I failed to create SaaS twice, both in the early stages.
I always had an idea of creating a small business, and once I became a Web Developer, I knew it should be something tech-related. I did the research and found Indie Hackers - creators who're building small tech businesses based on their skills with their own money. I dived deep into the community by chatting with creators, listening to podcasts, reading books, etc. It seemed to be a perfect place for me where smart “people create cool stuff online and make money in the process”.
The plan was simple
- Come up with an idea
- Learn about competitors
- Build better/faster/cheaper product
- Market it throughout Twitter / Cold outreach / SEO / etc
- Make money
- Live a successful life.
Sounds sexy, right? Seemed like success was so close.
However, just today, this beautiful Sunday morning, I found myself with 2 failed attempts struggling to find a new idea for my next "exciting one million dollars SAAS".
So, I'm writing this to find out if I did at least something right.
The real-world execution of my plan
- Learned about a successful product
- Tested this product and decided that I can build similar but better/faster/cheaper.
- Excited! In my dreams, I’m a successful entrepreneur with a Lambo, or no… with Lambo and Porsche, yeah!
- Bought the domain name with a cool name.
- Created 10+ new Notion documents with roadmaps and tasks.
- Started doing designs and building.
- Found a lot of edge cases, and the product seems to be much harder than before.
- Tried to force myself to build, but motivation fell. Felt exhausted.
- Realized that I’m much happier when I’m not building this project.
- Quit.
These 10 steps show me what exactly went wrong:
I’m Dreamer and Pessimist
This hot combo work against me so effectively and ruin my attempts so fast. I’m dreaming of how cool this project is, expectations rise high, seems like nothing can stop me. However, just after my understanding of the whole complexity of the project, the pessimism wins the competition, I’m thinking how non-sense this project is competitors are so well established, seems like nothing motivates me anymore.
Solo creation could be scary
Making UI, UX, Front-end, Back-end, planning, management, marketing, and sales sometimes seem to be overkill for one person. However, I still believe that it can work out and strongly admire Indie Hackers who are doing everything by themselves, the difficulty level - of Ultra High. I also found that nobody around me in real life is particularly interested in my ideas. The product creation in such conditions feels lonely and not fun, then It’s easy to quit.
Ideas are tricky
My framework for coming up with ideas was to take a popular product in a crowded market and recreate it in my way by improving it or making it more affordable. It sounds alright and I heard that it worked for some Indie Hackers. However, in my case, the main problem was the complexity because I wanted to build a big and scalable project which could take me up to 6 months of MVP creation.
Let’s recap
So, I have been trying to come up with a way of creating a small software business for around 5 months. Here are my learnings:
- My first solo project should be very simple, straightforward, and short (2-3 months long).
- I should build in public and ask Indie Hackers what they’re thinking about an idea.
- I should understand myself better and learn what an idea I want to work on.
- I should fight against my pessimism and restrain my dreams.
- I should accept that it’s really hard and it will take time.
- I should consider finding a co-founder.
- I should be happy no matter what!
There are some good points in here but I don't see the most important one:
MARKET/SELL BEFORE YOU BUILD
This is advice I don't follow nearly enough, and I have my own lack of success to show for it! I managed to finally follow this simple piece of advice when launching my newsletter -- even getting just the few people that validated my idea is what I should have been doing all along on all my projects.
Even if a concept is extremely easy to put together -- sell before you build and do it manually (if possible) at first. Market validation will tell you really quickly if you have a hit or a miss on your hands, and how big of a hit it is.
If you get people signing up and paying for your idea and you haven't built it yet (congrats, you're even better at market validation than you think) -- just let your first customer(s) know you're going to build it in 1-4 weeks and give them 3 months free (and premium support forever or whatever) for the inconvenience. If they want their money back of course refund it and let them know they'll hear from you in however many weeks.
Time spent on a project, successful completion of a project pale in comparison to having paying customers.
All the "build in public" people are doing is advertising/marketing to you to keep their project top of mind as they build it.
OP, listen to vados. He's spot on.
Nice, this is actually a great piece of advice! It could be a good motivation to not give up and build.
yeah it's not the only approach, but it's really important to know that this is what you probably should be doing -- obviously not every single case, but most times it will save you time, effort and money.
For example, some people take a market based approach -- they literally find a market, talk to people in that specific niche/market and THEN figure out what to build, based only on customer feedback (people who are willing to commit money to you right now if you solve their problem).
What if the product is something you can't really monetize right away? Like a browser extension or mobile app you build an MVP for but don't want to spend more time investing into premium features if the free version doesn't really catch on?
I'm no expert, but if it's a browser extension or mobile app sounds like a prospecting page + follow up emails/calls to do customer development would be the best way to start.
Don't build the thing at all -- neither the free version nor the premium features, talk to the customers that want it enough to:
Also AFAIK I am the only one popularizing the term "prospecting page" so spread it!
