Ask HN: Building a SaaS by connecting services instead of custom-dev everything?

#1

Post by _jdams » Fri, Oct 20, 2017, 5:06 PM UTC

I've been reading a lot on Indie Hackers lately about SaaS businesses, typically smaller "micro-saas" which serve some hyper-specific features/business model until there are opportunities to expand. Is it possible to piece a SaaS together by combining a website framework such as Wordpress with payment processing from Stripe, and maybe a few other services, without having to re-invent the wheel or learn full-on development?

To be honest I haven't even come up with an idea yet, so I'm not ready to start, but I'm doing a weekend of research to determine feasibility of getting the barebones of a SaaS started while leaving me with an opportunity to seek contracted/outsourced help for small tasks as opposed to developing everything myself. Any experience in this area? I'll also be digging through IndieHackers interviews to see if I can find others who have shared similar experiences with little custom development work (until it was needed).

Re: Ask HN: Building a SaaS by connecting services instead of custom-dev everything?

#2

Post by kposehn » Fri, Oct 20, 2017, 5:13 PM UTC

I’ve actually done something similar before - using stripe and Sendgrid to make a small (and unremarkable) email service.

I had a very basic management app in rails but nothing else. In the end, I spent maybe 40 hours of dev and less than $100 to make it (domain name and ssl cert). It was a proof of concept for myself.

The drawback was assembling the elements to make it resulted in little to no unique value in the product itself. It had no compelling value prop and as such I never released it.

So, you can do this but you’ll probably have to do some dev work and make sure the end product is both compelling, solves a real need and can deliver continuous value.

As an aside, a product that I did enjoy a while ago (the name escapes me) was really just a single person sending a newsletter with a curated list of web dev/design contracts. He used gum road to charge $40/month for it. While I used it, it was totally a valuable offering - and involved zero dev work.

Value can be created in other ways too :)

Re: Ask HN: Building a SaaS by connecting services instead of custom-dev everything?

#3

Post by sharemywin » Fri, Oct 20, 2017, 5:31 PM UTC

Here's a link to an article for something like that:

https://www.process.st/mvp-app/

Re: Ask HN: Building a SaaS by connecting services instead of custom-dev everything?

#4

Post by _jdams » Fri, Oct 20, 2017, 5:56 PM UTC

kposehn wrote: post #2

I’ve actually done something similar before - using stripe and Sendgrid to make a small (and unremarkable) email service. I had a very basic management app in rails but nothing else. In the end, I spent maybe 40 hours of dev and less than $100 to make it (domain name and ssl cert). It was a proof of concept for myself. The drawback was assembling the elements to make it resulted in little to no unique value in the pr…

Thanks for the feedback and for sharing your personal experiences. I think your comment about value being created in other ways (and in sometimes incredibly simple, non-techy ways) is something important to not lose sight of. Also, just in that example alone, future enhancement of a service like that could be automating the newsletter into multiple formats, for viewing on the go (such as a kindle format, PDF, etc.), instead of leaving it email only.

But yea, like I said in my OP, I don't even have a business idea yet. Whatever it is, it will need to have a real value prop to be worth doing.