11–20 of 79 posts
Honestly, I think this fails at the first bullet point: "Pick a niche that is already validated". My first bullet would be "Build a product that your existing customer says they need and they can't find." That's how all my SaaS as a solo have come to be.
arrrghhh this "find a niche" stuff again. what if I am a regular 9-5 engineer in a big company. where the hell am I finding those? By using random idea generator and getting "note taking add-in for excel for amputee ballerinas"? aw jeez, they dont have enough money, I must pivot to broker ballerinas
Unfortunately, my discovery and learning process also involved a good amount of luck and trying to describe it feels a lot like step #2 in the "How to draw an owl" meme. At some point, luck and hard work is involved, and there is no obvious playbook for your next step.
However, if there is a chiton of money to be made in Excel add-ins for amputee ballerinas, and you know how to make add-ins, and you know how to find and talk to amputee ballerinas, it might not be a bad career move, though...
Specifically for me it doesn't speak at all to the differences between starting a SaaS like this as a team of founders versus as a solo founder. As a committed solo founder all I can say is that choosing solo founding is not something to be undertaken lightly!
My startup CV is now roughly an equal length of being on a team of 4 founders and the current solo founder situation so I see the differences all the time. There are a lot of positives to both options but to write an article like this and not blend an awareness of the trade-offs between the two makes it much less interesting.
I've really struggled with being a solo founder despite it being a strong preference and learning to face every aspect of the running the business with a very conscious awareness that you're +1 in certain things and -1 in others is the only way I've found to make it work.
The idea you choose is a big part of this. I've seen thinking about your idea & solo founding preference described on twitter by @warikoo like this:
2x2 matrix
X-axis: Do you have the core skill reqd for the startup? Y-axis: Are you a control freak?
Y,Y: DON'T have a cofounder
Y,N: Could get one, but with complementary skills
N,Y: Hire people, might make them cofounders later
N,N: You have to have one!
How big is the risk of some competitor just copying with business with 10x the engineers and taking your customers?
How big is the risk of some competitor just copying with business with 10x the engineers and taking your customers?
arrrghhh this "find a niche" stuff again. what if I am a regular 9-5 engineer in a big company. where the hell am I finding those? By using random idea generator and getting "note taking add-in for excel for amputee ballerinas"? aw jeez, they dont have enough money, I must pivot to broker ballerinas
I thought this was implicit: you find a problem you deal with on a daily basis. This is probably why there are so many more startups pitching development tools than, for instance, something to make the lives of truckers a little easier. If you work as a regular engineer, you must come across dozens of daily problems any of which are not properly solved by your current tools. Even simple things like following up consi…
arrrghhh this "find a niche" stuff again. what if I am a regular 9-5 engineer in a big company. where the hell am I finding those? By using random idea generator and getting "note taking add-in for excel for amputee ballerinas"? aw jeez, they dont have enough money, I must pivot to broker ballerinas
i don't believe it have to be a niche. lets look at Zoom, its in a saturated market with a lot of established products that already have all the Zoom's functions built in but hide under complex UI that no one know how it work or its there.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I thought this was implicit: you find a problem you deal with on a daily basis. This is probably why there are so many more startups pitching development tools than, for instance, something to make the lives of truckers a little easier. If you work as a regular engineer, you must come across dozens of daily problems any of which are not properly solved by your current tools. Even simple things like following up consi…
Here’s a midly annoying problem I’m currently facing with Slack. Getting annoyed of jumping between DM’s and channels where I end up losing track of a channel I may have needed open or was going through. I feel like having tabs in slack would fix this? Not sure if it makes sense for the app to have this feature but something I’ve been thinking about.
arrrghhh this "find a niche" stuff again. what if I am a regular 9-5 engineer in a big company. where the hell am I finding those? By using random idea generator and getting "note taking add-in for excel for amputee ballerinas"? aw jeez, they dont have enough money, I must pivot to broker ballerinas
Most of my projects have come from just listening to friends or families on their pain points (either in their jobs or life), evaluating the market around those problems and then taking action if it's a good idea.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I thought this was implicit: you find a problem you deal with on a daily basis. This is probably why there are so many more startups pitching development tools than, for instance, something to make the lives of truckers a little easier. If you work as a regular engineer, you must come across dozens of daily problems any of which are not properly solved by your current tools. Even simple things like following up consi…
Here’s a midly annoying problem I’m currently facing with Slack. Getting annoyed of jumping between DM’s and channels where I end up losing track of a channel I may have needed open or was going through. I feel like having tabs in slack would fix this? Not sure if it makes sense for the app to have this feature but something I’ve been thinking about.