn't talk with customers, and went right on.

It's unfortunate because all of them were hard-working people with great talent. But if you create something users don't want, you're not going to succeed.

• Start building now, go to market fast
• Don't quit your job yet
• Many projects fail before success

I'm sharing my solopreneur journey on Twitter → https://twitter.com/AlexMano12

Starting a business is not easy, however, with the right mindset and tools you can excel in it. My advice for them would be to focus on what is in their control. Like the quality of the product, the requirements gathering, and research. If your product is good enough you only need good marketing to promote it.

Focus on the marketing, community building and create the demand before you go all in. Then you can start building in public. A great product no one heard of can be the most difficult challenge to overcome.

If you don't have a financial liability, my strong advice is to quit the day while giving yourself a timeline with the clear measurable goal to achieve it in the next 6/9/12 months.

Do throrough market research first, validate the idea, talk to customers, create a landing page, try doing things manually first.

1. NEVER quit your job to pursue your dream of starting a Startup until you've validated your idea and have 10 paying customers. It's the equivalent of climbing a mountain without any ropes. Your safety net is gone. 🧗

2. NEVER spend months building in private without telling anyone or showing any customers. You'll build features that don't matter, like Auth and a full payment system. 🛑

And 3. NEVER, ever, think this is going to be easy.

I did all three of those with FormFlow and it has put me back months.

Make sure people want your product before start building. Use the tools that make you times faster not the ones you know.
P.S I'm the author of useGenerated.com -builds a GraphQL Backend in minutes not weeks or months. Generates actual usable/ extendable code. Stack NestJS/PrismaORM.
Limited offer: use this code to get it free just this month: 1d1pgij

I would say "figure out your distribution" before diving too much into the product. You need to know exactly who your target audience is and how to reach them ... One more thing that will help a lot "Solve a problem that you already have personally" at least you will start with some validation about the problem :)

My 2 cents:

• Quitting your full-time job? - Have some savings before your SaaS becomes profitable.
• Find a niche - Never try to start big.
• Validate the idea within your niche audience.

Yours,
KodingKitty

Find a micro-niche and create a stunning product.
Engage with your potential customers from day 0.

1. Build a product you really believe in
2. Don't waste your money on unnecessary things
3. Do user interviews, PMF testing, etc.
4. Give emphasis on marketing before trying to go big
5. Create a team that you can trust
6. Focus on testing your product features

Try to launch as fast as you can, don’t be afraid of cutting a lot of features out, and start building relationships on your target niche once you have identified it ( even if you haven’t build the first version yet )

Best advice is just to start building! Mainly what happened when we began with Evoke

But DON'T quit your job. It provides a good source of runway.

Pick your fights wisely so you can live to fight another way.

Also, marketing is more important than building most of the time. Take a look at my twitter: https://twitter.com/TheRealEtch

Im looking for more programmers to work on projects! please DM me on IG / Twitter!

@dvnschmchr

Focus on a small vertical. Don't go big from day one. Validate your idea first.

Here's the TL;DR from me.

1. Do this on your spare time. Don't quit your full-time job, yet.
2. I repeat. Do this on your spare time. Don't quit your full-time job, yet.
3. Validate the idea before you build it.
4. Build an MVP
5. Prove that people are willing to pay for it
6. Scale as far as you can on your spare time
7. If you're successful and can scale further with more time, quit your job.

If you quit your job day 1, you have less runway to succeed. If you can't scrap something together in your spare time you're not much more likely to succeed full time. You'll just be more stressed because you're running down your savings.

Prove people will pay for the idea first, then code!

Yeah. Don't do it! Too much competition. You can come up with other kinds of business models. Like success based prices. Let's face it - nobody wants to pay a subscription fee. Especially for something they don't use. And creating something that people will always use, in terms of software is extraordinarily difficult.

My take, perhaps not the ultimate one but something that was my own pain for a long time: be privacy-first and think about the big customers who'd want you to support a different deployment model that is not entirely SaaS (e.g. on-prem/hybrid/etc.)

Validate the idea.