Thanks, will do!
Just curious since you seem pretty experienced and I'm kinda new to trying to launch a startup. Are you a web dev by trade? Any thoughts on the most ideal job to build up the right skills for launching a decent tech startup?
How many startups did you try launching which didn't take off before you became adamant about the idea of a prospecting page? I've heard of similar validation ideas in the past before but didn't listen to them, but my ears are much more open to experience after my current MVP isn't taking off as well as I'd hoped.
I've tried a lot of stuff, but a bunch of it hasn't worked (yet)! IH is a great place to learn from people who have done stuff that does work, and to find people who have good advice from failure as well.
I'm not even a good sales/product guy -- finding a good group of people is key so they can drop insight on you, it's probably one of the most important things actually.
About 4? I'm going to let you know right now that what I said is like... absolutely right. Almost no room for interpretation. If you also watch the YC founder videos (their youtube channel is a gold mine), a lot of YC comes down to telling founders to do two things:
Their path is a bit different (YC companies have money to burn through), but for bootstrappers and indie people, selling before you build is basically the most important thing you can do.
It's simple:
Luckily for us, what the customer is buying from you can be shown without building it all the way. If you have to build it, build the smallest, scrappiest MVP, but 99% of the time you don't have to build it -- what you're selling them is something that fixes the pain they have.
If they can imagine your solution (or better yet, see a picture/video of a mockup), then some % of them should be feeling enough pain to preorder.
[EDIT] One more thing! This is antithetical to who I am (I like to yak shave), but you should be finding and using tools that lower the cost of trying an idea to near zero. Don't code your own landing pages, don't manage your own mailing lists, use free tools like google docs/sheets/meet, use zapier to automate easy flows, if you can pay someone $20/hour to code the most basic functionality over 10 hours, do it.
Again, I break almost all these rules, but I do it to my detriment. The right thing is to make MVPs as cheaply as you can make them when you have to.
You can try our unique approach where we have people experimenting with small ideas as a part of community - some are Micro SaaS, some are info products, some are newsletters.
Both of the below are part of our single ecosystem.
Yeah, just found your Micro SaaS Ideas a couple of days ago. It's very helpful, thank you!
Thankyou!!
You didn't fail, you quit as you said yourself. 5 months is just the beginning. I tend to spend at least 6-12 months on a single idea. The magic to me happens when I'm months and months deep into the project, when I learn more about the domain and the problems I'm trying to solve. And I'd rather pivot than outright quit.
I have also considered the co-founder route. It can be a brutal journey alone. The major downside there is the added complexity, no need to split ownership or responsibilities or make sure the other side is living up to the agreement. It's much easier to rely on and trust yourself. Finding that in a partner can be incredibly difficult.
I think this is your most valuable lesson:
Sounds like you just needed to pace yourself more.
Thanks for the answer. Regarding the co-founder, you're right, it highly depends on the relationship between co-founders and the project itself.
Hey, just wanted to add my 2 cents here.
I am the founder of hanek.com, and a solo founder, and...I definitely will take the "co founder" path next time: it has been a very lonely 3 years path.
Keep going man, there are only very few people who got it right the first time. My current gig is 4th one (after a series of failures).
Thank you, I will!
Keep going Eugene. Never give up.
Thank you, I will! 😌
It's exactly about me right now.
2 months ago I set a goal to ship a chrome extension in one month and it didn't happen. As for today I only finished the extension itself, but I also need to add user auth logic, set up the payment process, create a landing page, and so on. As for this time I'm completely exhausted and don't want to continue, but I understand that I've already spent so much time developing that I can't just give up.
After 2 failed projects (event not completed and not released) and the struggle with the current one I see the problem - after some time euphoria of bringing a cool idea to life and making a profitable product will 100% go away and after this stage, the only thing that will bring me to the finish is my will and discipline.
I would say that the process of having have built what you did still is a good step in the direction you want to move in. It taught you about building chrome extensions and other parts of the tech stack so that is still a +1 since you will be faster at building the next product if you wanted to!
Yeah, I think there are other things that could push you through this problem:
Maybe in your case everything else you would be able to set up without code.
I believe you don't need any authentication and custom logic on your website just for selling the Chrome extension.
So, the entire setup of all things you have to do is 2-3 days, 0 lines of code.
I would be so happy to use Gumroad or Stripe, but unfortunately, they are unavailable in my country (Ukraine). So basically I left only with Paddle.
Yeah, maybe you are right and I don't need any auth logic 🤔
You can use getrevin.com and get a stripe account even in countries where stripe is unavailable as Revin is an MoR similar to paddle
Wooow, thank you so much! Haven’t heard about Revin before
And here we go, good luck with your extension!
