Dive into the essentials of creating a SaaS product from the ground up with our detailed guide, enriched with sarcasm and humor for an engaging read.

1. Find Your Niche

Choose a problem that you have overcome or are passionate about solving. Ask yourself if others have faced the same problem. Are you passionate enough to work on it 24/7 for at least two years, overcoming many barriers?

“37 Signals” was looking to manage all their internal projects in one place. They couldn’t find the right platform, so they built their own tool and called it “Basecamp.” Today, it is used by over 100,000 customers.

2. Look for Competitors

You might not be the only one looking for a solution. Research all the foremost companies in your niche, their products, customer segments, and figure out what existing companies are ignoring. Those are your opportunities to disrupt them.

Not everyone needs a Salesforce CRM. They are expensive, difficult to maintain, and can only be afforded by enterprises. Hence came HubSpot, FreshSales, Zoho, etc. Each one has its own niche.

3. Look for Customers

Identify the pain points that customers are facing with existing products. Visit their support portals and see what their customers are complaining about. Find a new use-case that would excite customers. Focus on that very thing. That should be your entry strategy into the market, and it should be powerful enough.

Don’t assume that Microsoft or Google is the solution to all problems. There is no one-size-fits-all.

4. Validate Your Idea

Validate your product approach with at least 30-40 potential users and figure out how to influence them. It’s not only about what you can offer your customers, but also why they should use your product.

The notion that someone will steal your idea is naive. You are the only one who can build your company. Share it with others and get more feedback in the early stages.

5. Get to Work

Once you have the market insight, start working on it. Remember, “there is no better time than NOW.” You don’t need the best equipment, talent, workplace, or lots of investors to get started. Most successful entrepreneurs started from their garage, closet, or basement. You don’t need a lot of money or resources to start your business; you just need perseverance.

Salman Khan, the founder of Khan Academy, started recording video tutorials from a small walk-in closet using a blackboard and a mobile camera.

6. Build an MVP

Don’t try to build a world-class product. Instead, build a minimum viable product (MVP). Improve the product over time and keep improving. Build a SaaS product that works as expected instead of trying to get every feature in the first release. Target the early adopters; they are hungry for new products and innovations. You will get genuine feedback from them.

Facebook was a social tool used by college students. Initially, it just had 40 users. As of today, FB has over 2.7 billion active users.

7. Measure

With each release, test what works and what doesn’t. Measure is a statistical analysis of your product. How many returning users do you have? How many new acquisitions have you had in the past week? What features are your customers complaining about? What features do the customers like the most?

8. Learn

As time passes, more customers will leave feedback. That is your learning opportunity. Improve your product using the Learn-Build-Measure loop. Get closer to the customer, and that is how you learn.

Zappos customer service never goes through a phone tree. There is always a human who picks up the call and answers the customers. Their representatives don’t have a script to read. They are given the authority to talk to customers as they like.

9. Be Lean

Most entrepreneurs make this mistake: once they see a flow of cash and customer growth, they double down on the team, recruitment, and think that their overall growth will double. NO. The company “37 Signals” operates with only 54 employees, and their annual revenue is over $78 million as of 2018. Keep your team and expenses lean.

Your goal must not be to create a product; create a brand that has a sense of purpose.