51–60 of 79 posts
> A good ballpark to get started is creating three plans around $47, $97 and $249 each. just like that. really? no matter what kind of SaaS you're running?
Find a popular product, pick a growing niche that product serves not so well (you can see that in reviews, twitter, etc) and build a specialized version of that product with a friendly and modern UI. When serving different niches, usually products require different configurations for each and get quite heavy and confusing. You can fix that by specializing on one niche.
We don't refer to Doctors, Lawyers, and Accountants as "Solo Doctors", etc...
They are simply people who have studied their area of expertise for years, are disciplined and principled in their approach, likely carry some form of E&O insurance to warrant their work, and are perfectly capable forming their own legal entity and opening their own "office".
Broadly speaking, these professionals belong to networks of other professionals, who occasionally collaborate on projects.
Reading the article in this context then, focusing on a niche makes perfect sense for any Professional.
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
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…
2) >>> 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. This makes sense if you're a developer or work in software. Eg, I'm a Product person who built tools on the side to scratch my itch. My platform was Google App Engine (GAE). When the GAE GUI was deprecated, I realized that I really found a GUI much more convenient and so built - https://nocommandline.com and in the process fixed stuff I didn't like about the old GUI.
I think the trick here is to set right expectation i.e. recognize that not every idea is going to be a Unicorn or a big business. It could remain 'just a side project' or turn out to be something that just brings you extra income (pay your rent, weekly gas bill, etc).
If you want to compete with the big players, you have to solve the most important pain point and work upward from that small use base. My case: I work on https://hanami.run (will soon move to https://mailwip.com due to hanamirb.org conflict) and email forwarding is very competitive. Big and old players are all over the place because at the end of day, setting up email forwarding isn't hard and many open source projec…
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"
"Solo Founder" seems like a proxy that just acknowledges that Software Development is now a Profession. We don't refer to Doctors, Lawyers, and Accountants as "Solo Doctors", etc... They are simply people who have studied their area of expertise for years, are disciplined and principled in their approach, likely carry some form of E&O insurance to warrant their work, and are perfectly capable forming their own legal…
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"
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.