How to Create a SaaS and Compete with the Big Players as a Solo Founder • Hacker News Board

Re: How to Create a SaaS and Compete with the Big Players as a Solo Founder

#41

Post by GGfpc » Tue, Oct 19, 2021, 5:25 PM UTC

lewisjoe wrote: post #26

omarhaneef wrote: post #7

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…

pg has an excellent essay on how to fine niches or startup ideas in general. My thumbrule: 1. Pick a market that already has money-making companies. If you can beat them by price & quality, even after considering the first-mover advantage - go for it. 2. [From pg's essay] Just experiene more in life, with different people facing different kinds of problems from different sectors. That's a sure shot way to eventually…

Can you link the essay? Or even expand on what is pg?

Re: How to Create a SaaS and Compete with the Big Players as a Solo Founder

#42

Post by ogjunkyard » Tue, Oct 19, 2021, 5:25 PM UTC

ezekg wrote: post #33

ogjunkyard wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought the same thing. Current major players in the market I'm going after offer their products/services for free, and niche players offer their products for $5/month or $20/year. Charging $47+/month is a nonstarter as customers are price conscious.

Honest question -- are you trying to build a sustainable business on $20/yr per customer? That sounds very ... challenging.

The company operating on the $20/year model offers a very specific feature-product and that's basically the only thing they do. My goal is to have that be one of the features my company offers eventually and do this with a handful of complimentary feature-companies to build something more robust over time, the idea being that I charge something like $10+/month for a set of "premium features".

Re: How to Create a SaaS and Compete with the Big Players as a Solo Founder

#43

Post by edmundsauto » Tue, Oct 19, 2021, 5:27 PM UTC

artemonster wrote: post #16

omarhaneef wrote: post #7

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…

"you find a problem you deal with on a daily basis". Nope, not necessarily. Depends on where you work. If you are a cog in a big company, slaving away your 9-5, then no. You would NEVER get an idea that some finance folk would love to get an excel addin where you can click together in a simple GUI a data fetch from API, or whatever.

There are also routes outside your main 9-5 at BigCo. In fact, your employment agreement with BigCo probably is written so that you don't want to get an idea for an internal product!

Try meeting people not in your field. Yes, it will take effort. Yes, it will be uncomfortable. Because of those challenges, fewer people have explored that space - so there are still fertile grounds for new products.

Re: How to Create a SaaS and Compete with the Big Players as a Solo Founder

#44

Post by ogjunkyard » Tue, Oct 19, 2021, 5:28 PM UTC

thih9 wrote: post #37

ezekg wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question -- are you trying to build a sustainable business on $20/yr per customer? That sounds very ... challenging.

Could you elaborate? It seems to me that $20/year could be a good lowest tier price, especially for products targeting individual customers (as opposed to businesses). There are successful solo founder projects in that range (notably pinboard.in, $22/year).

For sure, I agree with this take. My goal is to build a small, lean company that serves one particular market and expand over time.

Re: How to Create a SaaS and Compete with the Big Players as a Solo Founder

#45

Post by HeyLaughingBoy » Tue, Oct 19, 2021, 5:29 PM UTC

axegon_ wrote: post #22

omarhaneef wrote: post #7

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…

Most problems we all face on daily basis are completely trivial and those which aren't are often solved by someone. Which is something people often overlook and end up making products which no one really needs. Here's an example - I broke the remote for my AC earlier this year but I managed to salvage the codes and program a wifi-enabled ESP32 to communicate with the AC over wifi remotely, I made a crazy stupid UI fo…

That's actually a good idea.

Was the original remote app enabled? If not, now you have a potential product for those people who would rather use an app than the manual remote. Are spare remotes hard to get or expensive? There's another market that might want to buy from you, especially if the AC unit that is old or obsolete.

Spare parts/retrofits with new features is big business. There's a good chance that if you dug into this particular problem you'd find that it could be profitable. Not quit-you-day-job profitable, but at least enough to bring in a few extra $k per month.

Re: How to Create a SaaS and Compete with the Big Players as a Solo Founder

#46

Post by HeyLaughingBoy » Tue, Oct 19, 2021, 5:31 PM UTC

GGfpc wrote: post #41

lewisjoe wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

pg has an excellent essay on how to fine niches or startup ideas in general. My thumbrule: 1. Pick a market that already has money-making companies. If you can beat them by price & quality, even after considering the first-mover advantage - go for it. 2. [From pg's essay] Just experiene more in life, with different people facing different kinds of problems from different sectors. That's a sure shot way to eventually…

Can you link the essay? Or even expand on what is pg?

pg == one of the founders of YC.

http://www.paulgraham.com/articles.html

Re: How to Create a SaaS and Compete with the Big Players as a Solo Founder

#47

Post by intrasight » Tue, Oct 19, 2021, 5:44 PM UTC

CodingPanda42 wrote: post #8

intrasight wrote: post #2

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.

In a way that is the same point, just in your case you have already existing customers. But if you don't have a look at what other companies customer are doing and optimize for a segment of those can certainly be a good approach IMHO

Sort of but not really. The article is mostly about differentiation. But if there's no existing solution to a customer problem, then you don't have to differentiate.

Re: How to Create a SaaS and Compete with the Big Players as a Solo Founder

#48

Post by dinkleberg » Tue, Oct 19, 2021, 5:49 PM UTC

artemonster wrote: post #28

foogazi wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what if I am a… Why does advice have to apply to every scenario ? What if you are a paraguayan field worker and this is not actionable for you ? Anyways, I’d suggest you talk to others around you and see if you spot the pain points in their day

>Anyways, I’d suggest you talk to others around you and see if you spot the pain points in their day This is not a predictable tactic that would yield a viable SaaS idea, this is a gamble "go dive into the ocean, maybe you will find treasure"

There is no predictability in starting a business. If we could easily predict the idea for the next big unicorn everyone would be going in on it.

Starting a business is a gamble. If you don’t have some risk tolerance, starting a startup is not the right path.

Re: How to Create a SaaS and Compete with the Big Players as a Solo Founder

#49

Post by _jal » Tue, Oct 19, 2021, 5:56 PM UTC

cvhashim wrote: post #10

omarhaneef wrote: post #7

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.

I encourage people to move to email. I know people hate it, but I'm serious.

Threading suddenly works in a non-stupid way, search suddenly works, and you can manage your own windows.

Re: How to Create a SaaS and Compete with the Big Players as a Solo Founder

#50

Post by keewee7 » Tue, Oct 19, 2021, 6:05 PM UTC

1cvmask wrote: post #3

So what's the SaaS that you created and managed to compete with big players as a solo founder?

In the C++ world there is a dude with funny hair who makes a living by being a C++ expert.

What is his real world C++ experience? Being a C++ expert.