Being in the same process for the last few months and few tries before, not only tech things, I could easily say I experienced basically everything from your post. Scary process that at the end can be rewarding on so many levels. We need to keep trying and just find that one or few things which will click in the moment. Nice post!
Thank you! Yeah, keep trying and go forward with all your best ideas.
I see a lot of my own experience in your post. Even down to my ideal timeframe for projects these days (2-3 months). However, one thing I've been working on is only starting projects I'm willing to try for a year or so.
I think achieving success is a lot more likely from compounding efforts on the same project or two, rather than starting new every 3 months.
Yeah, that's 100%. The idea is to launch MVP in 2-3 months and after that keep working on the project. It would be ideal.
Thank you for sharing mate, this is so insightful.
Yay, happy to help!
(1) You need something you care about so much that it will outlast your next shiny object. When trying to build the best house, you need to find a good location and at some point, commit to it and hunker down. If you are scouting for the best location all the time, you won’t ever have time to build the best house. If you have 100 minutes, devote 35 minutes on exploring and the rest on building. (2) Most developers underestimate and look down upon sales and marketing. Making the first sale is a lot harder than you think. It might take you 3 years. It took me 40 months. (3) You are still young if you don’t have kids and a mortgage. You can use this as a learning experience, if you are smart. Life is long and you just need one hit to be financially successful.
Hello,
Can you notice why you failed to create SaaS twice??? There are some major points that you https://proserialkeys.com/igi-3-activation-key need to be considered while you create a SaaS.
Kathleen Anthony
The idea of growing personally through experiences while earning income is a great idea, I'm all for you, and have some advice.
Maybe you can find a partner. If you are good at technology, then find a partner who has experience in business and GTM. If you are in this role and your technical ability is half, you can find a CTO, like this It allows you to focus on what you are best at, and at the same time, you can have a part of cross work to cooperate with your partners. When you do everything alone, the work that you are not good at will limit your movements and may hinder your actions. You boldly imagine and innovate, thereby missing a good product. At the same time, a person is lonely, and your pain may not be released during this process, which will damage your health
To release the idea of a product this morning, you can have only one official website or just a blog. In short, when you have an idea, find the person closest to you to chat about it and see the feedback. This is also what YC advocates. Practice, you will get feedback on the direction in this process, and you will also get customers, people will not steal your ideas, nor will they laugh at you, do it with confidence, make your risks less, and avoid investing meaningless workload
It's good to have a few customer calls before you start building. If there are people who are waiting for your product, that also acts as a major motivation driver.
Building and selling is harder than it looks
hmmm what you really should do is learning about your audience in the first place. people who are building business for the sake of a sportscar are unlikely to succeed. while it is okay to like expensive stuff, its not the right motivation in my opinion – especially not in the saas field.
you did not mention talking to users at all. copying from the competition might be a way to got, but I would start with the users and their needs, jobs, pains and stuff. every good product is a solution for a problem someone suffers from. the greater the problem, the greater the need.
Yeah, that's right, that's something that I don't pay attention to enough. How many potential customers do I need to interview to understand their needs, what do you think?
PS: Sportscars were added for the cliche feeling and just for fun.
I am giving lectures on that topic and am doing consulting for validation, so i would say i have a decent understanding:
it really depends on the hypothesis you are setting. generally its all about validation or falsification. to check if a hypothesis is whether true or false you need to set them up first. What problem are you planning on solving? who might have this problem? who is your potential customer etc? These are hypothesis you can validate by testing. If you want a concrete number i would suggest talking to as many people as possible. statistically you need to have a minimum of 150 or so interview partners to remove inaccuracies and to avoid confirmation bias. obv your interviewees should be rather diverse in your specific niche. there is a lot to talk about in that area so its hard to break it down in just a few sentences. i havent unlocked post privileges yet but i am planning on writing articles about that here.
How do you do sales and marketing if product is launched in semi saturated or saturated market? It is difficult to come up with unique ideas everytime
Just launch and monetise, even if the product sucks.
You have to learn somehow.
Make it work.
If you quit before revenue...I have bad news for you.
A suggestion for future efforts. You could apply to MassLight, we specialize in helping founders build their startups. We invest capital, software engineers, and mentors in early-stage startups in exchange for equity. A startup journey is never easy, but if you want help kickstarting things feel free to apply we're always accepting applications!
I agree it's a struggle and probably most of us all have.
I think it's important that we need to determine if this is a project or a business. Because any project/business takes time and commitments.
For the same reason, I wrote this financial modeling tool to help me assess from financial standpoint to have some realistic expectations: https://increnovation.azurewebsites.net/fermi/highlevel
This is still work in progress, any recommendation helps.
I strongly feel that you should have a community before you have a project as it makes lagging on a project so much harder.
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I agree but it at least motivate you to try harder and harder to complete on deadline and not leave the project halfway.
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Yep
Next time, start at number 8.