Want to build SaaS? Amazing,but don't start with it.

Dan Kulkov
15 replies
You are 99% likely to fail with SaaS as a first startup for 2 reasons: ā€” Not enough audience to support you ā€” Not enough knowledge about customers' problems Odds are against you šŸ„² Start with these products to solve these issues. Launching SaaS next would be a piece of cake. 1) Curated list 2) Notion template 3) Newsletter 4) Closed community 5) 30-day challenge 6) 1-person agency 7) Pre-recorded course 8) Podcast 9) Email course 10) Blog Full thread ā€” https://twitter.com/DanKulkov/st... What product idea would you add?

Replies

Sveta Bay
E-book is a popular one also!
Prachi Gupta
Research tool to survey my target audience and early adopters
Sushil Sharma
Thanks, Dan for sharing it. Really helpful.
Sushil Sharma
@kronop Seriously, I started making a curated list before I launch my main freebie product. I was thinking in the same line with my partner to hunt for a small product first and then the main product. Your discussion came at the right time. Thanks, man.
Bob Swinson
Hi, curious why building an audience in the other 10 categories is any easier than building an audience for a SaaS?
Dan Kulkov
@bobby_swinson it takes less time to ship an MVP, it often can be cheaper or even free for customers, it's easier to market
G. M. Mehdi
What would you say to founders who've built a great product with enough of no.2(solving real problems) but not enough of no.1 which is the community?
G. M. Mehdi
@kronop I agree. In my case I'm creating a product for marketers, to help with marketing, and being a marketer myself I'm not unfamiliar with common problems. So while I may not have built the community for my product launch, I'd like to think I'm aware of its issues and available solutions.
Aspen Chadderdon
The start-up I recently started with has built a great community around the product and was founded by a team with first-hand experience of the problem. This post gives great insight into why people are willing to jump on board with the SaaS model.
Krati Gupta
this is a good roadmap. thanks for sharing.
Prajwal Prakash
Interesting take! I think the audience point is definitely relevant. But to get more insight into customers' problems, one key has to be to get actual feedback on what you're building. SaaS companies also fail because they launch late and can't pivot.