Common mistakes developers make starting their first SaaS

Last month I gave a talk at the Ruby conference Friendly.rb about starting your own SaaS. I couldn't fit my talk in the 25 minute slot and had to delete 17 slides. I will resurrect some of those slides and fit them into this article.

Before building a SaaS, I should build an audience first

Nobody is going to pay for that, I can build this in a weekend

We should do Freemium, nobody is going to sign up with a credit card

A good product will sell itself

Pretending that you are a big company

Treating your customers the way you want to be treated

We have to do everything legal, GDPR, etc

Bad ideas for a SaaS bootstrapper

Two-sided market places

Ideas that are too big

Targeting Consumers

Ideas that don't fit a category

Ideas that lead to changing behavior.

Ideas for people without money.

Good ideas

• Solve a painful problem
• For a reachable group of people with a big budget (niche)
• With an existing category (helps with explanation, SEO, and Integration marketing)
• Ideally with some existing competitors but not too many