My advice is to hunker down and write code. Perfect it, do a friends-and-family beta test, then test it on a wider scale. Implement valid feedback and launch it.

Launch it asap and make cold calls to your target audience.

Saas business is very tricky in a way, initially you would be able to reach to initial customers but scaling up requires a lot of efforts and word of mouth or I would say organic reach plays a pivitol role. As small as making sure you have a great SEO of your website so organically you can generate leads in mid-long term. Content marketing is also very critical and strategically writing articles which can increase your traffic can be another strategy.

Consider using AI in your business idea. The current explosion of the Large Langauge Model (LLM) such as ChatGPT has made it very easy to build productivity tools for many different use cases.

You find a problem where AI can be a productivity tool and apply it.

In terms of advice, my two cents would be to focus on solving a real problem for your target market, and to test your idea and gather feedback as early and as often as possible.

Remember to build a strong team and network of advisors who can support you along the way, and don't hesitate to ask for help if you need it.

Just do it. Build a community on IH, Reddit, other SM and go at it.

build in public

I'm a marketer by trade and am involved with one startup for a very specific market within a niche. I am working with a developer and we have access to a closed audience of 30k potential clients - this has been achieved by leveraging contacts.
So, my point, use your contacts and think about marketing from the outset.

100% this approach; talk to potential customers and set up a landing page and attract traffic to it, to see if there is any interest in the market. http://totaldentallab.com/home

Go read this : https://makerstation.substack.com/p/how-to-find-the-right-startup-idea

I am building a SaaS product myself, and I have just started to acquire a few customers. My best advice for anyone who would like to start a SaaS app is to have a mentor.

Find someone who has already achieved what you want to do. Your mentor will save you a lot of time and give you priceless advices

Learning is the one, can do at any age.. Do learning before you start...Come with colourful lights... And the most important thing is tracking what you do... Tracking plays a vital role in your business.. Let me suggest a free tool for tracking purposes..
Website: https://www.serpple.com/

Saya merasa puas karena sudah join di situs judi Login dewa poker ( https://67.207.83.133 ) disini saya sudah memenangkan banyak dan meraup banyak keuntungan di situs judi kartupoker fun ( https://161.35.5.62 ) jadi tunggu apa lagi, mari join di situs kami dan rasakan sensasi keseruannya.

Be patient and listen to the right person and share it to the world.
Me I use twitter to share my advancement for my apps: https://twitter.com/youcef_appmaker

If you're looking to build a SaaS app, here are a few pieces of advice to consider:

Identify your target audience and their pain points: Before you start building your SaaS app, you need to know who your target audience is and what problems they are facing. This will help you design a product that addresses their specific needs and makes it easier for you to market your app.

Develop a minimum viable product (MVP): Rather than building a full-featured app from the start, focus on building an MVP that addresses the most critical pain points of your target audience. This approach will help you validate your idea, get feedback from early adopters, and refine your product based on real-world usage.

Choose the right technology stack: Choosing the right technology stack for your SaaS app is critical. You'll need to consider factors like scalability, performance, security, and ease of development. Popular technology stacks for SaaS apps include MEAN (MongoDB, Express, Angular, and Node.js), LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP), and Ruby on Rails.

Plan for scalability: Your SaaS app needs to be able to handle increased user traffic and data volume as your business grows. Ensure that you build a scalable architecture that can handle the increased load, and consider using cloud-based infrastructure services like Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Azure to handle scaling automatically.

Focus on user experience: The success of your SaaS app depends on user adoption, so you must prioritize the user experience. Focus on building a clean and intuitive interface that makes it easy for users to accomplish their tasks and achieve their goals.

Develop a robust marketing strategy: Building a great SaaS app is only half the battle; you also need to get it in front of potential customers. Develop a comprehensive marketing strategy that includes content marketing, social media marketing, SEO, and paid advertising.

Listen to customer feedback: Finally, be open to customer feedback and use it to improve your app. Make it easy for users to provide feedback and actively engage with them to understand their needs and pain points. This will help you build a better product and keep your customers engaged and satisfied.